Hello, everybody, I recently got an MacBook Air M3 16GB RAM & 256 SSD, 13 inch and the battery life is seemingly horrendous.
I remember when I got my MBA M1 a few years back the battery life was stellar (and still is even at 84% battery health) when browsing, watching movies, reading books, and using heavy audio processing software like Ableton Live Suite, as well as working with other apps like Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, playing games like Hades, Night in the Woods, Disco Elysium and etc. (I got this machine because there was a great local deal and I needed the extra boost for future work. I'm writing this because someone on Reddit asked.)
In comparison, the M3 air battery life just sucks, I can barely get a full day's work (or even half day) of writing/producing even at 50% screen brightness and the laptop also charges really slow with MagSafe. Before writing this post I made sure to do a couple of things.
- Activity monitor is not showing any abnormal energy spikes or drains and the computer isn't running hot at all. When browsing, light gaming or producing music the temperature stays between 36-40 degrees Celsius which is normal as far as I know.
- I reinstalled MacOS and that did nothing, currently on Sequioa 15.2. I also did a factory reset, no changes.
- Battery health is at 100% and 15 cycles since I got it which was at the beginning of December, no problems so far when checking with software such as AlDente, Coconut Battery and Better Battery 2.
- I reset the SMC as per Apple's official guidelines for apple silicon machines (even though from what I learned the M series laptops don't actually have an SMC?!?!)
- I searched for random processes that could have been draining the battery, didn't find anything consequential. Also Spotlight isn't indexing anything at this point. I did force a re-index with Onyx but that didn't change anything.
- Low Power mode barely changes anything. I think the most I've gotten is 7-8 hours at best with mixed usage and maybe 5-6 on the regular which is not as much as I remember my old M1 holding on for.
At this point I have no idea what is there left to do and I'm wondering if this is a problem with Sequoia in general, as I saw a couple of threads on the Apple support forums, Reddit and here regarding increased battery draining since the update or in general on MBA M3 laptops. I have no qualms as to returning the device for a quick look at the shop, other than it's an annoying process, but I would like to know if I am missing something or it is a general issue that might be fixed in the future. I also haven't added anything that I don't use on my old Macbook, so I can't say anything like a rogue process or random software is an issue.
I know apple's claims about 14 to 18 hours of battery life are not something I should take at face value and I never have as they are extremely contextual, but judging from my own experience, the battery life shouldn't be like this even on low power mode. I've attached a screenshot of my battery draining (from Better Battery 2 Pro) when I was using Ableton 12 for a bit with 12% CPU load from the software and just chatting with friends.
I remember when I got my MBA M1 a few years back the battery life was stellar (and still is even at 84% battery health) when browsing, watching movies, reading books, and using heavy audio processing software like Ableton Live Suite, as well as working with other apps like Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, playing games like Hades, Night in the Woods, Disco Elysium and etc. (I got this machine because there was a great local deal and I needed the extra boost for future work. I'm writing this because someone on Reddit asked.)
In comparison, the M3 air battery life just sucks, I can barely get a full day's work (or even half day) of writing/producing even at 50% screen brightness and the laptop also charges really slow with MagSafe. Before writing this post I made sure to do a couple of things.
- Activity monitor is not showing any abnormal energy spikes or drains and the computer isn't running hot at all. When browsing, light gaming or producing music the temperature stays between 36-40 degrees Celsius which is normal as far as I know.
- I reinstalled MacOS and that did nothing, currently on Sequioa 15.2. I also did a factory reset, no changes.
- Battery health is at 100% and 15 cycles since I got it which was at the beginning of December, no problems so far when checking with software such as AlDente, Coconut Battery and Better Battery 2.
- I reset the SMC as per Apple's official guidelines for apple silicon machines (even though from what I learned the M series laptops don't actually have an SMC?!?!)
- I searched for random processes that could have been draining the battery, didn't find anything consequential. Also Spotlight isn't indexing anything at this point. I did force a re-index with Onyx but that didn't change anything.
- Low Power mode barely changes anything. I think the most I've gotten is 7-8 hours at best with mixed usage and maybe 5-6 on the regular which is not as much as I remember my old M1 holding on for.
At this point I have no idea what is there left to do and I'm wondering if this is a problem with Sequoia in general, as I saw a couple of threads on the Apple support forums, Reddit and here regarding increased battery draining since the update or in general on MBA M3 laptops. I have no qualms as to returning the device for a quick look at the shop, other than it's an annoying process, but I would like to know if I am missing something or it is a general issue that might be fixed in the future. I also haven't added anything that I don't use on my old Macbook, so I can't say anything like a rogue process or random software is an issue.
I know apple's claims about 14 to 18 hours of battery life are not something I should take at face value and I never have as they are extremely contextual, but judging from my own experience, the battery life shouldn't be like this even on low power mode. I've attached a screenshot of my battery draining (from Better Battery 2 Pro) when I was using Ableton 12 for a bit with 12% CPU load from the software and just chatting with friends.
