[solved] Why does my MBA battery get drained with light use?

[CatTheHat]

I purchased an MBA with 8 GPU cores, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD. I have a small non-powerered USB hub with one mouse connected to it.

I feel that the battery gets used quite quickly despite hardly running anything strenuous. Most of my use on this charge has been quite lite with long periods of near-idleness while I listen to music. In addition, my screen's brightness is set to 6 notches (I'm not sure how else to explain this).

I have read the other battery draining threads, and nothing stood out.

BigSur says my battery health is 100%; while Coconut Battery claims that I'm at 96% battery health with 15 cycles.

I have performed a diagnostic and found no issues.

What appears troubling that I can't quite put my finger on is that Coconut Battery indicates that I'm discharging at nearly with 6 watts with only few applications open.

Here is my activity with my current charge.

One thing I would like to add is that it appears that no matter what I'm doing in Safari (whether I have one tab open or 20) I always see the message about Safari using a significant amount of battery. The only extensions I have are Bitwarden and DDG Essentials.

Having said that does anyone have any comments on how I can address this?

Thank you.

 

[xraydoc]

Test it without the unpowered hub attached. If it's relying on your laptop to power its circuits, I'm sure it's using up some power that won't be reflected in the Activity Monitor.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I agree with doc. It is probably your hub.

 

[jdb8167]

I purchased an MBA with 8 GPU cores, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD. I have a small non-powerered USB hub with one mouse connected to it.

I feel that the battery gets used quite quickly despite hardly running anything strenuous. Most of my use on this charge has been quite lite with long periods of near-idleness while I listen to music. In addition, my screen's brightness is set to 6 notches (I'm not sure how else to explain this).

I have read the other battery draining threads, and nothing stood out.

BigSur says my battery health is 100%; while Coconut Battery claims that I'm at 96% battery health with 15 cycles.

I have performed a diagnostic and found no issues.

What appears troubling that I can't quite put my finger on is that Coconut Battery indicates that I'm discharging at nearly with 6 watts with only few applications open.

Here is my activity with my current charge.

View attachment 1732272
View attachment 1732273

One thing I would like to add is that it appears that no matter what I'm doing in Safari (whether I have one tab open or 20) I always see the message about Safari using a significant amount of battery. The only extensions I have are Bitwarden and DDG Essentials.

Having said that does anyone have any comments on how I can address this?

Thank you.

I'm testing right now with my Caldigit SOHO dock with my M1 MacBook Air in clamshell mode streaming Apple Music. The dock only has a Display Port connection, no other peripherals. Coconut battery says it is pulling 5.4 W. That will kill the battery relatively quickly with a 49.9 Wh battery (about 9 hours). I would say this is normal.

Without Apple Music streaming I'm seeing about 4.85 W. This also seems to make reasonable sense.

 

[CatTheHat]

Thank you for the help.

It turns out my small Anker dock consumes between 2.5 and 3 watts.

Problem has been solved!