The updated MacBook Air 11" and battery life.

[Sinnthetic]

Hello MacForums community! This is my first post and thread here.

I had a question pertaining to the upcoming Macbook Air 11 and was thinking with the new Sandy Bridge Processors, do you think we would could possibly see a battery jump from 5 to 7 hours?

I was also curious to why the 13 inch has a 2 hour longer life span then the 11. Is it mainly size?

Thank you in advance.

 

[endhalf]

13" have bigger battery, that's why it has 2 more hours over the 11"... About original question, we can only speculate about it. It is possible, but if it is true we should know by wednesday (hopefully).

 

[fibrizo]

As much as I would wish for it, I am slightly skeptical. As the new 13 inch macbook pro ended up with less advertised battery life, from 10 hours to 7 hours. Realistically for me I feel like I lost 30mins to 1 hour in my own practical uses... ie I used to get 7 hours on my 2010 13 inch mbp and now I get about 6+ on my 2011 13 inch mbp. But I would love it if the new mba had a longer battery life in the same form factor to replace my current 11 mba

 

[42streetsdown]

With the lack of the nVidia card we may see a slight drop in power consumption, but we'll just have to wait to see if that pans out for better battery life.

 

[fibrizo]

With the lack of the nVidia card we may see a slight drop in power consumption, but we'll just have to wait to see if that pans out for better battery life.

But that's what I meant, the 2010 13 inch mbp had a 25W C2D + nvidia chipset going to a 35W i5 made a 10w increase while eliminating the Nvidia chipset. But the advertised battery life dropped by 3 hours from 10 to 7, with a practical drop for me of ~1 hour.


The new airs will go from 10w C2d+ nvidia and 17w+nvidia to 17w and 25w i5/i7 the increase seems a little less, 7w increase with 11 inch and 8w increase with the 13 inch. I'm not sure we'll see an actual increase in battery life advertised or in reality unless it's redesigned inside, most likely it will be the same I think?

 

[42streetsdown]

But that's what I meant, the 2010 13 inch mbp had a 25W C2D + nvidia chipset going to a 35W i5 made a 10w increase while eliminating the Nvidia chipset. But the advertised battery life dropped by 3 hours from 10 to 7, with a practical drop for me of ~1 hour.


The new airs will go from 10w C2d+ nvidia and 17w+nvidia to 17w and 25w i5/i7 the increase seems a little less, 7w increase with 11 inch and 8w increase with the 13 inch. I'm not sure we'll see an actual increase in battery life advertised or in reality unless it's redesigned inside, most likely it will be the same I think?

I've read that the TDP of the 320M is 10-12W. So the current Air has a total TDP of 20-22W, and 27-29W for the 11 and 13 inch respectively. While the new Sandy Bridge ones will have 17, and 25. That's a 3-5 watt difference on the 11 inch model, and a 2-4 watt difference on the 13 inch.

The 2010 13 inch MacBook Pro also had a 320M. 25W plus 10-12W for the nVidia chip makes 35-37W, 35W is the TDP of the new chip in the 2011 model so that's a 0-2 watt possible power savings.

I don't know if the extra couple watts is going to translate into better battery life or not, but there are more power saving with the Air than with the Pro going from 2010 to 2011.

Also it's important to note that the advertised battery life drop from 10 to 7 is supposed to be due to new reporting techniques.