You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Disappointing MacBook Air M1 battery life

I am seeing 5-6 hours of battery life with my new M1 Macbook Air - mostly just email and web browsing. Have all the recommended battery settings. Anyone else disappointed with the batter performance?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.0

Posted on Nov 26, 2020 5:49 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 29, 2020 10:45 AM

Yes, exactly the same here. Far from what Apple claims and what some reviewers have confirmed. I complained to Apple and actually exchanged my first machine for a new one. But the new one is behaving the same as the first. About 6 hours with the same type of usage you describe: email (which is gmail which is web browsing) and other web browsing, e.g. Google Docs, Sheets, Slides., and just plain browsing. The occasional Zoom or Google Meet or Skype. I have an open case on this that was escalated first to a senior adviser and then by the senior adviser to engineering. I'll come back and let you know if I learn more.

11 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 29, 2020 10:45 AM in response to BumpasDog

Yes, exactly the same here. Far from what Apple claims and what some reviewers have confirmed. I complained to Apple and actually exchanged my first machine for a new one. But the new one is behaving the same as the first. About 6 hours with the same type of usage you describe: email (which is gmail which is web browsing) and other web browsing, e.g. Google Docs, Sheets, Slides., and just plain browsing. The occasional Zoom or Google Meet or Skype. I have an open case on this that was escalated first to a senior adviser and then by the senior adviser to engineering. I'll come back and let you know if I learn more.

Dec 9, 2020 6:33 PM in response to Steve RK

Here is an update. I have finally been able to get 14 hours of battery life by turning off wifi and bluetooth and disconnecting EVERYTHING external and just running videos constantly. This gives me the expected 14 hours. Now I am going through a process of adding things back, one by one. It's going to take some time to identify the problem, but I will go through the process. I suggest you try the same thing. If you can't get 14 hours with everything disconnected and nothing but video playing in VLC or something like that, then you might have a hardware problem. I'm now convinced that something I'm doing is soaking up energy, and I'll eventually figure out what it is.

Jan 23, 2021 4:49 AM in response to BumpasDog

I'm saw a similar issue in the M1-MBP. What I discovered is that the problem was Chrome. Chrome for M1 uses power like crazy. I was getting 30% of the advertised battery life. So, last night, I tried a test and shut down all chrome instances and used nothing but safari for browsing. That was 8 hours ago. My browser ran all night (cuz I fell asleep watching YouTube with autoplay on). My battery is at 87%. Based on the hype this is what I would have expected. Oops and I left Activity Monitor running all night too. FYI it's using 3-4 times the "energy" of safari.


I suspect that chrome did a recompile for M1 but did not optimize or refactor their code for power efficiency. First a memory hog now a CPU hog.


Because of this, until Chrome is optimized I'll only open it when I need to for G Suite apps or password migration etc. Been looking for a reason to move off Chrome anyway.


Please try using the native safari browser. I'm going to download Bing and see if he's been optimized for power consumption by MSFT.

Disappointing MacBook Air M1 battery life

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.