Disappointing MacBook Air M1 battery life

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.

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.

I've had the exact opposite with my new 2020 MBA. I've got Bluetooth and WiFi enabled and use the Mac to browse the Internet, YouTube video consumption, iMessaging, Maps, etc. I'm using the computer for days at a time and I've had trouble getting it to under 30% battery.

Weird...

Looks like im not alone... I also had only 6 hours of battery.

I sent my computer back for repair but it passed all the hardware test. Then I asked them to do a factory reset and the problem was solved. It seems that something on the background was draining the battery, and factory reset somehow fixed it.

Steve RK wrote:

I'm now convinced that something I'm doing is soaking up energy, and I'll eventually figure out what it is.

Did you find any clues in the Energy tab of Activity Monitor? If there's a greedy app it should show up there.

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.

Musical Borg wrote:

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.

That finger of guilt for Chrome seems to be consistent with other user reports I have noticed here on ASC. Thanks for jumping in to share your experience.

I get more than 5-6 hours of battery life with web browsing mostly and video calls every day but I think it could be better in my opinion. Maybe we have to wait an update.

Hi! I had my M1 Air about a week, getting approximately 7-10 hours of display time.