Degradation Battery life on late 2010 MacBook Air

As anyone else seen rapidly deteriorating battery life in their MacBook Air or is there a diagnostic utility to verify the battery is functioning correctly? For the first 3 weeks of my new 13" MBA, I was getting between 6-8 hours of battery life straight. Most of these was while writing code in Eclipse on international flights. Once I got close to 7 hrs when editing photos in Photoshop!

Now during the past few weeks, no matter what I change with the display setting, turning off wifi, etc, I'm only getting 3-4 hours battery life when the only application I am running is Eclipse with wifi/bluetooth all disabled. Its been a pretty dramatic battery life downgrade. Also, twice this past week I have shut my laptop with 40-50% battery life. Then when I've opened it back up (this would be from "deep sleep" mode) it will not come back to life. After plugging the charger back it and booting up, I'll see the battery charging at 1%, meaning its either not going to deep sleep or I've got a battery that won't hold a charge. So my suspicion is there is a battery related issue.

Anyone have idea's on how to verify I don't have a bad battery or a problem with deep sleep mode or have seen similar battery performance issues?

Late 2010 13" MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.5), 1.86 GHz w/4GB RAM

Posted on Dec 2, 2010 3:49 PM

32 replies

AKLApple

Level 1

0 points

Nov 20, 2011 12:56 AM in response to TK MBAir 2010

My 2010 MBA originally had about 6 hours of battery life. Lately it is down to 3 hours max. Took it to Apple who ran it through battery diagnostics - came through as not having a problem. Technician then manually tested and battery ran out a little over two hours. Battery was replaced under warranty. Used the MBA again tonight and with only clearing e mails the battery was flat in three hours. Any suggestions as looks like this isn't a harware issue with a brand new battery?

Nov 20, 2011 1:21 AM in response to AKLApple

I've run into very erratic battery behavior with my 11" 2010 Macbook Air. Although the diagnostics say the battery is fine, it can be very problematic...showing over seven hours available one minute and two the next. I think it probably averages about three, sometimes four hours most of the time (depending on what I'm doing)...but you'd never know that by watching the icon in the toolbar.

The only thing that seems to help is to reset the SMC periodically. More here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964

One thing I've found that has a big impact on battery life is screen brightness. If I cut it from 100% to 60% (which I find acceptable most of the time) it can add another hour or more to battery longevity.

Hope that helps!

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Degradation Battery life on late 2010 MacBook Air