Macbook air battery life

i have a new 2011 Macbook AIr 13inch with the i7.

Over 2 weeks of usage i've observed less than a 4-5hour battery life from simply browsing the web on non-intensive sites and running hardly any other applications.

I always drain the battery out prior to a full recharge, but on a new laptop this is dismal.

I have the i7 13" and the battery is awuful. Same as Onitsuka.

We have an October 2011 13" MBA and that I am pretty confident that it has 7 hour (or very near 7) battery life but not the new one. I can almost watch the battery percent number click down while I am just light surfing the web. With the old one, I wondered most of the time if the battery meter was stuck was working as it would seem to run for hours before hitting 90%. If I was inside the 14 day return window, I would return this and get a refurbished 2010 model in a heartbeat.

The new MacBookmAir has a much more powerful CPU. If you regularly push the CPU to it's limit, it will be harder to meet the advertised battery life. A way to reduce the CPU load is to disable flash with a Safari extension such as click to flash. This will allow you to view Flash content when you really need it (videos and some menus) but turns off it's battery sucking features for less important items such as animated web ads. Most folks using this have seen a 1-2 hour increase in battery life when web surfing.

This is not a failing of the MacBook Air, but due to the poor design of Adobe Flash which regularly will use all your CPU's horsepower resulting in shorter battery life.

But I am not pushing my CPU to its limits. I am just surfing some web pages. I have FlashFrozen on my machine so it will not run any Flash and the battery still drops fast. My issue has nothing to do with Flash.

I read this post earlier today and was seeing the same thing with my i5 that I just purchased last week. No apps running on my machine other than Chrome and Safari (web browsing). I literally would see my battery start to count down as I surfed. I turned off the lighted keyboard and even dimmed my display, but still had issues. I called Apple Support, they checked the settings on the battery, but nothing seemed unusual. Activity monitor didn't show any intense CPU usage by anything. I was in the 14 day period and was able to exchange mine for a new MBA. This one seems to be much more stable so far.

I never got into it but I originally had an i5 but that is not what I ordered. I originally ordered an i7 but an i5 got delivered. But once I had it I thought I would not notice the difference and decided to keep it. But a few days later I had found out that the newer MBA had the slower Toshiba SSD in it. Our 2010 MBA had the faster drive in it and it drove me nuts to know that that the newer MBA had a slower drive. Since I was in the 14 day window I sent back the i5 and ordered the i7 which did come with the faster SSD. I am not sure but I thought I did not have this battery issue with the i5, but I could not be certain as I did not have it that long. I have called Apple support to complain about this but maybe it is time to do it again and see what they say.

Anandtech did some battery longevity testing, and found the i5 and the i7 quite comparable in drain. I think the difference is within the margin of error of the batteries on two different units.

Test Information.

I agree. I love the new MBA and have only been using it for a few days but the battery life is well below expectation for super lite browsing. Haven't downloaded or run any heavy apps yet... Thinking of bringing it back for a check since this doesn't feel normal.

I even did the test where you run the www.reallyrefreshing.com page where it refreshes a page every minute. It looked like using this testing page would yeald 5 or 6 hour battery life results, but in real life, it is not lasting that long.

Just a follow up to my post yesterday. I did take my original I5 back to the Apple Store and they replaced it with a new one. The new laptop seems to be much more stable thus far. I did notice something interesting on the one I took back -- on a full charge it was only registering in the 7hr timeframe on a full charge. The new one shows 9hr 36 min on a full charge and then adjusts downward with usage in a few minutes, but still registers higher than the old laptop did on a full charge after some usage. I will leave it on today under normal use after fully draining and recharging the battery yesterday and will report back later today. I still suspect it was a bad battery. Other than that, this thing is SUPER fast.

I suspect like any new product that Apple has a couple of lemons in the group. I think that was my issue with the first machine I purchased and took back. I also read about the SSD in the new MBA. I don't have the article, but I did find something that talked about how they've been able to make other improvements that actually make the machine faster with the same hardware. I can tell you that my I5 is the fastest computer I've ever owned. I'll see if I can find that article. . .

Interesting article. . .I guess they are shipping with Toshiba and Samsung SSD. . .

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/07/26/macbook-airs-using-ssds-from-both-toshiba-and-sam sung/

It looks like I'm running with the Samsung on mine.

Tested battery life today on my I5. After a full charge overnight, I took off the power supply, then I spent the day web browsing, email, you tube videos, etc. I had one Google Chrome browser open with 10 different tabs open to 10 different web pages for most of the day. Keyboard LED turned off and about 3/4 power on the brightness display. All told, I was able to squeeze out 7Hr and 15 Min from the battery today.

Like I said in my earlier post, I had the slower Toshiba drive. I was getting about 150 read and write speeds and our refurbished 2010 MBA was getting 250 read and write speeds.

OK, just got off the phone with Apple support. I was told that the 7 hour battery life is for the i5 processors only (as the small print explains) and that if you get the i7, that it WILL be less than 7 hours. So after discusssing it with them, I have a return order for my i7 MBA and have a i5 on order and will be here in the next few day. For what I will be using the MBA for (surfing the web, storing and viewing photos from my DSLR while on vacation, some minor document creation), I will not notice the difference in speed and will be happier with the longer battery life.

Apple care was very helpful and understanding in helping me get in the machine that would make me happy. While I love everything about the MBA, having to lose the 7 hour battery life was a deal breaker for me and now I should be all set once the new one arrives and I get my data and software migrated over.

@jmac18: you got great battery life and were even doing more than the typical "light browsing" by using YouTube videos and > 50% screen brightness. That is what I am hoping I get with the new machine.