MacBook Air battery life/standby time destroyed by Lion!

You are the first one I read that has this problem. I wouldn't worry much, Apple will be launching updates to fix it sooner or later.

Hi Mikkel,

I have the same problem here with a Macbook Air 11" Model 2011. Overnight it looses 30% of it's battery when in sleep modus. (MAC OSX Lion pre installed)

Anyone else have this problem to?

Mine loses heaps of battery over a short period of time when it is in sleep mode.

Yup, I have a substantial reduction in the battery life of my 2010 MBA after installing Lion.

Love many features in Lion but there are three killer problems:

1. Battery life is lower by 2 hours or so. Don't know what to do.

2. Safari memory usage kept increasing, using up to 1.5 GB of memory. Finally stopped using Safari and moved to Chrome 14.0.835.162 beta.

3. System runs hotter.

Overall teh system seems less stable and more prone to hiccups than SL ever was.

Yes, indexing finished a long time ago. No, I don't use Citrix. And yes, I do check Activity Monitor and do not see any rogue processes.

I have filed bug reports with Apple.

Any news or updates from the user community?

Haven't noticed this on my macbook, while take a look at it tonight though.

Same issue on my 2011 11" Air. Cat knocked out magsafe while I was alseep, got home from work, battery at 0%. So in about 18 or so hours of sleep time: 100%-0%. I had noticed this before. Instead of "close and go" with the air, I've been working around it by manually shutting it down. It's a shame though since the reason I got it was for quick and easy portability.

Just got a 2011 11" Air and saw my battery drain 100%, overnight, while sleeping. Would love to hear if anyone comes up w/ a fix.

My wife's MBA (Late-2010 11" 2GB) had its standby and operating times destroyed by Lion. Prior to the Lion upgrade, useful operating time were 5+ hours and standby forever it seemed. After the Lion upgrade, immediately useful battery life was 2 hours and standby barely lasted overnight. I ran Coconut batttery to discover that, at idle with no applications running in the foreground, the machine was drawing 16.7 watts. The case was also uncomfortably warm when operating on battery. On charge, it showed 434 watts (shocking don't know if this is normal for Snow Leopard though). My MBP (mid-2010 13" 8GB Snow Leopard 10.6.8) only consumes 9 watts at idle on battery by comparison (and it doesn't have SSD and other power saving features available on the MBA).

So, I downgraded to Snow Leopard by reinstalling the machine from scratch. Power consumption in coconut battery shows 5 watts at idle with no applications. When I wake the machine from standby, coconut battery shows 0.1 watt consumption. So, I believe this may have solved the battery longevity problems. Since I only downgraded today, I have to test for some time before I can declare the problem fixed.

I have since discovered through some testing of my own that if I explicitly put it to sleep (Apple->Sleep), then it will last well in standby (lost 2% overnight vs previous 100%). It does not seem that lid closing or letting the computer sit will get it fully to sleep for me for some reason. I have chrome, apple mail, and itunes open generally. Are any of these known to keep Lion from being able to sleep?

This problem has been a major issue for me with my late 2008 Macbook Pro. I'm going to try manually setting it to sleep as the amknapp suggested.

If even that works, this issue is super frustrating. I close my laptop friday with full battery, monday morning I open it up and its completely dead.

😠 SO ANNOYED THAT ONE SEEMS TO HAVE THE ANSWER. THERE ARE TECH WIZARDS ON HERE I KNOW THEY'RE ON HERE. SEEN THEM ANSWER OTHER POST. BASICALLY ANSWER YES OR NO DO WE NEED TO SHUT DOWN THE LAPTOP PHYSICALLY TO AVOID BATTERY DRAINAGE. BECAUSE JUST CLOSING THE LID(IE "SLEEP MODE") DOES NOT SEEM TO WORK.

Mikkel D wrote:

My girlfriend's 2010 MBA used to be able to be in standby mode forever (for weeks, if not the advertised month) and still maintain a charge with Snow Leopard. After upgrading to Lion, the battery drains overnight.

Anyone else have this issue?

And does anyone know how to solve it? I tried resetting the SMC which seems to have helped battery life slightly when the computer is in use but had no effect on standby time.

Any help would be much appreciated.

My mid 2011 MBA is acting strange too:

If I leave the lid open it does not sleep properly no matter what settings I set in the power options. It turns of the screen when it should but battery drains in 5-6 hours regardless. If I close the lid it drains slower but it still drains the battery in a few days. And in fact my old windows laptop have longer sleep time 😟

I have to remember to close the lid, and I still have to charge every night. Very uncool.

Hi all. I have the exact same issue.

MBA 13'' late 2010. I just upgraded to Lion, and now the battery drains in 5 to 6 hours when the lid's closed.

I'll see if putting it to sleep mode by hand helps, but it kind of ruins the 'it just works' argument in favor of apple products...

The original post is already 2.5 months old...

same issue here, 100% drain overnight with lid closed. Doesn't happen on MBP, just the Air.