Only six hours of battery life on my 2013 MacBook Air 13"

Thanks Ralph, I've been keeping up with all your comments. Since I bought it on the day of WWDC I am really close to breaching the 14 day return.

I'll give it a few more days and use it all day tomorrow at work and see if it makes it. I'm sure I'm over reacting a bit but watching the percentage drop so quickly makes me nervous. I'll keep in mind what you said about indexing.

And, like you said at worst case I will call Apple then take it into the genious bar.

Eurodance stated----

Apple's website says (http://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs.html) that the 13" will last up to 10 hours withiTunes movie playback, and up to 12 hours of wireless web

True and untrue.....Apples website on BATT LIFE has a footnote #4 , indicating (at bottom) that, that is with the I5 PROCESSOR, not the I7.......see the small print at bottom

from apple.com, see after power there is a #4 for FOOTNOTE

Powelski said -- Apple claimed that the battery stays alive for 12 hours.......

Apple.com states battery life at 12 hours is WITH I5 PROCESSOR not I7, read footnote #4 from apple.com posted pic of same here:

I have a 13" I5 new AIR, and am getting at or near 12 hours batt life on typing, and playing youtube in the background, and periodic PDF opens. I am extremely impressed by my I5 batt. life.

Foxpapa, you have an I7, youre NOT supposed to expect 12 hours out of your AIR, ....that rating is only for the I5 processor, .....if youre getting 9 hours, thats about right.

See apple.com footnote #4 on same:

Just thought I'd post an update on my battery life. So for a little recap: I have a 1.7 i7, 8gb memory, 500gb storage, 11-inch macbook air. When I first got the computer in the mail, it was lasting 7-6 hours on a full charge while doing minimal tasks (browsing the internet). I called Apple and they sent me a new one, which had the exact same problem.

I discovered a strange occurance a few weeks ago. If I let the computer charge up completely and leave it on the charger for a few hours after it turns green, then restart it, then unplug it, the battery meter says I have about 15 hours of battery life. And what's odd is that this battery meter estimate is actually relatively accurate, the computer will last about 13 hours and the battery will drain very slowly. However, if I let the comptuer go to sleep, the battery goes right back to draining very quickly when I wake it up. Obviously I can't constantly keep my computer awake all the time while I'm going about my day or traveling, so I am stuck with the 6 hours battery life that I get without that little trick.

I've started to wonder if the battery problem is some sort of software problem that the 1.7 i7's are having. Anyway, that's just my two cents. For other people getting 6 hours of battery, try the trick I mentioned above. Let the computer charge up completely and leave it on the charger for a few hours after it turns green, then restart it, then unplug it and report back about how quickly your battery drains. I'm interested if this works for other people.

This is what the monitor shows when I do the trick, the monitor will say 15 hours of battery life, and I get around 13 hours of real time comptuer usage.

Well I have tried what you suggested noname14, however it didnt seem to change too much on my MBA.

I am certainly not even seeing an indicated time of 12 hours, the only time I have seen this was when I first turned on the MBA after purchase.

@Kyle531, yes its good that Apple are at least reading the threads, what they will do about it remains to be seen.

I think I will be getting in touch with them to try and extend my 14 days to 30 days.

I suspect that Apple have received numerous calls on the matter and hopefully will address the issue.

My main gripe is that I feel we have been led up the garden path somewhat with the times quoted. Its a bit like buying a car with an advertised top speed of 220mph, only to find that this is only achievable downhill, tail wind and off a cliff!

Had I known what I have since found out, I more than likely would have purchased the MBP.😕

I understand where you are coming from with the maths to the equation.I would also agree that changing the brightness does in fact play a major factor. This will apply to any chipset.

I have both the screen brightness and keyboard set at 50%, 8 clicks.

I am actually ok with these settings, its bright enough for me most of the time, but maybe not for others.

The battery indicator changes all the time. I have purposely been using very little today, other than emails, Internet and watching a movie stored on the SSD. I have disabled dropbox and screensaver, as it stands now I am showing 71% battery, 9;04 hours remaining. This is an improvement on what it was showing earlier today

Screenshot showing 100% battery

Screenshot showing 71% battery

It appears that in the world of the new MBA, less is more! 😉

OK, this past couple of days I spent some time testing the battery with different scenarios, and here's what I found:

These tests were performed on MacBook Air 13", i7, 8 GB, 512 GB, with Auto Brightness turned off, Brightness level at 6 bars and Volume at 7 bars, WiFi on & connected, and Keyboard Light off.

Scenario #1 -- surfing/downloading: I drained the battery entirely, until it died completely and shut down the system. When I booted it up and logged in to my desktop, I let it charge to 100%. Once the MBA was fully charged, I unplugged the charger, the battery meter of course showed 100% and it estimated 10:08 hours remaining, which was at 2:30 PM. So I immediately started downloading 1-6 GB of files back-to-back and surfed the web. By 6:11 PM the battery was at 50% with estimated remaining time of 4:07 hours. Then by 7:56 PM the battery was at 25% with estimated remaining time of 1:45 hour. So I continued until it was down to 1%, and that was at 9:30 PM with estimated remaining time of 0:04. So the conclusion for this test was that I got about 7 hours with continuous web surfing and downloading of huge files.

Scenario #2 -- watching movies: Similar to the previous test, I drained and fully charged the battery and unplugged it from the charger after it was fully charged. At 10:50 AM the battery was 100% with estimated remaining time of 12:00 hours. At 11:05 AM (battery=100%) I started playing the movie Cloud Atlas, which is 2:51:55 hours long. As soon as the movie was over, I started playing it for the 2nd time, at 2:01 PM when the battery was down to 78%. Once it was over, I played it for the 3rd time, at 5:00 PM when the battery was at 53%. Once over, I played it for the 4th time, at 7:52 PM, when the battery was at 28%. When the 4th session was over, the time was 10:47 PM and the battery meter was at 3% (estimated remaining time 0:24). After that, I did some surfing until the battery was down to 1%, and that was at 11:10 PM with estimated remaining time of 0:12. So that means I unlike Scenario #1, I got 12 hours and 5 minutes!

Apple's website says (http://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs.html) that the 13" will last up to 10 hours withiTunes movie playback, and up to 12 hours of wireless web. My findings seem to be inconsistent with Apple's numbers, but I'm very pleased with Scenario #2 results. I think in Scenario #1, the i7 processor contributed in draining the battery faster during the back-to-back downloads. So I'm curios to see a similar test done by someone who has an 13" i5.

Well, I hope this was helpful to anyone who had questions regarding the 13" i7 battery life. And feel free to ask any questions which you might have regarding my experience.

@PlotinusVeritas,

Eurodance stated----

Apple's website says (http://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs.html) that the 13" will last up to 10 hours withiTunes movie playback, and up to 12 hours of wireless web

That's true -- but I never said/claimed Apple's number were based off of i7. But keep in mind that my test concluded that my 13-inch i7 lasted 12 hours by playing back-to-back videos. Which is significantly longer than Apple's estimated/claimed 10 hours on 13-inch i5.

 Eurodance

1.Run ETRE check and post results here

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

EtreCheck is a simple little app to display the important details of your system configuration and allow you to copy that information to the Clipboard. It is meant to be used with Apple Support Communities to help people help you with your Mac. EtreCheck automatically removes any personally identifiable information from the output.

2. REPORTED "remaining" battery life and ACTUAL battery life are wholly different.

The time "remaining" estimate is (just that an estimate) is currently inaccurate in some instances in Mavericks, others report same and much testing on my own of several machines indicate the same.

*This is being looked into

This however does not affect the ACTUAL battery life.

recommend the free APP called coconut battery and checking via mAh of charge rather than a time "remaining" indicator until this is resolved

http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

Or can contact Apple for free service and/or in shop diagnostic as you are entitled to same.

I can happily report around 15% increase in battery life (actual) on 2 different Air under Mavericks

3. Use of Chrome , dropbox and some others are bad battery hogs. (run Etrecheck above)

4. BATTERY USE / ABUSE Keep it plugged in when near a socket so you keep the charging cycles down on your LiPo (lithium polymer) cells / battery, but not plugged in all the time. When not being used for several hours, turn it off.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html

"Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time."

General rule to remember of Lithium batteries is:

Never drain them LOW & dont always/often store them HIGH

While cycle count is commonly seen to be the “miles” on your Lithium Ion pack cell in your Macbook, which they are, this distinction is not a fine line at all, and it is a big misconception to “count charge cycles”

*A person who has, for example, 300 charge cycles on their battery and is recharging at say 50-60% remaining of a 100% charge has better battery usage and care than another person who has 300 charge cycles at say 15% remaining on a 100% charge.

DoD (depth of discharge) is far more important on the wear and tear on your Macbook battery than any mere charge cycle count. *There is no set “mile” or wear from a charge cycle in general OR in specific. As such, contrary to popular conception, counting cycles is not conclusive whatsoever, rather the amount of deep DoD on an averaged scale of its use and charging conditions.

(as a very rough analogy would be 20,000 hard miles put on a car vs. 80,000 good miles being something similar)

*Contrary to some myths out there, there is protection circuitry in your Macbook and therefore you cannot overcharge it when plugged in and already fully charged

*However if you don’t plan on using it for a few hours, turn it OFF (plugged in or otherwise) ..*You don’t want your Macbook both always plugged in AND in sleep mode (When portable devices are charging and in the on or sleep position, the current that is drawn through the device is called the parasitic load and will alter the dynamics of charge cycle. Battery manufacturers advise against parasitic loading because it induces mini-cycles.)

Keeping batteries connected to a charger ensures that periodic "top-ups" do very minor but continuous damage to individual cells, hence Apples recommendation above: “Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time”, …this is because “Li-ion degrades fastest at high state-of-charge”.

This is also the same reason new Apple notebooks are packaged with 50% charges and not 100%.

LiPo (lithium polymer, same as in your Macbook) batteries do not need conditioning. However...

A lot of battery experts call the use of Lithium cells the "80% Rule" ...meaning use 80% of the charge or so, then recharge them for longer overall life.

Never let your Macbook go into shutdown and safe mode from loss of power, you can corrupt files that way, and the batteries do not like it.

The only quantified abuse seen to Lithium cells are instances when often the cells are repeatedly drained very low…. key word being "often"

Contrary to what some might say, Lithium batteries have an "ideal" break in period. First ten cycles or so, don't discharge down past 40% of the battery's capacity. Same way you don’t take a new car out and speed and rev the engine hard first 100 or so miles.

Proper treatment is still important. Just because LiPo batteries don’t need conditioning in general, does NOT mean they dont have an ideal use / recharge environment. Anything can be abused even if it doesn’t need conditioning.

From Apple on batteries:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1446

http://www.apple.com/batteries/

Storing your MacBook

If you are going to store your MacBook away for an extended period of time, keep it in a cool location (room temperature roughly 22° C or about 72° F). Make certain you have at least a 50% charge on the internal battery of your Macbook if you plan on storing it away for a few months; recharge your battery to 50% or so every six months roughly if being stored away. If you live in a humid environment, keep your Macbook stored in its zippered case to prevent infiltration of humidity on the internals of your Macbook which could lead to corrosion.

Considerations:

Your battery is subject to chemical aging even if not in use. A Lithium battery is aging as soon as its made, regardless.

In a perfect (although impractical) situation, your lithium battery is best idealized swinging back and forth between 20 and 85% SOC (state of charge) roughly.

Further still how you discharge the battery is far more important than how it is either charged or stored short term, and more important long term that cycle counts.

Ultimately counting charge cycles is of little importance. Abuse in discharging (foremost), charging, and storing the battery and how it affects battery chemistry is important and not the ‘odometer’ reading, or cycle counts on the battery.

Everything boils down to battery chemistry long term, and not an arbitrary number, or cycle count.

* some usefull, partially "ok, interesting" information on same

Gaming: In cases of heavy and frequent use in gaming it is recommended, if possible, to keep your Mac plugged in since these frequent fast and deep discharges of the battery are not ideal for battery longevity.

If you were to always keep your macbook battery floating between 20% and 80% charge roughly, then you’d have no other considerations to make about your battery and its care,… except for long-term storage.

Natural changes of capacity in lithium batteries happens when they undergo cathode degradation at roughly 20% per year where Ion exchange becomes less efficient. Mostly low draining (deep DOD) and to a much lesser degree high standing charge rates accelerate this process. Unnatural capacity for lithium battery charges changes, and chemistry changes in a lithium battery when often pushed or pulled to extremes

In a lithium battery, deep discharges alter the chemistry of the anode ➕ to take up lithium ions and slowly damages the batteries capacity for the cathode ➖ to transport lithium ions to the anode when charging, thereby reducing max charge levels in mAh. In short, radical swings of power to lithium cells disrupts the chemical ecosystem of the battery to hold charges correctly which likewise impedes the perfect transfer of lithium ions both in charging and discharging. In charging your lithium battery, lithium ions are “pushed uphill” (hard) to the anode, and discharged “downhill” (easy) to the cathode when on battery power. Deep discharges, damages this “upward” electrolyte chemistry for the battery to maintain a healthy charge and discharge balance relative to its age and cycles.

Optimally, in terms of a healthy lithium battery and its condition, it is most happy at 50% between extremes, which is why low-power-drain processors such as the Haswell are ideal on lithium battery health since a partially charged battery with a low-drain processor has, in general, much more usage in hours

Battery calibration, battery memory, battery overcharging, battery training, …all these concepts are mostly holdovers from much older battery technology, and on older Apple portable Macbooks ranging from early nicads, NiMh and otherwise; and these practices do not apply to your lithium battery and its smart controllers.

Calibrating the battery on older Apple portable Macbooks with removable batteries.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14087

There is no indicated calibration of current Apple portable Macbooks with built-in batteries.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1490

There is no battery calibration with current Apple portable Macbooks with built-in batteries. Lithium batteries have essentially a 0-‘memory’, and all such calibration involve the estimations fed to the system controller on the SOC (state of charge) of the battery over long periods of time as the battery degrades. The software based battery controller knows the battery's characteristics, or SOC and adjusts itself. This is why there is both no need and purpose to periodically deeply drain your macbook battery, since it doesn’t affect the characteristics of the battery, and further still deep discharges are something you should not do on purpose to any lithium battery.

Bad discharging or battery use conditions:

Heat (due to environmental conditions or due to rapid discharges from heavy use = gaming / video editing)

Rapid discharging of the battery frequently causes chemical changes over time in the battery leading to decreased capacity and resistance of current flow.

The very worst use of your battery is often draining the battery very low, and worse still letting it remain in such a state.

*Most long-term rapid damage to the battery occurs from discharging it with high loading (gaming) conditions but paramount is avoiding deep and frequent low DOD (depths of discharge) in use.

Undesirable charging or charged conditions:

High perpetual SOC (state of charge), where the battery is always or very often connected to charge

Parasitic loading where the battery is both usually on and charging or worse both always charging and in sleep mode, since this induces mini-cycling of the battery.

Bad general handling conditions:

Temperature use conditions when either too hot (95F and above) or too cold (50F and below)

Storing your battery away with a low charge (40% and less) long-term.

Considerations:

Your battery is subject to chemical aging even if not in use. A Lithium battery is aging as soon as its made, regardless.

In a perfect (although impractical) situation, your lithium battery is best idealized swinging back and forth between 20 and 85% SOC (state of charge) roughly.

Further still how you discharge the battery is far more important than how it is either charged or stored short term.

Ultimately counting charge cycles is of little to no importance. Abuse in discharging (foremost), charging, and storing the battery and how it affects battery chemistry is important and not the ‘odometer’ reading, or cycle counts on the battery.

Everything boils down to battery chemistry long term, and not an arbitrary number, or cycle count.

Keep your macbook plugged in when near a socket since in the near end of long-term life, this is beneficial to the battery.

Peace 😊

I read an article recently that highlighted how, when used side by side, Chrome kills battery 2-3 hours quicker than Safari:

"While reviewing the new MacBook Pro with Retina display, I ran the usual Verge battery test on Apple’s new machine. With the screen set to 65 percent brightness, it cycles through a series of websites until the laptop’s battery gives out. The native Safari made the new Retina machine look good: 13 hours and 18 minutes. Google’s Chrome, on the other hand, forced the laptop to tap out at 9 hours and 45 minutes."

http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/10/8381447/chrome-macbook-battery-life

- Each active program along your dock uses power - try quitting each App if you find you aren't using them.

- Set your screen brightness to the lowest comfortable setting - surprising how much of a difference this makes.

- Use full cycle charges - Wait until your Mac is below 10% then charge all the way to 100%

- "The Energy Saver pane in System Preferences has many options to help improve the battery life on your Mac notebook when idle. For instance, setting your display to sleep when idle temporarily turns off the backlight and significantly improves the battery life." - Apple.

- "Mac notebooks have a number of integrated technologies which can have a significant effect on battery power.

• Disable AirPort or Bluetooth from their menu bar icons or in System Preferences (Network and Bluetooth respectively). This will help save power.
• External USB, FireWire, ThunderBolt, SD card, and Expresscard devices added to your notebook may also draw power and should be disconnected for optimal battery performance.
• Eject any CDs or DVDs from the integrated SuperDrive (if available on your notebook) to avoid the drive spinning periodically." - Apple.

Good luck.

You can check the health of the battery by going to the apple, left side of the menu bar, About This Mac, More Info, System Report, Hardware, Power and see what it says about Capacity of the battery, cycle count, and Condition...condition should be Normal or it needs to be tested by the techs.

I'm noticing the same issue and I have the same specs but with 250gb hard drive.

I'm laying in my bed browsing the internet (with chrome) with the screen at 50%, the key backlighting turned off, bluetooth off and the sound muted. I'm not running intensive programs but I'm noticing a huge drop in battery life.

It went from saying 13 hours, 11, 10 and now 9 hours of batter life. I can't imagine the system is supposed to be this innacurate. So, did we both get defective batteries (mine is saying normal too) or is something draining the battery way more than it should?

I'd guess at current consumption that I would be lucky to get 5 hours on at the previosly mentoned settings.

Since you also say this is a brand new MBA, if you mean REALLY new, give it a couple cycles to level out. Out-of-the-box it is hard to judge the charge life since it spends a lot of time and energy working in the background running Spotlight indexing all of the files in the storage. That slows the machine down and uses a lot of resources.

You can also go to Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor and see what the cpu load is, memory utilization, hard drive/SSD acivity, and Network activity. Gives you an idea of just what the Air is doing, and what you may not know about that it is doing in the background.

The other side of the coin, I don't remember ever having looked at those battery charge time estimates, I don't belive them anyway. With the way I use my MBP I just look up at the battery percentage when on battery power and if it is getting down to 50% start looking for an outlet to plug in if possible. I am just not a fan of those projections because they can be misleading.

I think you are right. Software estimations are often very innaccurate. I just worry since I got it two days ago and Apple said you could get 'up to' 10 hours watching videos. Meanwhile I'm sitting here browsing the web and losing percentages per 3 or so minutes.