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

Update: after 2.5 hours of sitting on, with sleep disabled,no apps running and default brightness: the original MacBook air they sent has 65% battery life and the new replacement they sent has 45%. What a joke.

There have been users reporting higher battery discharge rates with the i7 machines, the processor power draw should not be measuably greater for the average user, so a little curious about what is going on. You should need laboratory test instruments to measure the power demand differences. Think I will try to dig something up on this because it doesn't make a lot of sense right now.

when you said I7, i knew what the problem was,

I hear those with the hotter battery-squeezing I7 are getting about 4 hours LESS battery life

Its the one of the many reasons i did NOT want the I7

Youve got an I7 running hotter and drawing more power, you should by default expect a good bit less batt life, regardless of the Haswell

Ive heard 9 reports of I7 13" Air users........theyre getting average 4 hours LESS batt. life. I hate to say this, but I dont think the Air should have ever been made with the I7, the entire purpose is moderate application use and new Superman-like battery life.

I7 just doesnt fit the model of what the Air really "IS", or is meant for.

Actually, the 12 hours turns out untrue in real life tests, people are seeing just OVER 13+

hours life on thier 13" I5 Airs

I have one, and the battery life is I N C R E D I B L E

and i used to have a year older air, it makes my older air look like stone age battery tech by comparison.

and write speeds are blazing.

Bench tests show that there are next to NO conditions joe blow is going to see any difference in the I7 over the I5

" I have the same specs but with 250gb hard drive."

The new MBA is not available with a "250gb hard drive".

I have good news. I left my macbook air on (disabled sleep mode), with automatic brightness, no programs running so that I could time the fully charged battery life. it got exactly 5 hours of battery life before it died (depressing). after it died i let it sit there for a few hours, like a naughty child in the corner.

then i plugged it back in, without turning it on, until it was fully charged and the light was green. when i finally turned it on, the battery meter said I had 13 hours of battery life left. this was higher than anything i had ever seen before.

thinking it was a fluke, i left it on again (disabled sleep, no programs running etc), and after 5 hours of sitting on, it still had 65% battery life left! i'm not sure what happened here. i assume the battery was recallibrated (even though i have been told numerous times that macbook airs come pre-callibrated and that this would be a waste of time).

Needless to say, I am extremely satisfied that I found the solution to this dilemma. If anyone else is having a similar problem I suggest you do what I did. I wish someone from apple supprort would have told me to do this. Clearing the p-ram did nothing. turning it off and restarting did nothing. I had to let the battery fully deplete, sit for a few hours, then charge it completely before turning it on.

apples tech specs on battery life are correct. on apple.com it has a footnote #4. on batt life specs

#4. says. ------- batt life. is based upon I5 processor

so. you just didnt read the fine print on the tech specs on apple.com. as per mac Airs batt life

great. thanks so much for pointing that out. it really helped me solve my problem.

The battery life is completely unpredictable. On both the original and replacement computer they sent. I used both of them over the last few days, and they both lasted around 12 hours, which had me pretty content. So I boxed up the old one, getting it ready to send off, thinking my problems were over. I'm using the replacement right now, doing the same stuff as I did before, just light browsing on the internet and the battery is draining incredibly fast. After one hour I only have 80% battery life. I have no idea what is going on. I am definitely not doing anything differently.

I should add that, for the last couple of days, when I would unplug the computer from power, it would say I had around 11 hours of battery life. When I unplugged it this morning, it said 6 hours, on a full charge. Obviously I never trust the battery times the computer says, but whenever it says I only have 6 hours, it drains extremely fast. I have no idea why the battery times are so variable.

after more experimenting, i notice that if i charge the battery completely, then restart my computer, then unplug the cord, my battery meter often says i have over 12 hours of battery life. when i do this, the actual battery time i get is pretty close to 12 hours. does anyone have any idea why this could be?