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

I just purchased a i5, 256 GB, MBA last weekend pretty much only for the battery life. (Also my first Mac, but that's off topic) I am coming from a 3 year old Toshiba with a 1st gen i7... I was getting MAYBE 30 minutes on a full charge! Also, playing any type of video caused it to overheat and turn itself off in approximately 20 minutes (with a cooling pad). I took it apart and cleaned it monthly and nothing helped...anyway, rant over.

I feel bad for those of you with issues with your 2013 MBA battery life. I'm STILL on my first charge, and since it's my new toy I feel like all I do after work is play around on this thing. I've installed numerous large programs, played a ton of videos, and of course have done a ton of personalizing and web browsing.

Currently, it states that I still have 32% and 5:56 minutes left on my charge. I have easily put over 10 hours into this. I do however keep the backlit keyboard down to 2 ticks from the bottom, and brightness at about half way. I'm not into overly bright displays.

I know it's a small sample size, but I solely bought this for the battery life and so far im extremely pleased.

I just bought a brand new 2013 i5 Air and on my first full charge, it's is estimating 6 hours of battery life. I was listening to Spotify this morning and battery was going down at pretty rapid pace. I think in the last 2.5 hours, I was down to 55%. I just stopped playing Spotify and in the last half an hour battery have only gone down 4%. Not sure what's going on, but I hope it will stabilize soon. The whole point of Haswell Air is battery life.

I think I found the culprit. I have MenuWeather app on my mac that shows weather status on the menu bar. It was apparently stuck on updating itself. As soon as killed it, my battery life estimate jumped to 5:39 remaining with 38% battery left. I had Macbook Pro before I purchased this Air and I never paid attention to which apps were draining battery faster. With Air, I just want a computer that can last me all day without plugging it in and it seems like I will now have to pay attention to these tiny apps.

Weather app uninstalled, but still not getting more than 7 hours. I am really just doing web browsing and watching videos on YouTube. I am very disappointed. It it doesn't get better, I am either returning this Mac or going to Apple to exchange this one with another to see if there is something wrong with my Mac's battery.

I hate this. I've had my MBA for a couple of months now and have loved the battery life until this week (today being Wednesday).

All of a sudden I have to charge the battery from full, twice every evening - which means I'm now getting not quite 4 hours of battery life and I'm only facebooking and web browsing.

Until this week I only needed to charge up every second night.

Could it be coincidental that this has become an issue only since ios7 implanted itself into all my hardware on Sunday night..?.

I purchased a i5, 128 GB, MBA 11" in july. As like others, bought this MBA for it's battery life. First months satisfied with battery life. I'm not sure, but it seems that since the latest update 10.8.5 battery life has become a problem. Running just a few apps: safari, calander, dropbox, battery dropped 1% each 3 or 4 minutes. Even doing nothing at all. Battery is 'normal'. Calibrated the battery, did not solve the problem.

Genius Bar checked it, nothing wrong with battery. Apple Care advising a SMC reset. Didn't do that yet, because I read that it's doing nothing. What worried me, is that the Apple people never heard of this problem. Not reading this thread obviously! Apple just released a small update if in rare cases (?) there is a battery problem. Well, did the update, not sure if it will solve the problem. I have to see yet.

I also got serverely reduced battery life when I upgraded to mavericks.

It was only like 2 days old (1 week old now) - reduced from like 18 hours when using lightly, to like 7 (9 MAX) - never near more than 10 since mavericks, and that with like nothing running.

Want to do a "trilogy" movie test and see if it survives Phil's (was it Phil Schiller?) batman or Dark Knight trilogy. I doubt it'll make it half way.

Steve

I am extremely disappointed with the battery life of my MB Air 13".

I've returned two and now working on the third.

In all three cases I was not able to get more than 5 hours of battery life off of a full charge to 100%. This is with simple light web browsing and nothing intensive with screen half-dim.

The Mac support people reset PRAM and SCM and that helped briefly.

Very discouraged with my first Apple laptop. Maybe I will try a fourth and not upgrade to Mavericks and see if that makes a difference but this drill of returning and restoring everything is getting OLD. Real fast.

Have a read -https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5532410?answerId=24260222022#24260222022

Potential Battery/hardware issues- Battery Self Discharges!

Dont know if anyone has mentioned this (7 pages is a bit to read). But I was seeing this happen with my laptop as well. What helped was booting into safe mode once. This issue was that kernel_task was using 100% of one of my CPU threads and this killed the battery life obviously. Booting into safe mode helped this somehow as I didnt have any 3rd party kernel expentions installed since it was less than 5 days old. I know this is an old thread, but to anyone else that has this issue. I hope this helps.

so would you have to boot into safe-mode everytime you wanted a better battery life or one and done?

so frustrating, I'm still only getting 3-4 hours. *****.

I just got the MBA 13". Battery life seems to be great. After 5 of use, I still have 70% left on the battery on the first charged. The estimated battery life was 15 hours. I do not install memory hog applications. I switch off the keyboard lit normally when I am not use and turn down the LED backlight to 1/3.

Makesure you use Safari for net surfing only. Quit all the applications before put it into sleep mode.

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 😊

In response to Parker, booting into safe mode once supposedly repairs some disk issues or it can. So says apple support.

I recommend that you open activity monitor. Put you MacBook to sleep for like 5 minutes. Open it back up and watch kernel_task and see if it's using 100% of your cup right after you wake your laptop. Mine will for maybe 30 seconds then it returns to around zero. If it continues like mine was, it eats battery for breakfast. Booting into safe mode and then rebooting normally seemed to fix this for me. If you have 3rd party kernel extensions then you may new to remove those. Google will help you fin out how to detect that.

Hope this helps!

I actually just noticed that my macbook was doing it again. Kernel_task was using 100% of one core...

Here are my results to the above test:

Hardware Information:

MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013)

MacBook Air - model: MacBookAir6,2

1 1.3 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2 cores

4 GB RAM

Video Information:

Intel HD Graphics 5000 - VRAM: 1024 MB

System Software:

OS X 10.9.1 (13B42) - Uptime: 0 days 0:2:17

Disk Information:

APPLE SSD SD0128F disk0 : (121.33 GB)

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

Macintosh HD (disk0s2) /: 120.47 GB (58.11 GB free)

Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

USB Information:

Apple Internal Memory Card Reader

Apple Inc. BRCM20702 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

FireWire Information:

Thunderbolt Information:

Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus

Kernel Extensions:

Problem System Launch Daemons:

Problem System Launch Agents:

Launch Daemons:

[System] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist 3rd-Party support link

Launch Agents:

User Launch Agents:

User Login Items:

iTunesHelper

Internet Plug-ins:

FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 12.0.0.38 - SDK 10.6 3rd-Party support link

Flash Player: Version: 12.0.0.38 - SDK 10.6 3rd-Party support link

QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3

Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9

Audio Plug-ins:

BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.9

AirPlay: Version: 1.9 - SDK 10.9

AppleAVBAudio: Version: 2.0.0 - SDK 10.9

iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.9

3rd Party Preference Panes:

Flash Player 3rd-Party support link

Bad Fonts:

None

Old Applications:

None

Time Machine:

Time Machine not configured!

Top Processes by CPU:

20% Safari

17% com.apple.WebKit.Networking

8% WindowServer

1% EtreCheck

1% launchservicesd

Top Processes by Memory:

217 MB PluginProcess

151 MB Safari

111 MB com.apple.IconServicesAgent

106 MB com.apple.WebKit.WebContent

73 MB WindowServer

Virtual Memory Information:

1.13 GB Free RAM

2.11 GB Active RAM

259 MB Inactive RAM

512 MB Wired RAM

146 MB Page-ins

0 B Page-outs