Mathias Luther
Level 1 (73 points)
Notebooks

Q: MB Air 13" lousy battery life

My brand new Air 13" gives me only 4-5 hours of battery time. My older 11" MB Air always has worked for up to 8-9 hours. The fan now comes on frequently – I didn't even know the 11" had a fan.

Could it be the i7 draws that much more power than the i5? Is there a hack to throttle back the processor when not needed then?

Posted on Oct 7, 2016 1:00 PM

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Mathias Luther

Q: MB Air 13" lousy battery life

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  • by Lanny,

    Lanny Lanny Oct 7, 2016 1:38 PM in response to Mathias Luther
    Level 6 (8,041 points)
    Desktops
    Oct 7, 2016 1:38 PM in response to Mathias Luther

    Check Activity Monitor for hints about possible energy inefficient software. For, example, I find that playing "Words with Friends," from the Facebook page in Safari takes a real bite out of my battery charge.

     

    If you don't use Dashboard apps, deactivate it.

     

    Something I noticed recently, if you don't need to have your keyboard lit, turn the lighting all the way down, and turn down your screen backlight to the minimum needed. Even on their automatic settings, they are perhaps set higher than needed.

  • by Mathias Luther,

    Mathias Luther Mathias Luther Oct 7, 2016 11:41 PM in response to Lanny
    Level 1 (73 points)
    Notebooks
    Oct 7, 2016 11:41 PM in response to Lanny

    Don't play any games, always have dashboard deactivated, the keyboard light is off, screen dimmed.

    Do have /have you had a MB Air to compare with?

  • by Mathias Luther,

    Mathias Luther Mathias Luther Oct 8, 2016 2:18 AM in response to Lanny
    Level 1 (73 points)
    Notebooks
    Oct 8, 2016 2:18 AM in response to Lanny

    I would just like to hear what your battery mileage is.

  • by OGELTHORPE,

    OGELTHORPE OGELTHORPE Oct 8, 2016 4:56 AM in response to Mathias Luther
    Level 9 (52,764 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 8, 2016 4:56 AM in response to Mathias Luther

    Batteries over time deteriorate.  How old is the battery?  What does it show in System Information>Power:

    Screen Shot 2016-01-10 at 12.58.11 PM.png

     

    Have you tried a SMC reset?

     

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

     

    Ciao.

  • by Mathias Luther,

    Mathias Luther Mathias Luther Oct 9, 2016 3:21 AM in response to OGELTHORPE
    Level 1 (73 points)
    Notebooks
    Oct 9, 2016 3:21 AM in response to OGELTHORPE

    Like i said, it's brand new. Charge cycles 12, and the current capacity still slightly exeeds design capacity. Besides, I'm comparing it to an my three year old 11" version with much better battery life.

    So I suspect the culprit might be the faster processor, or the flash memory – I've installed an OWC 1Tb flash instead of the original 126 Gb. But I've also ran it for a while with the same memory I've had in the 11" machine, and that seemed to influence battery life only marginally.

    The third possibility is that Apples promise of a 12 hour battery life wasn't true to begin with. BTW just writing these lines took 5% off the battery. Twelve hours of video playback is a joke.

  • by OGELTHORPE,

    OGELTHORPE OGELTHORPE Oct 9, 2016 4:49 AM in response to Mathias Luther
    Level 9 (52,764 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 9, 2016 4:49 AM in response to Mathias Luther

    Mathias Luther wrote:

     

    The third possibility is that Apples promise of a 12 hour battery life wasn't true to begin with.

    That is true.  The parameters that Apple uses for advertising battery run time are not very realistic of real world usage.

    That said, 4-5 hours of run time should only occur if you are pressing hard the processing capacity of the MBP.

     

    Have you tried the SMC reset?

     

    An appointment at an Apple store genius bar to check the battery would be a good option.

     

    Ciao.

  • by Mathias Luther,

    Mathias Luther Mathias Luther Oct 9, 2016 8:40 AM in response to OGELTHORPE
    Level 1 (73 points)
    Notebooks
    Oct 9, 2016 8:40 AM in response to OGELTHORPE

    Yes I did an SMC reset today at your suggestion, haven't really noticed any difference yet but probably I even couldn't. Somhow it seems to be a question of excessive power consumption, not the supply in the battery (which still has more than its design capacity of power). This is the impression I get from the fans working and the rather warm machine.

    I´ll watch it now for a couple of days if this SMC reset has had any effect.

  • by Lanny,

    Lanny Lanny Oct 9, 2016 9:28 AM in response to Mathias Luther
    Level 6 (8,041 points)
    Desktops
    Oct 9, 2016 9:28 AM in response to Mathias Luther

    This is the impression I get from the fans working and the rather warm machine.

    More evidence that something is hogging cpu time. Use your Activity Monitor to identify processes that may be using excessive processor time.

    Screen Shot 2016-10-09 at 12.27.03 PM.jpg

    Note: It's GB and TB, not Gb and Tb. B=byte b=bit