When news broke out that the Macbook Air mid 2013 came with a longer battery life, I wanted to buy one right away. My dear husband reminded me that I still had a macbook. He is right, of course. In fact , my Macbook Air mid 2011 still had Apple care till August 2014. There was no reason to buy a new one until….my daughter told me that the black macbook I gave her would not turn on anymore. The 2008 black macbook was bound to retire soon. I offered to give her my old macbook. My husband just had to laugh that I found a reason to buy the latest macbook.
I purchased the base model of a 13-inch MacBook Air 256GB Flash Storage at Liteware and paid extra to have my files transferred from my old Macbook Air. In less than 2 hours, I got my brand new Macbook Air. I can’t tell the difference between my old 2011 Macbook Air and my new one. They say that everything that’s new about the 2013 Air is hidden away inside the laptop.
The MagSafe 2 power socket is different from the 2011 model.
The Macbook Air 2013 pretty much looks the same on the outside as the 2011 edition, aside from the addition of dual microphones on the left-hand side. Apple says the two microphone slots allow for noise cancelling during calls and adaptive voice detection when you’re using OS X’s dictation feature.
I won’t discuss much about the features of the Macbook Air 2013 since you can find that in many review sites. I wanted to see if the much touted 12 hour battery life is indeed true. The outstanding battery life comes from the Haswell processor. The Verge says 13 hours and 29 minutes. That’s really all you need to know
13 hours and 29 minutes. That’s all you really need to know — that’s how long the new MacBook Air running Safari lasted running The Verge Battery Test, which cycles through a series of websites and images at 65 percent brightness. Run time in Chrome was shorter, at 11 hours and 29 minutes, but both are still ridiculously impressive. In fact, it’s the record for a laptop running our test without an external battery.
I did my own test to see if it is really 12 hours. Well, I don’t have a battery tester so I am just showing my normal usage. Open apps were: my Chrome brwoser (with 6 tabs open including Facebook), Tweetdeck, Viber, Word, Preview, App store, Etre Check. Screen brightness is at 5 bars while keyboard backlight is 1 bar. I documented this on the second day after a full charge,
At 7:00 AM, I started using my Macbook Air . The battery indicator is at 100% full charge. Time remaining 9 hours 24 minutes. How disappointing.
I brought my macbook air to my breakfast table so I can continue to monitor the usage. At 7:48 AM, battery indicator is 97% and it says “9 hours and 48 minutes time remaining”. That’s a few minutes more than the earlier indicator.
While eating breakfast, I would occasionally browse at my facebook, tweetdeck and email. At 7:59 AM, battery indicator is 96% and ” 12 hours and 26 minutes time remaining”. I have no idea why there was an increase in battery life. I did nothing unusual except taking breaks…taking coffee then glancing at my macbook.
It is 8:02 AM and battery indicator is now 95%. Time remaining is at 13 hours and 26 minutes.
At 9:21 AM and at 86% battery indicator, time remaining is even higher at 14 hours and 12 minutes. I continued to check on my sites like the Philippine Online Chronicles, and my blogs. I did not add any new programs to make the test consistent. 14 hours 12 minutes is impressive.
I now started heavy browsing and work at 9:00 AM. By 10:05 AM at 81% battery life, time remaining is now 8 hours and 51 minutes.
I had a lunch meeting so I was unable to use my macbook air until 2 PM. I worked until 5:00 PM until it was time to head off to another meeting. By 6:21 PM, I checked the battery indicator. At 46%, time remaining was 5 hours and 28 minutes. I still had enough juice to last me till midnight.
The battery life is really impressive. The life decreases as I opened more tabs to browse and wrote on my word document for my article. I can safely say that battery life is around 8-10 hours when working heavily . I notice the “time remaining” increases when I take breaks in between work.
I have already upgraded to Macbook Air Software 1.0 update even if I don’t have WIFI issues. The battery life continues to be the same as when I tested it two days ago. Hopefully the new Air continues to exhibit long battery life as it makes the world of difference for my mobile office when I need a full day without concern for power.