I get it, they added a better speaker system to the 15-inch Air.
But I thought it would get a better battery life too?
After all, the 16-inch Pro gets many hours more than the 14-inch Pro, while the 15-inch keeps 18 hours like the 13-inch.

Just thought it was interesting.

I guess the extra power required by the larger display makes it a wash. I'm surprised too

jabbr said:

I guess the extra power required by the larger display makes it a wash. I'm surprised too

This. Plus how thin they kept the device.

The battery is 66.5wh vs 52.6wh on the 13". Sounds like just enough to compensate for the larger screen. I bet there's loads of space in the chassis for a larger battery.

Maybe they'll put more battery in with the M3 model

18 hours of rated battery life is nothing to sniff at. Yeah it sucks a little that it's not better but still I don't think I really care.

Yes I am curious about the tear down.
I think 18h will translate to quite a good long battery life and adding more battery will also increase the weight but one would guess their should be more space than only 66Wh.
Same thickness, same hardware (except more speakers) but
13" = 625 cm2 bit less than 3/2 are battery (incl trackpad.) 375cm2
15 = 808 cm2 which is 183
This is very rough but in theory the trackpad takes some space so I am and all the additional space is full height so I am very conservative here.
Still that roughly translates to 78Wh which could fit easy enough.

One can argue that more isn't needed and it is a waste of resources and weight but I feel like 75wh would have pushed it over 20h and on the go with full brightness it would be worth it.
I think they did it as another "make it a bit worse" so the decision to go for 13" or the Pro isn't based on battery life. I am sure there is empty space I doubt the speakers use that much.

Was also expecting more battery life. But the current rated 18 hours should be more than enough. Maybe with a bigger battery, the weight increases. Hopefully in the future with M3, the battery life will be even better.

dusk007 said:

One can argue that more isn't needed and it is a waste of resources and weight but I feel like 75wh would have pushed it over 20h and on the go with full brightness it would be worth it.

The increased weight would be the problem.

We're complaining now that 18 hours of battery isn't enough on a laptop? Charge it at night. If you're on your computer for 18 hours a day, take a break and go outside. Jeez.

Battery life is still a concern for me, my M1 Pro 16" gets 7 hours or so under load, or less than 6 under heavy load.

Yeah - I do stuff with my laptop.

If I was just watching movies, sure it would last the advertised 18 hours or whatever.

I wonder what's the best laptop for battery life - I kind of assume this 15" air with M1 will have one of the best battery life in real life use.

The 16" MBP has a screen that drains insane amounts of battery while not actually being all that bright. I always have to max out brightness... and the screen gets very hot, definitely a first for a laptop. So I think this is where most of my battery life goes. I would be happy with a normal screen that gets bright without getting hot, ie, drawing tons of power...

PS: Hmmm... as I was writing this I was thinking - maybe it's ProMotion - we know 120 Hz uses more battery than 60Hz - and what if there's a bunch of websites open that have animations on them... I set my display to fixed refresh rate now maybe that will help....

Elohim369 said:

I wonder what's the best laptop for battery life - I kind of assume this 15" air with M1 will have one of the best battery life in real life use.

Well, the 15” comes with an M2. We'll know pretty soon whether the “up to 18 hours” pans out. By definition, it has to, given that huge loophole of “up to…”. 😎

Now, here are Laptop Magazine's battery test results on a variety of Macs.


Battery life results The champ is supposedly the 13” MPB M2 with Touch Bar!

The 14” MPB looks good except for the M2 Max.

The problem is that, if you rummage around MR, you'll find many posts decrying the M1 14” for its poor battery life, especially while it's supposedly ”sleeping”. That may apply to the M2 versions as well…

Wonder what their test results were for the M1 MBA…

Will the 15” do as well?

Eric8199 said:

We're complaining now that 18 hours of battery isn't enough on a laptop? Charge it at night. If you're on your computer for 18 hours a day, take a break and go outside. Jeez.

It wouldn't be authentic Macrumor forums without threads complaining about already class-leading battery life, 8GB vs 16GB RAM, and whether to buy that new Mac that was updated 5 minutes ago now or wait for the next update.

Linus Sebastian from Linus Tech Tips has stated in multiple videos now that his video editors have switched from the best Windows laptops money can buy to Apple Silicon MacBook Pros on press trips just because of the class-leading battery life, and here we are discussing if the MBA's 18 hours is enough.

TechZeke said:

It wouldn't be authentic Macrumor forums without threads complaining about already class-leading battery life, 8GB vs 16GB RAM, and whether to buy that new Mac that was updated 5 minutes ago now or wait for the next update.

Linus Sebastian from Linus Tech Tips has stated in multiple videos now that his video editors have switched from the best Windows laptops money can buy to Apple Silicon MacBook Pros on press trips just because of the class-leading battery life, and here we are discussing if the MBA's 18 hours is enough.

As the OP, I wasn't actually complaining about battery life. I just wondered why it wasn't more on a larger device. People used to buy the 17-inch Macbook Pro for the improved battery.

Eric8199 said:

We're complaining now that 18 hours of battery isn't enough on a laptop? Charge it at night. If you're on your computer for 18 hours a day, take a break and go outside. Jeez.

18 hours is a best case though. Folks with heavier workloads on higher brightness can probably still get it down to 5-6 hours.

When I had a work issued 16" M1 Pro I was routinely in situations where I was only getting that much out of it. Not all the time mind you, I probably averaged about 8 hours, but the situation was such that I always brought my power adaptor (or external battery pack) with me when out and about.

Of course you can curb your usage or power settings to some degree, but now you're altering how you work to conserve power, which means better battery life would be beneficial. But hey, if it's just for home use (light web surfing/movie watching) not a problem.

Eric8199 said:

We're complaining now that 18 hours of battery isn't enough on a laptop? Charge it at night. If you're on your computer for 18 hours a day, take a break and go outside. Jeez.

Spot on. Took the words out of my mouth.

Eric8199 said:

We're complaining now that 18 hours of battery isn't enough on a laptop? Charge it at night. If you're on your computer for 18 hours a day, take a break and go outside. Jeez.

18h is more like a best case. The 14" MBP says it has 12-15h battery life according to Apple that would make a full work day easy but the reality is 4-8h if you do serious stuff on battery, which is a maybe full work day. So 18h is probably 6-10h in reality I guess which is almost safe for a full work day and not even bother with a charger.
But if that notebook was filled up more with battery and had some 20h+ life it would probably be super safe over the line even with serious usage.

It is awesome battery life compared to windows or intel before where serious load was 1-3h instead of the advertised 10-20h. But it is still only 15-18h if you have a light workload like just typical education stuff like I had while stuyding perhaps. But nowadays docker, IDEs, ... will suck it dry quite a bit.

Beau10 said:

18 hours is a best case though ....
.... I probably averaged about 8 hours, but the situation was such that I always brought my power adaptor (or external battery pack) with me when out and about.

Exactly me too. I had a 14" and averaged about 4-8h depending. You can optimise and get a lot of battery with light usage but if you actually have docker running and do some dev work it won't fly to not bring a power adapter for a day of work. Still awesome that any long meeting or such is not problem but an eniter work day just barely works and is a bit risky.

Display is the largest contributor to power consumption.

The 15 Air has almost the same battery capacity as the 14 Pro. This is why video playback time, which uses only decoding blocks on the SoC, is about the same for both devices. However, the 15 Air wins in web surfing even though it has a smaller battery. Running JavaScript will power up large parts of the processor.