One of the best features of Apple's new MacBook Airs hasn't gotten all that much attention. Here's Steve Jobs announcing it last week:
That's the 13.3? Air Jobs is talking about -- later on at the event, he introduced the 11.6? version and said it got up to five hours, again with the tougher tests.
I've been using the 11.6? MacBook Air over the past week and a half, and judging from my experience, Apple's estimate of five hours is indeed realistic. It's about what I'm getting -- which is a pleasant surprise considering that I'm used to discounting the battery life claims made by laptop manufacturers (including Apple) by anywhere from thirty to sixty percent. The Air's five hours remind me more of the ten-hour claim Apple makes for the iPad; it seems fair.
Now, I'm not saying that typical battery claims are lies, and I know that the words "up to" are meant to indicate that that the numbers aren't promises. They're way closer to best-case scenarios than Harry-case ones -- what you may get if you don't push the notebook very hard. And even then, they feel high in many cases. Last year, AMD's Pat Moorhead guestblogged here and noted that PC manufacturers' battery tests tend to involving cranking screen brightness way, way down. But I do that myself -- and turn off features like Bluetooth, and opt for "power saver" modes -- and I stillgenerally fall short of the claims.
I don't seem to be a freaky exception, either. I did a totally unscientific survey of my Twitterfollowers, asking them if they ever get remotely the battery life that manufacturers claim. Most of them say the claims don't jibe with their personal realities:
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