Insights of the life of a MacBook Air battery

"12 hours of battery life" is the premise of the new MacBook Air. How does that hold over time?

Since my previous laptop bought in October 2012 (in Malaysia, one of the cheapest country to buy Apple products, ask me more), I started tracking (manually so far) the battery capacity and cycle counts on a monthly basis.
I found that after 6 months and 220 battery cycles (full charge), the battery capacity had dropped to 90%.



Jared Davenport found a similar pattern with 10% of battery capacity gone after 4-6 months of use.

Over the 19 months period, the drop in battery life is pretty regular.

Less cycles per day after leaving my startup.

To know more about my usage of the computer, I compared the number of battery cycles over the different periods. It appears that the number of cycle dropped after October 2013, which matches the change in my professional life (I stepped down from my startup flocations.com). While I believe I still spend most of my days in front of the MacBook Air, I probably changed the way I plug it.



The battery capacity of my 2012 MacBook Air now stands at 5,200 mAh, with around 5h40 of use time as per the battery indicator.
The new MacBook Air (2014) shows me 7,440 mAh and 12h40 use time (with no software running).

How to get the battery data on your Apple computer

Go to Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info... > System Report > Power

Find the interactive charts on my site.