I’ve been tripping over my own words in order to find the right phrase to express my satisfaction with the new MacBook Air. At well over 10 hours of battery life from a single charge, it’s been an absolute game changer for me.
I have the 11″ variety of the MacBook Air, and while Apple’s officially stated battery life is 9 hours, I’ve always done a bit better than that. The 13″ variety officially gets 12 hours of battery life, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see it get somewhere in the 13-14 hour range.
Apple is famously bearish when it comes to battery life predictions, which means users generally end up with the pleasant surprise of even higher numbers than Apple’s company line. But now, out of seemingly nowhere, Toshiba is claiming that its upcoming 2.5 pound ultra book will get an insane 22 hours of battery life.
Unless those estimates are egregiously overstated, this could be very good news for the next generation MacBook Air.
Packing specs in the ballpark of the MacBook Air, Toshiba’s Kira Dynabook sports a 13″ 1366×768 resolution screen, 128 GB SSD, a Haswell based Intel processor, and 8 GB of RAM. Another higher end model with a Retina caliber screen is said to pack in a just as impressive 14 hours of battery life.
The main detail that we need, the size and specs of the battery, is currently unknown at this time. I wouldn’t be surprised if Toshiba is overestimating its claims, or performing its tests in a ridiculously unrealistic user environment. But even if its so-called ultra book gets somewhere around 16-18 hours of battery life, that’s still mighty impressive; especially so in such a diminutive form factor.
It’ll be interesting to see what actually comes of this. If this turns out to be legitimate, even in the range of Toshiba’s estimates, this could signify great things for the next MacBook Air. What do you think about Toshiba’s claims?