M1 MacBook Air handles a Zoom-filled workday with battery life to spare

Reported by MacRumors, the new M1 Macs are having a major impact on the amount of battery that video conferencing apps like Zoom gobble up. One forum member, who works regularly through Zoom, has found that the software is only eating up between 10-13% of battery life per hour on the new MacBook Air.

MacRumors forum member "acidfast7_redux," who resides in the UK, spent most of their work day today on Zoom video calls using their new MacBook Air with the M1 chip and 8GB of memory. After a 2.5 hour video call, they say their battery life dropped by 17%, and after a second 36 minute video call, their battery life dropped by 7%, meaning that Zoom ultimately consumed roughly 10-13% of battery life per hour.

They ran the new MacBook Air completely unplugged for a workday and found that it survived with battery life to spare:

Finishing the day at the office now:

• 09.11 to 17.25 (8h14m)
• Battery went from 100% down to 28%

Time breakdown for the office part of the day was:

• 4h33m Zoom meetings (just closed Zoom for the first time since opening it this morning at 10.00)
• 3h01m web browsing / MS Office / emails
• 45m sleep (just closed lid and left the office)

Video conferencing software like Zoom are known for eating through battery life, and this result is even more impressive since the software has not even released native support for Apple silicon yet.

These numbers are impressive given that Zoom has yet to introduce native support for Apple Silicon Macs, so the app is currently running through Apple's translation layer Rosetta 2 on Macs with the M1 chip. Zoom is known to be quite the battery hog on Intel-based Macs, so Apple Silicon's power efficiency gains will be much welcomed.

When Apple unveiled the new Macs and M1 chip, it promised that users would get twice the battery life when using video conferencing software, and that claim appears to be holding up.