Battery life matters

As I recently posted, I bought the AirPods Max and one of the nice features there was its massive 20-hour battery life. This is actually the third device I've bought in six months where battery life has been a massive part of loving it.

I purposely bought the previous two devices just for the battery life. I had an iPhone 12 and whether it would make it through the day was unpredictable. I also had a MacBook Pro from 2017 which really struggled to make it through one hour on the go. Its battery had degraded that much and of course within 20 minutes it was on energy saving mode and it had to slow down.

Using both of these devices had become so painful simply because of poor battery life that it was worth the large price to buy new devices (with minimal trade-in values helping just a tiny bit).

Obviously there are other benefits to these new devices. They are certainly faster and more responsive but ultimately the thing I just love is that when I turn the device on it works, it isn't out of battery. I can go and sit on the sofa and not be plugged in and my laptop isn't going to die on me. I could work there for an hour and then pop to the coffee shop for another few hours. I can watch YouTube on my phone on the bus, then take calls. None of my devices are running out of battery when I need them most.

I know this might feel obvious but I think in 2024 this is the first time in my life where my devices aren't lasting the day with me. Whenever I need to do something with them they're able to do it. I no longer have power access anxiety, and it's just such a sort of simple but brilliant quality of life improvement.