MacOS – Skype video call taking a lot of battery power on mavericks

batterymacbook promacosskype

I have got mavericks 10.9.2 and latest Skype version 6.14(351) on a MBA 2013.
Whilst on a video call with one person only both cameras turned one and very good wifi signal Skype drained about 18% of the battery for 30 minutes.
Also the laptop base became quite warm to even hot.

Is this normal and if not, how might I resolve it?

Best Answer

Video processing is a CPU intensive task. 18% for 30 minutes is within normal operating times, as far as I can tell.

To save battery, consider lowering the brightness of your screen during a video call.