How long should my laptop battery last from fully charged?

cepheus

The spec here is not very enlightening,

maximum life : up to 5h15min (Mobile Mark™ 2007)

but I'm sure it packs up within a few hours! I don't think it ever did much better when I bought the laptop 9 months ago, could I change it? Even if I could, would a new one perform any different or are these times BS?

Perhaps it depends what you do, just internet surfing in my case, no games or noise.

WhiteChristmas

Yes, it depends what you do. The quoted times are usually obtained by switching on and leaving the machine idling with the screen light turned down to minimum etc.

Anything which involves a lot of hard disk or CD-ROM access slashes it; in my experience, "normal" browsing reduces it to about 75%.

In time, your battery will degrade, but if you're still getting hours of use then it's still OK. My Dell is still giving 2-2.5 hours per charge vs the 3 hours I got when it was new some 3 years ago.

cepheus

I would be happy with 75% but it seems to be more like 40%.

The screen light seems to be stuck on 40% irrespective of the slider. There are however, three settings for the battery: balanced, power saver, and high performance. Surely they should use balanced for time quotes? Anyway I have shifted it to power saver.

fenlander_uk

40% sounds about right. Manufacturers' maximum battery life figures bear about as much similarity to real life as quoted mpg figures for motor cars. (You can get 60mpg provided you travel at 35mph in a straight line with no braking or accelerating...) They're normally taken using power saving settings, with wireless and bluetooth turned off, screen brightness turned down, and light tasks only.

If you watch HD videos, you'll be lucky to get 40%...

cepheus

No just still pages, although a few may have Java. Presumably the Toshiba settings I mentioned above does all that power saving stuff for you? I will give it a proper test tomorrow.

InsideInsurance

There is no standard definition of things like battery life, some companies really do stretch things by testing it with the screen turned right down, and absolutely minimal activity (if any at all). Others are a bit more realistic in terms of running it on a mid-low brightness doing moderate web browsing or wordprocessing type applications.

All of my Apple products have always been fairly true to their claimed battery life (other than the iPhone) as is my Dell work laptop but my old Fujitsu laptop was no where close in the slightest, 40% probably would have been about right.

paddyrg

If you have wifi or bluetooth enabled, that'll reduce battery life, if you have the screen on or playing sound, etc - that'll reduce battery life. If you do *anything*, it'll reduce battery life. If you have a USB keyboard/mouse, guess what...

The theoretical maximum lives are so unrealistic it's bonkers. Work plugged in where possible!

Notmyrealname

cepheus wrote: »

The spec here is not very enlightening,

maximum life : up to 5h15min (Mobile Mark™ 2007)

but I'm sure it packs up within a few hours! I don't think it ever did much better when I bought the laptop 9 months ago, could I change it? Even if I could, would a new one perform any different or are these times BS?

Perhaps it depends what you do, just internet surfing in my case, no games or noise.

On my Macbook Pro doing web browsing, email etc with screen brightness about 50% I get around 5hrs.

If I turn bluetooth on I lose an hour.

If I up the screen brightness to full I lose an hour.

If I watch Youtube or any other online video I get 3hrs or so.

cepheus

I performed a more scientific test by actually timing it to rundown! This is about 3 hrs before the 30 min warning in power saving mode, surfing, and with a headset and mouse plugged in.

I have now drained the battery down to 40%, removed it, and placed it in the fridge which is supposed to be the optimum storage conditions for a lithium ion battery.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_store_batteries