Exhaustive netbook battery comparison finds a clear winner, no victims
By Donald Melanson 
posted April 10th 2009 5:46PM
posted April 10th 2009 5:46PM
It's hardly the first netbook battery comparison to appear in the Thunderdome that is the internet, but this latest thirteen-strong round-up from Australia's NetbookReview is one of the more comprehensive to emerge as of late, with it only slightly compromised by a few netbooks that aren't available in the site's home country. Not surprisingly, the netbooks equipped with six-cell batteries came out well ahead of their less well off counterparts, with the MSI Wind U115 Hybrid leading the way with an impressive time of 6:56. That was obviously aided in no small part by the netbook's dual SSD / hard drive setup, and by a less commonly used 5100mAh six-cell battery, as opposed to the 6600mAh version used in the second and third place Eee PCs (which each clocked in around the four-hour mark). Bringing up the rear were the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 and Dell Mini 12, neither of which were able to eek out even two hours of use. As you might expect, however, all of the tests involved a worst-case scenario, so you can expect to get a good deal more juice from all of 'em if you're not spending every waking hour watching WMV files.
Lies! the Lenovo S-10 is great!
I consistently get about 3 1/2 hours out of mine.
and how exactly is a 5100mAh battery better than a 6600mAh battery??
that's kind of like asking why's the 12 gallon gas tank in a civic better than the 20 gallon gas tank on a hummer
mAh is telling you pretty much nothing about the battery Wh would.
Yeah but it definitely doesn't help the MSI last longer...if anything it just shows how impressive its battery life is, getting 6:56 on 25% less capacity than the Eees.
@ Pizzicato-
Assuming the MSI and Eee batteries operate at the same voltage (considering they are 6 cells, they probably do), then mAh has a direct relation to the capacity, just as Wh would. (Amps*Voltage)*hour = (Watts)*hour
@ Colin B
They don't. The 5100mAh is at 11.1 volts, versus 7.4 for the other. 3 x 2 vs. 2 x 3.
You know what happens when you assume....
hmm, fair enough. my initial point is still valid though...what does the lower mAh rating have to do with making the Wind better?
colin - did you read my analogy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Celeron_microprocessors#.22Dothan-512.22_.28ultra-low-voltage.2C_90_nm.29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Atom_microprocessors#Atom_Z5xx_series_.28single-core.29
the cpu in the eee draws a lot more power than the cpu in the wind.
I think that's irrelevant to my point. The blurb states that the fact that the MSI has a 5100mAh helps it in comparison to the Eees 6600mAh battery. I don't see how this stat by itself illustrates an advantage. Now, if the real reason it has a lower mAh rating is because it has a more efficient CPU, that's great...but not what they said.
I suppose it's possible i'm completely missing something here too...
engadget writers are as stupid as the rest of us. these battery tests don't actually test the battery. the battery manufacturer already tested them - thus, they have a capacity rating in volts and mAh. what these battery tests really test is the amount of time it takes for something to completely discharge the battery.
if a civic gets 40 mpg on a 12 gal tank and a hummer gets 15 mpg on a 20 gal tank, the civic will drive 180 miles further than the hummer on 1 tank of gas, even though the tank sizes are different.
also:
1 watt hour = 1 volt * 1 amp hour
5.1 amp-hours * 11.1 volts = 57 watt hours
6.6 amp-hours * 7.4 volts = 49 watt hours
even if the eee had an atom cpu, the wind would still last longer because its battery is actually larger.
Biased testing? they can not cite insuffiient time frame or market release to justify NOT including the ASUS EEE 1000HE, I get 8.0 hrs of real life productivity with wrieless on!, blows any of the listed away.
do you spend all your time watching WMVs? That's how they tested battery life. 6 hours of straight video is quite impressive. you can tack on another 30% or so of all of the figures to get real world battery life. so, think 9 hours for the new MSI, 3 hours for the dell, etc.
This all makes me wish I had waited another two months and gotten a 1000HE for $25 less than my 3 cell HP 1030nr (as nice as the keyboard is, I'd kill for another 5 hours of battery)
I was wondering the same thing. I get 7 hours easy out of my NC-10, probably more if I pushed it, so what the hell?
I ran my HE for 6 hours straight watching H264/AC3 avi files. That took the battery down to 10% remaining. Had other things to do and couldn't continue till it was juiced out. Was impressed I got that much. Not sure I could get quite to 6:56, but I'm sure it'd be close.
Also, the S10 tested includes the old 3-cell battery - if you buy an S10 now, the high-cap battery (11.1 V 4800 mAh) is practically a free upgrade.
No Samsung N10? =(
while this is awesome to see, why didn't they do wifi tests? imho they should have had 2 more tests. 1 test where they used a browser and streamed hulu or something measuring battery life and another test which used HD and wifi, maybe serving up a linux distro over bit torrent or a combination of both previous tests.
i really wish they did a wifi test also :(
I gotta agree with Howard - This comparison leaves out some serious competition!! My Acer Aspire One D150 always clocks in at about 5:30-6 hrs.
My 6-cell Aspire One will do the same but only if the WiFi is set on "economy" mode. But in that mode the Wi-Fi is virtually useless: much too slow. With WiFi running full bore it's more like 3-5 hours.
It would be interesting to know if similar power-saving tricks were turned on or off in the Australian tests.
"...if you're not spending every waking hour watching WMV files."
but when i'm on a 5 hour plane trip, all i do is watch WMV files. so i can expect to get 4 hours of battery life on my Eee 1000HA? i really hope i can get the 7 hour battery life it advertises for.
If you COULD, Asus would be selling it as a 12 hour netbook instead of 7.
Wouldn't the Mini 12, inherently be the worst? It has a 12 inch screen with the highest resolution (1280x800) when compared to all of the other netbooks in this test. I'm surprised it did as well as it did. Also it doesn't have a flash SSD... Kind of makes the S10 and Mini 1001 look sad though.
I dont think that this article must be your only guideline in case you want to buy a netbook with long battery life .
Some good netbooks like Samsung NC10 or NC20 are missing from the comparison.
my nc-10 approches 7 hours no problem
One stat that they didn't put in the table, but that is nonetheless interesting is efficiency- comparing how many mAh per minute each one uses:
MSI Wind U115 Hybrid 12.26
Asus Eee PC 1000HD 26.19
Asus Eee PC 901 27.62
MSI Wind U100 20.00
Asus Eee PC 1000H 30.99
Asus N10J 25.95
Dell Inspiron Mini 9 11.58
Asus Eee PC S101 30.43
Acer Aspire One AOA110 15.83
HP Mini 1001TU 18.74
Lenovo IdeaPad S10 21.93
Dell Inspiron Mini 12 20.56
Two interesting things here. The Mini9 actually comes out on top for efficiency, but it has such a riduculously small battery that it can't run for that long. It does have an LED-backlit screen and only an SSD, which probably helps quite a bit.
Also, the EEE's are surprisingly inefficient when it comes to battery. They do have fans, whereas the Mini 9 doesn't (i'm not sure about the others).
You're looking at the wrong figures. mAh per minute is not a meaningful unit. Multiply the ampere-hour by the voltage and divide by hours of run time. Then you get a meaningful measure of power draw expressed in Joule per second (better known as Watt).
Don't they teach physics at school anymore these days?
Look at this table:
http://netbookreview.darrenyates.com.au/?p=355
There is capacity in mAh, energy capacity in Wh (more important I guess), and average power consumption in W. (which is like your mAh per minute, but more meaningful and standard).
I don't agree with the Mini 9 numbers since it has a know issue with battery reporting for certain variant batteries. Testing an advanced copy of new bios and it appears to fix the problem. The battery now reports 32560mWH capacity and 13.2volts.
My Dell has a 6% wear level so it reports 30740mWh at full charge and 16.2volts. I am getting 3.75-4.0hrs consistently on a full charge with BT and WiFi.
Uh... why on earth would they leave off the Asus EeePC 1000HE? It blows all of these away. Wacky.
I'm surpised to see the Dell Mini 12 that bad. Doesn't it have the Poulsbo chipset (GMA500), which is much more efficient that the GMA 950 of the others? I'm waiting for the new Acer netbooks with Poulsbo and an 11.1" WXGA screen. That one should last 10 hours.
Can't we just get beyond Thunderdome?
> Can't we just get beyond Thunderdome?
AAARRGH! You beat me to it!
...Sean.
What about eee pc 1000h that has great battery life?
It might not be out or hard to find in Australia
Eke. The word is eke. "Eek" is for when you see a ghost.
It seems like the author of the article can't take to anyone criticizing his numbers, and really gets defensive. It's actually kinda laughable.
The list isn't really exhaustive though, which is admitted by the author himself. He didn't test the best batteries available with each model (for example, he didn't test the 6 cell S10 battery) which can skew the numbers a good bit.
With all of the flaws with the numbers, it's still interesting to see that not all batteries are made equal- which is what it seems stores like Best Buy try to tout by not giving detailed battery info. At least here we're seeing how varied battery size can be with batteries that might be seen as being the same by the average consumer.
Glad to see someone willing to test the numbers though. Too bad it wasn't that extensive.
Doesn't the Samsung NC10 completely blow these scores out of the water?
Also the article explicitly states that this isn't an exhaustive comparison. Engadget, either you're intentionally joking around or you're unintentionally skewing the truth. If it's joking, stick to the puns; and if it's an error, then show more care and don't represent studies that other people make in a false light.
Especially if they try to point out that possible bias in the first few sentences
First, I’d say the winning position of MSI Wind U115 is not only due to its SSD, but more to it’s newer processor and chipset: it uses the Menlow platform (Atom Z530 and Poulsbo chipset) which consume much less power (see the power consumption table), when most others use Atom N270 and GMA945.
I’d like to see somewhere how the Menlow performs in 3D. The older netbooks, such as my eeePC 1000H run Google Earth reasonably smoothly. There are youtube videos showing that, but no Poulsbo 3D test anywhere. Anyone?
Second, I’d like to see in that table a *WEIGHT* value. The number of *cells* tells me nothing, but the kg you have to carry around is important. BTW, why do all tell capacity in cells, whatever that is? why don't they select units with a bit more physical meaning.
Battery life vs weight is the relevant figure to me
This could have been figured out by simply multiplying the Ah by volts to get watt-hours. Of course
the msi u115 has the highest watt-hours.
(this assumes the stated battery values for Ah and volts are correct, which isn't always the case)