Battery life of 13 netbooks compared, MSI U115 emerges victorious
April 10, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Netbook vendors and consumers are placing increasing importance on battery lives. We have seen a number of netbooks announced recently from all of the major players (MSI, Samsung, Asus and Acer) who are trying to push longer and longer lasting battery times. To take the headache out of finding out which ones last the longest, Netbook Review has undertaken the arduous task of comparing the battery life of thirteen different netbooks.
Each of the netbooks were tested with the UserBench Battery 2008 benchmark, which involves stress-testing the battery to an absolute maximum. The author claims that the results present a worse-case scenario and should be the bare minimum life expected. The app plays back a WMV video clip with the display and hard drive set to never switch off. Power management was set to “always on”.
Now it is worth pointing out that the list isn’t like-for-like. Some of the models which have 3-cell batteries (HP Mini 1001TU, Lenovo IdeaPad S10 and Dell Inspiron Mini 12) foot the table, whilst others which have 6-cell batteries (MSI Wind U115 Hybrid, Asus Eee PC 1000HD and Asus Eee PC 901) top the table.
Unsurprisingly, the MSI Wind U115 came top of the table with a battery life of 6 hours and 56 minutes, compared to the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 which lasted only 1 hour and 47 minutes. The Samsung NC10 is not included in the list as it is currently not available in Australia.
April 11th, 2009 4:26 AM
Why no test of the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, which promises batter life of up to 9.5 hours?
April 11th, 2009 7:03 AM
I was wondering the same. The only thing I can think of is that maybe it is not that readily available in Australia right now?
April 11th, 2009 7:57 PM
Personally I would have liked to see both the EEE PC 1000HE and the MSI U110 to also be included in this test.
April 14th, 2009 7:17 AM
Also Samsung N110 should be at this test. I think that Asus EEE PC 1000HE vs Samsung N110 test would be intresting.
April 14th, 2009 7:29 AM
Only 6:56? I did just read that it runs 13 hours and with 9 cell battery 25 hours?
April 14th, 2009 6:34 PM
Remember, this test involves the worst possible scenario for battery life (plus I think he is only using the 6-cell battery for the Wind U115 Hybrid).
The 25 hour test was run on idle which means it is the best possible scenario with a 9-cell battery.
May 7th, 2009 4:59 PM
I’ve just bought an ASUS1000HE and I must say that I wasn’t expected the battery to last as long as advertised, but after 9 hours and a half it still got 10% of it.
WOW, just wow. And I must say that I was listening to music and for 2 hours saw a movie and scanned for at least 3 hour for viruses with my client.
With the Wifi connected it stays 7 hours for sure.
I think it’s the best mini notebook that the money can buy.
November 25th, 2009 9:35 PM
The dell mini 12 is the most useless thing I’ve ever seen, and why aren’t any of the 9+ hour netbooks on the list?