{"id":1534,"date":"2015-07-21T03:11:21","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T03:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/?p=1534"},"modified":"2015-07-21T03:11:21","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T03:11:21","slug":"laptop-computer-battery-life-hits-new-highs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/laptop-computer-battery-life-hits-new-highs\/","title":{"rendered":"Laptop computer battery life hits new highs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A handful of new systems are promising more than 15 hours\u2019 battery life on a single battery charge, or 20 hours with an optional second battery installed. The days of plugging in on the road are almost over, at least for short business trips.<\/p>\n<p>Panasonic introduced its newest Toughbook 31 which can run for up to 18 hours depending on the use case, or 27 hours with an optional <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">second battery<\/a> installed. The laptop has a tough briefcase-type exterior so it can withstand a fall.\u00a0Panasonic Toughbook beats out two other recently introduced laptops for battery life. Dell claims 15 hours for its XPS 13, or 22 hours with a second \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/dell\/hd438-batteries.html\">Dell hd438 battery<\/a>. And the two batteries in Lenovo\u2019s ThinkPad X250 can power it along for up to 20 hours.<\/p>\n<p>For all these estimates, <strong>battery life will depend partly on the applications you\u2019re running on your notebook<\/strong>. \u00a0Playing video games and watching movies generally draws more juice than surfing the web or using a word processor. The display draws the most battery power, and the brighter the screen the less battery life you\u2019ll have.<\/p>\n<p>Ongoing improvements to storage, memory and CPUs are all helping to lengthen battery life as well.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/toshiba-pa3818u-1brs-batteries.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1535\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/toshiba-pa3818u-1brs-laptop-battery.jpg\" alt=\"toshiba-pa3818u-1brs-laptop-battery\" width=\"694\" height=\"343\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/toshiba-pa3818u-1brs-laptop-battery.jpg 694w, https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/toshiba-pa3818u-1brs-laptop-battery-300x148.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 694px) 100vw, 694px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nLaptops that get more than 15 hours on a charge usually have solid-state drives, which are more power-efficient than spinning hard disks.\u00a0Battery technology itself hasn\u2019t improved much lately, but laptops are getting smarter, more sophisticated circuitry to help them run longer.\u00a0Intel used to focus more on horsepower than energy efficiency, but that\u2019s switched in recent years, he noted. Displays are also advancing, with laptop makers using tricks to improve perceived quality of images by modulating the backlight.<\/p>\n<aside id=\"insert-module-1517\" class=\"nativo-promo smartphone tablet desktop \"><\/aside>\n<p>The above laptops also use Intel\u2019s latest Core processors based on the Broadwell microarchitecture, which is more power-efficient than its predecessors. Intel says Broadwell alone can extend battery life by an hour when watching HD movies or browsing the Web.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/panasonic-power-tool-battery.html\" target=\"_blank\">Panasonic<\/a>\u2019s claim of 18 hours is for a power-saving mode, with the wireless off and screen brightness reduced. That\u2019s probably not a typical use case for most people. And while Dell claims up to 15 hours for the XPS 13, Intel\u2019s measured only 11 hours for the same laptop.<\/p>\n<p>Intel and AMD are both reducing the size of processors while packing in more cores, controllers and other features. That reduces the number of components on a motherboard, reducing power use further.\u00a0AMD claims its PC chips will be 25 times more energy efficient over the next few years, which could mean 50 hours battery life in idle mode.<\/p>\n<p>But for now, 15 hours is the exception rather than the rule. It\u2019s pretty impressive when you compare it to just a few years ago, and for now it\u2019s probably enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A handful of new systems are promising more than 15 hours\u2019 battery life on a single &hellip; <a title=\"Laptop computer battery life hits new highs\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/laptop-computer-battery-life-hits-new-highs\/\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Laptop computer battery life hits new highs<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,3,5],"tags":[959,102,960],"class_list":["post-1534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-batteries-technology","category-battery-knowledgebase","category-battery-wiki","tag-dell-hd438-battery","tag-laptop-battery-life","tag-toshiba-pa3818u-1brs-battery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1536,"href":"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1534\/revisions\/1536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aussiebatt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}