- Jul 1, 2001
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I would love to see Anandtech (or some other laptop reviewer) come up with a real-life based laptop battery torture test for measuring worst case battery life.
Most laptop reviews include a weak laptop battery test that has them using something lightweight application like web browser or Microsoft Office for 8 hours, and then proudly parrot the manufacturers claim that the laptop has "all day" battery life.
Of course, if you try to play a game or even try to stream a movie from Netflix from one of these laptops unplugged, you would be lucky to get 3 hours of battery life.
That's why I propose adding the "Ultimatebob's no BS Battery Torture Test" to the review:
1) Charge the laptop up to 100%
2) Fire up a web browser, bring up Netflix and attempt to stream every episode of Black Mirror in full screen mode at 80% screen brightness and 80% volume. You know, like someone trying to binge-watch a series during the weekend would actually do.
3) The test doesn't end until the laptop puts itself into hibernation mode due to critical battery.
My hunch is that most new laptops would last less than 4 hours.
If that battery torture test isn't enough, I'd recommend an alternate test where you try to play Civilization VI at recommended quality settings unplugged with the same screen brightness and volume constraints. Between the CPU usage, GPU usage, and screen runtime I would expect most new laptops to run less than 3 hours.
Is that really a fair represention of actual daily laptop usage? Probably not, but I'd rather know the worst case scenario upfront instead of the best case scenario that the manufacturers offer in their estimates.
Most laptop reviews include a weak laptop battery test that has them using something lightweight application like web browser or Microsoft Office for 8 hours, and then proudly parrot the manufacturers claim that the laptop has "all day" battery life.
Of course, if you try to play a game or even try to stream a movie from Netflix from one of these laptops unplugged, you would be lucky to get 3 hours of battery life.
That's why I propose adding the "Ultimatebob's no BS Battery Torture Test" to the review:
1) Charge the laptop up to 100%
2) Fire up a web browser, bring up Netflix and attempt to stream every episode of Black Mirror in full screen mode at 80% screen brightness and 80% volume. You know, like someone trying to binge-watch a series during the weekend would actually do.
3) The test doesn't end until the laptop puts itself into hibernation mode due to critical battery.
My hunch is that most new laptops would last less than 4 hours.
If that battery torture test isn't enough, I'd recommend an alternate test where you try to play Civilization VI at recommended quality settings unplugged with the same screen brightness and volume constraints. Between the CPU usage, GPU usage, and screen runtime I would expect most new laptops to run less than 3 hours.
Is that really a fair represention of actual daily laptop usage? Probably not, but I'd rather know the worst case scenario upfront instead of the best case scenario that the manufacturers offer in their estimates.