William Maher08 November 2007, 6:46 AM
Leading notebook makers are misleading consumers about the battery life of their notebooks -- we've done tests to prove it.
Toshiba's advertising campaign for the Portege R500 claims "weighs nothing, does everything". Everything, that is, except for delivering the advertised battery life.
Users of Toshiba’s much-hyped Portege R500 and many other big name notebooks are getting a lot less than they bargain for when it comes to the notebook’s battery life.
Instead of the huge 12.5 hours advertised by Toshiba, our testing shows that you’ll get less than half that figure with the R500. With DVD playback, you can expect 3 hours or less.
What’s surprising is how Toshiba told us they came up with the 12.5 hour figure – by turning off the LCD backlight and WiFi (amongst other power saver settings). In other words, you can’t actually see the screen unless perhaps you’re sitting in a park in direct sunlight.
Even then, you might be disappointed. We tried to emulate Toshiba’s R500 results and got about 9 hours. That sounds reasonable until you consider the notebook screen was so dark it was unusable indoors, and the computer was sitting completely idle the whole time.
A more realistic result? With the screen backlight on and wireless turned on we used the R500 for basic desktop tasks including Web browsing and some occasional music playback – this time we got about 5 hours. That’s the solid state drive model – you’ll get less with a regular hard drive.
Five hours of work-time is still great; most notebooks don’t get anywhere near this. But don’t be fooled, you’re unlikely to crack the 10-hour mark, or even anywhere near that.
And it’s not just Toshiba. Take Fujitsu, who advertises 6.5 hours battery life for the S6410. In our tests we got 3 hours 36 minutes.
So how do they come up with these over-the-top numbers? Toshiba bases their 12.5 hours on the JEITA benchmark, the standard measurement used by Sony and others. The problem? The test “is not intended as an accurate reflection of real-world usage”.
And, as our tests showed, we couldn't achieve the advertised battery figures under their conditions.
The exact JEITA method involves two tests – one leaving the machine idle, the other running a specific size video file. Neither test involves any everyday desktop tasks like Photoshop, playing DVDs, or browsing the Web.
As far as the test makers are concerned there’s no trickery here. The test was never meant to emulate real-life conditions, it’s just a unit to compare different notebooks. But notebook makers aren’t exactly going out of their way to make that clear in their advertising. Sony for example, is quoting up to a whopping 18 hours for its VGN-TZ18GN/X with the optional long battery.
Sony may be right, for all we know - we’ve tested the regular Vaio TZ and were blown away by the battery times, as we were with the Portege R500. But for now, we’ll be taking those 10-hour-plus claims with a grain of salt.
Toshiba’s Justin White points out that battery life differs a lot depending on what you’re doing with your notebook.
“It’s a bit of a hard one to quantify,” he told us. “It’s exactly the same as driving a car, you can get the best mileage out of it, it all depends on how much load is in the car, how much air is in the tires, how often you’re stopping and starting at lights.”
The situation is complicated by the introduction of Vista. “If you want long battery life I’d be turning Aero off. It doesn’t do your battery any favours,” White says.