Battery life ? Difference in r2 ?

Hi all just a general question , what's the battery life on the m14x r1 ? And does an ivy bridge i7 improve the battery life ? if it does by how much ? Also for the r2 , would the sandy bridge i5 give better battery life or would the ivy bridge i7's give more battery life ? Thanks .

 

I'll let you know on battery life with the m14x R2. I do not have a R1 so we'll have to find someone with a fairly new one that's battery is still like new.

 

I read that the difference is 30-45 minutes, but I could be mistaken.

On the R1, it ranges from 4-5.5 hours depending on how much you tweak it. I get 5.5 hours, but I have to turn off FX, downclock the CPU to 25%~ish (good enough for surfing) and have brightness completely lowered (1 notch increased) to achieve that

 

Thanks to both of your for your responses

Oh wow I didn't know the r1's battery was that good .. I thought it was only around 4 hours d:

 

Like I said in another thread, if I really tweaked it (lowest brightness, CPU @ 800mhz, Alien FX off, wifi on) I could get 6-6.5 hours, but I cant really prove that now as my battery is wearing and I can only reach 3.5 hours

 

why has AW removed the "disable charger behaviour" option in the BIOS? or can't I just find it!?

 

Ive noticed a big difference personally. I havent actually timed it out yet so it may not be accurate but when in class my R1 in power saver would rate me at getting a little over 4 hours. My R2 had the battery status at over 6 hours. Ill have to wait it out one day and get an actual time.
Also I should note that in class I keep the activity pretty minimal. Just basic stuff like surfing or documents, etc.

 

No idea how you get that kind of battery life. I get around 2 hours.

 

It's because they're turning their $1400 m14x into a $700 POS with screen brightness so low it's like putting a piece of tint over the screen while wearing a pair of sunglasses at the same time. To some people that's fine but they should have just bought an ultrabook or something if they really need battery life that bad. I'll take the bright screen, alien FX, fast CPU and GPU I paid for thank you. I got about 2 hours myself when I had a 14x so don't feel bad.

 

its nice to be able to put these machines into "ultra book" mode though. Mine gets around 4-5 hours if I have everything turned off. Not denieing what your trying to say here, but its nice to be able to get such usage out of a gaming machine.

 

my r1 i7 16gb ram ssd i get around 3- 3.5 hours if im lucky no tweeks and battery is reporting its at 100% in alien autopsy ie no degridation with general use on normal batt plan

 

Hi, after having and selling my R1 and recently receiving my R2, in my experiences, the battery life is better on the R2. While composing this message with wifi turned on and brightness set to one above minimum, the discharge rate is -7310 mW. Based on it's capacity, that translates to about 7-8 hours. Right now, battery bar says my full run time is 5 hours and 42 minutes (it updates as it learns your computer and behavior).

Yesterday I was composing a word document, so I turned off wifi and turned down brightness to the minimum. Consumption was around -5000 mW. That'd be over 10 hours, which is insane, even considering the more aggressive power saving tactics. I'll definitely be trying that when I return to school in the fall.

Edit: at the end of this email, the discharge rate was around -6,600MW. This is still with the same settings as above. Also, when I'm seriously using it on the go I turn off alienFX completely (including the status zones). AlienFX eats battery and creates heat (tip to gamers who really want to reduce their comp temps).

These scores are considerably better than what I'd get with the M14xR1. 4-5 hours normal behavior and 5:30 hours if I babied it.

 

Thanks for sharing - those are superb results, making the M14X better than ever

 

lol. I guess youre never in a situation where you need to conserve power eh? Some of us prefer saving the battery when at school. Why would we need our Alienware's full potential in class??

I agree, its awesome to be able to take my gaming machine to class with me at night and not have to even bother bringing the cable.

Thats about what I was getting. I thought it was really cool how it kept calculating it

 

Here is a picture I took yesterday : https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ln9sxhk5br7h88/2012-05-20 23.12.26.jpg

When watching youtube with AlienFX ON it was showing about 6hours.

This is outstanding.

 

interesting, very good to hear how long it can last. Any ocing involve? If so, details please.

 

WOW!

Now that is something to be proud of

*Voodooi is still in shock*

 

How do you find out your discharge rate?

 

You have to install BatteryBar to see your discharge rate, the evaluation version is enough.

 

Thank you!

 

Sorry to bring up an older thread but until someone actually RUNS their machine to 5% and shuts down with a timer to check, 5W is barely achievable with a netbook with 7.5W CPU. Most of these battery reading software are highly ineffective until after a few discharges. And then I'd still take an actual measurement over a software estimation.

 

I know this is a way old thread! But FWIW

I got 3.5/4 hrs when i got my m14x r1 in 2011 (30/12/2011) just doing lightish (mostly surfing/light gaming) things, now in 25/3/2013 I get approx 3 hrs with the same usage. HWmonitor shows 10% degradation.

If it helps anyone still.