M11x R3 Battery Life

Hi guys,
So I've been looking around the web a lot for R3 battery life stats, and while I've found a decent amount of info, there's been zero consistency among the battery stats that I've seen. Currently I'm waiting for mine to arrive, but I'm annoyed as even though I ordered it 4 days after release, my ESD is 5/13 and many people already have theirs. Anyways, Notebookcheck says that it gets 7.5 hours of regular usage, but in other places I've seen as low as 4 hours of regular usage. I trust NBC the most, but all of these low results are sorta scaring me. Could you guys who already have your M11x's post some regular usage and/or gaming battery stats? I know some have been posted around here but I'm hoping to pool everyone's answers into one place. Thanks!

 

7 or so hours browsing the web w/ mid level brightness is about right for me.

 

@xtravbx Hmm...sounds pretty good. What do you think that would be at min brightness (which I usually use for browsing)? Maybe 8.5-9 hours?

 

On a full charge Battery Bar shows 4.5 hours of battery life on my R3

 

And here comes the inconsistency haha!

@mario64, did you have the discrete graphics on? Could you perhaps run the battery down to get an accurate estimate please? I'm on the fence for getting this beautiful machine, haha! By the way, does anyone know if opting for the i5 processor over the i7 will contribute to battery life at all? They're both dual-core and 17w, so it seems as though there wouldn't be too much of a difference...

 

The only laptop was the R1 that had that kind of battery life.. My R2 and R3 are about 4-5 hours.. My wifes R1 gets about 6.5 or so.. Hope that helps

 

Optimus only engages the nvidia card when gaming so yes the intel card was enabled

 

Same here. 4.5 hours on i7 R3 and just over 6 on my R1

 

Yes you already said it...

 

Interesting... Then m14x and m11x battery life are essentially equivalent? How odd. Although it makes perfect sense haha. Surprising, I should say. XDD

 

My m11x r3 gives me around 7-7.5 hours of browsing on wifi and powersaver mode.

 

Seems like everyone's still getting different numbers...from what I've read, you guys have reports of anywhere between 4.5 and 7.5 hours. Does anyone have an idea of why this is happening? Wondering if I should opt for the M14x as one of my main reasons for getting the M11x was the superior battery life (and weight, but that wasn't as important).

 

One thing to keep in mind is that my power profile is set to balanced not powersaver. That perhaps could explain some of the discrepancy with organisedrhyme's results. Plus, I'm just going by BatteryBar's estimate which is generally accurate but I've never tested to confirm if I'm getting more or less.

 

Take the Alienware reported battery life and subtract it by 2 hours, that should be the real times.

E.g.
For R1 it was reported 8.5 by AW ... people were getting 6.5
For R2 it was reported 6.5 by AW ... people were getting 4.5

 

those times are prob with screen off and complete idle

still getting over 7hrs on my R1 my bro gets about 5 on his R2

if the R3 could get about 7 it really would be the best of both worlds.

 

7 hours of regular usage would be really great. Has anyone with an R3 seen how much battery life it gets when gaming?

 

If you are going to test the real battery usage, make sure you charge the m11x until it is 100%, shut it down unplug the power and run it on battery and start the computer up and use it normally with wifi on 50-70% brightness and just web browsing and office editing.


Now use it until it hibernates, but around 10% battery warning level, check your "Task Manager" go to performance tab and check the "Up Time" which will give you the real time battery usage.

Now do the same technique on testing the battery life with playing hd video/mp3/gaming or whatever scenario you like to do.

Trying to get battery life info on checking the default battery icon or some kind of 3rd party application is silly because it isn't accurate and the estimates always change.

 

this is how i get my numbers too.

 

I got about 7 hours yesterday from full charge to hibernate. Played some mass effect and portal. Watched videos off netflix. Typed up some notes using OneNote and sent e-mails using outlook. Brightness was set to 5 bars. Wi-fi was on the whole time. This thing has more than enough battery life for me.

 

Wow awesome!

 

@d2daanny That sounds really good...based on what you said, I should be able to make it through any day provided I start with a full charge.

 

@d2daanny, What is your setting at? does yours have an SSD? Because I really wanna know how your getting that much battery, while doing all that?

 

@instantcold I thought SSD's only slightly increased battery, as in by about 10%. Even if he is using one, that's only a 40 minute difference or so. Although maybe I'm wrong about SSD power usage...?

 

I'm getting around 6-7 hours of battery life as well, With Wifi on, browsing the web, downloading updates and installing games with steam.

 

That is freaking awesome! ... the best I've heard of so far, especially since it includes some gaming!

I'll be hoping for something similar. I'm also curious about your systems specs. Could people posting battery life give a quick indication of their setup & power scheme.

eg. i5, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, Screen at 50%, max battery life profile etc
(Someone who understands the critical components add suggestions here!)

I'm wondering if maybe there are some significant enough differences between components that usually don't do much. If things like CPU and SSD etc total a 10% increase, that ends up being an extra (hour <-wrong ) 36 mins on top of a 6 hour life.

 

So there you have it folks. It has similar or even better battery life than r1. R2 is no doubt have the worst battery life of them 3.

 

This.
10char

 

What are your specs? Thanks

 

I'd just like to say I'm a bit embarrassed about my math ...

10% of 6 hrs = 0.10 x 360 mins = 36 mins

But still, the general idea is still true - with such long battery life, slight % increases give greater extra life

... and gamers love extra lives

 

@Iceman82 No hard feelings, none of us are mathematicians here.

 

The reason you see such variances is because no two people use their notebook exactly the same.

Watching YouTube will consume more battery than surfing non-flash sites. Typing in notepad will use less battery than typing on a blog.


Then on top of that, everyone has different software installed....that will consume extra CPU cycles thus using more battery.



There is no good way to benchmark battery. (Unless you take two machines, format them clean & install the exact same software, and let them idle from 100% to shutdown) Beyond that, people like to exaggerate battery life claims for some reason. Even beyond that, some folks simply look at the "life remaining" in the taskbar & use that number.....which most of the time will be inaccurate as it's constantly updated depending on the current pull on the battery.



Yes, it sucks, but that's life. So, stop worrying about numbers and rest easy that any model M11X (R1, R2, or R3) will give you awesome battery life and are almost an "all-day" machine with light use.


As a general rule, the more power your components pull, the faster the battery will drain. Assuming that all three M11X models have the same rated mAh battery...so, just going on that the R1 will have the best battery life, followed by the R2, then the R3. Exactly how much better and worse will depend entirely on your individual usage.

 

@Arak-Nafein Everything that you're saying makes sense, but I thought that the R1 and R3 had equivalent battery lives, with the R2 being the worst. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it's the battery efficiency of Sandy Bridge.

 

It only makes sense if the battery sized are relative to the size of the chassis. Most manufacturers tend to maintain similar capacity across the board to reduce manufacturing cost and research. Hence why you see a negative correlation between size and battery life. On similar capacity batteries, the increase in display will yield a decrease in battery life. =/

 

Well, I'd like to see this done with

a base model i5
vs
i5 w/ 8GB RAM & 750GB HDD i.e. same specs as i7 model but with i5 cpu
vs
i7 w/ 8GB RAM & 750GB (& it's 2GB VRAM)

Or like the reviews often do with looping a video til the battery dies.

I am confident in this. I'm just a numbers man and I want to compare them!

So far, the R3 is much better than the R2 from what I can tell ... Well, some are the same, but overall the average is better, the best is much better.
R1 ~ R3 > R2

 

@Iceman82 Seconded. I'm just impatient and want to see some numbers.

 

From what ive read im getting the general idea that the R3 tends to have great power saving, putting it next to the R1s batt life when lightly used. but when a nice size load is put on the R3 it seems to act more like the R2 in power consumption.

This, if true would be pretty awesome. you cant ask for much more. power when you need it or marathon battery life if you need that instead.

 

It sounds like the perfect machine! You're so right, I think Sandy Bridge with Optimus has come and (almost) perfected the intended design of the m11x.