Asus and battery life?

I've been reading a lot about how Asus has poor battery life pretty much uniformly across there range of computers and I was wondering if anyone here could help to enlighten me as to why? I assume the components they use are pretty much the same as other notebook manufacturers, so these should draw the same power. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that their designs are not as thermal conscious, so excess heat build-up could cause the fan to run much more often than in comparable notebooks from other manufacturers?

Anyone have a better idea on what might cause this and how it might be fixed? Just wondering if there might be a silver bullet part that could be replaced to give much better battery life, or if it is a general design of the laptop fault?

 

Heat might have something to do with it.

But mostly I think it's bad/rushed power management. Things like badly coded drivers that don't step down the clock on the GPU when 3D is not used.

 

I can't give a better answer than E.B.E., but I can say that I highly doubt that there are parts you can just replace to get better battery life. I do wonder though what kind of battery life people expect. With my W3j standard battery I get 3-3.5, add the second battery (optical bay) and its 5-5.5 hours. My V6j got 4 hours before the wear issues kicked in. Whats wrong with those numbers, they seem just fine to me.

 

those were the days when asus was decent about battery life. now, the w7s barely hits 3 hours and even the f9 "ultraportable" barely gets 2.

 

i do not think you can call F9 as ultra portable..how do you really classify a ultra portable, to be between 11 to 12 inch and with a ULV processor can be classified as ultra portable.

any thoughts! rememebr F9s comes with T7500!!

 

Yes, Caleb, ASUS start-of-2006 notebooks and earlier all have decent battery life. Things have been going downhill since then.

I don't believe that a 50% or more difference in battery life between ASUS and competition can be explained merely by a running fan.

 

Thanks for suggesting a power management/drivers issue, that was something I hadn't really thought of.

I figured that the battery life issues that Asus seems to have are not the type that could just be fixed by throwing in a Penryn chip or an LED screen, but wanted to get some input from others in the community who know more than I do about these things. Personally, in a laptop I'm looking to get at a minimum 3.5 - 4 hours under light use when the battery is new. The reviews I've read for even the smaller Asus and Asus based laptops seem to have trouble getting much past 2. Which is a shame because I really like pretty much everything else about the laptop.

 

forgive me for butting in, but can some one explain to me this, when I recived my f3ka (12/27/07) the battery reading was 100% , but now reads 95% ?? also is it possible to run the laptop with out the battery when pluged in to the wall, without damaging the laptop? see I also have an old hp ze2000 model, that I run with out the battery and it works fine w/o it, thank u

 

Every laptop I've had (and I've had quite a few going back until 1989 or so) has worked plugged into the wall without the battery and has not done any harm to it. The only problem with this is that if you have a power outage or the power cable comes out the computer will shut down immediately without doing a proper shutdown.

 

i manually adjust the power settings for my laptop. I undervolt my cpu which brings down the powerusage a lot.

 

Not that I have any real knowledge about it, but I too have done a lot of reading.

In addition to what has been said, it probably has to do with the performance of the parts being used. For example, the F8SV has a t7500/t7700 and an 8600GT, which is significantly more powerful than the majority of 14" laptops out there.

Also, the F3SV has a similar setup with a 8600GS. Based on online stores, it seems most major (hp/sony/dell etc.) manufacturers will only use a less powerful 8400 in a 15" laptop. (feel free to correct me on this one as im not too sure, havent been looking at many 15" laptops)

And the F series is supposedly the "budget" series, so considering the bang for buck of all the F series notebooks, you've gotta expect some shortcuts somewhere. I'm thankful its something relatively minor. You can always buy an extra battery.

 

the problem is, you see notebooks with similarly powerful gpus that get considerably more battery life. for example, the dell xps 1330 has much better battery life than say the f9, even though it has a larger screen. also, the macbook pro has the 8600gt but gets better battery life than the asus g1s. i'm wondering what the whr are for asus batteries.

 

The G1s looks like it gets crappy battery life, and so it does! ... I can barely get 2 hours out of it with Vista Battery Saver and all. But, I don't mind since I can outgame any Macbook Pro easily since my GPU isn't as scaled back.

 

well....it's not so much of an issue for me since most developed countries don't lack power plugs here and there.... extra baggage to carry power cord around, but the places I go to usually have plugs (university... starbux... home... work... etc)

a short 2 hours of battery life in exchange for a competitively priced power machine is acceptable in my opinion.

 

That's why I dont get Asus. It seems like they dont want to improve their battery life or at least head in that direction. I've been waiting on a G1S to have LED backlight and hybrid gpu solution like X3100/8800GTS. It seems like Sony is the only one doing this concept, where in fact it should be the standard. I mean what's not to like? A dual purpose portable/gaming notebook at a flip of a switch with superb backlighting and power saving. Is it really too much to ask?

 

im no expert but i've read its due to battery wear, there's a thread on it somewhere on this site...

 

I have been to newegg looking at the Sony's and I noticed they had both the X3100 and some other dedicated maybe 8400 or 8600, is that to conserve power, whats it really for?

 

Yes, they have a switch that allows you to change between the integrated and dedicated gpu. This allows you the best of both worlds, an integrated gpu for when you want to conserve battery and a dedicated when you need more graphics power.

 

would it not be simpler to have it downclock like the c2d do?

 

Yes, it's so you can run either with integrated graphic to save power or switch to your main gpu when you need to game. The problem with Sony is that they gimp the main gpu, if it was a 8800GTS/GTX then it would be awesome. Along with 45nm and LED backlighting is quite decent to improve battery life. I was hoping Asus would catch on but after hearing about their latest releases, yet still nothing.

 

Indeed ASUS notebooks are relatively powerful, but as someone else noticed you can always find something similarly powerful from a competitor that has better battery life.

About the battery wear issues: they only affect a handful of models (V6J, R1F/R1E, V1J/V1S). For the rest, the battery is working as intended.

About the Watts-Hour question: ASUS batteries have the same energy density as the competition (similar Whr). The thing that causes them to discharge quickly is the higher power drain (Watts). Recent ASUS notebooks rarely go below 25 Watts on the strictest power saving profiles (where you can still read the screen, though).

I still think the main explanation is a careless attitude from ASUS towards the power-saving features of the hardware that they use.

 

I think part of the careless attitude can be attributed to the recent notebook ideal Asus has. They are after making notebooks for a North American market, and that generally means trying to make a cheaper computer. Prior to being popular in NA, they were fine.

 

Yup that's exactly right E.B.E. Asus laptops after the Merom processor all have bad battery life compared to its competitors with similar specifications. Mostly due to bad power management. I personally believe it is all about the cooling system.

Most Asus laptops run hot/warm and therefore the fan has to run a lot harder, consuming up 3-5 watts per hour. It seems that there is very little passive heat dissipation.

For example the MacbookPro has always been a good comparison to the V1S and even the G1S, and the MBP has passive cooling, and gets more battery life with a smaller battery (60watt) 3-4 hours, whereas the G1S and V1S have a 77 watt hour battery and can only get 3 hours max, mostly 2 hours and 30 minutes.

Unfortunately a few of Asus laptops are plagued with battery issues, and thus their battery usage is rendered useless or at least over time. Like many of us have figured out, Asus will simply not fix the issue.

Or at least, won't give the fix, and then fix it for the newer model, leaving the rest of us with these problems forever.

North America is Asus smallest market, sure it got a lot bigger because of the EEE, but before that came out, NA is just a small market for their notebooks.

And yes, I do agree that they seem to rush their products to production without proper testing, I mean come on, the R1F had evident signs of the silo scratching the pen, didn't they see it? Same with the headphone noise, didn't they even use the tablet and hear it? What about the screen rotate abilities, didn't they see all the other tablet competitors had proper rotate functions?

Sure the battery wear issues are not evident when producing the notebook, but there are so many other factors where Asus just overlooks.

I think we all know Asus has the ability to create the most perfect laptop for each screen size, but they just keep missing that mark. Not gonna lie but the XPS m1330 and m1530 are two of the best laptops I have seen hit the notebook industry.

The Sony SZ also is amazing but expensive. HP laptops, can't go wrong with them for basic users. Also even Alienware is becoming more competitive with their new Mx15 (or something). BTW this laptop has dual graphics.

There is a review on one of the Asus laptops with dual graphics, U3 or U1? don't remember and switching to the integrated graphics resulted in a 45 minute increase in battery life, not bad, but not good enough.

Overall Asus notebooks currently have the looks, the performance, decent price, good service for NA, but they lack in power management (battery life), and solving inherit problems with there notebooks.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

I found on my Z96J that the internal bluetooth never powers off, even when disabled. The bluetooth is connected via an internal usb hub. Disabling that hub results in between 4 and 5 watts power saving. Under extreme power saving conditions, my Z96J consumes less than 15W. I'm close to getting it under 14W.

Cooling has little effect on battery life compared to the rest of the hardware. Most fans run from a 5V power source, and consume a max generally about 500ma. But they are rarely at full speed, especially when power saving features are enabled. My guess is that the average laptop fan consumes one half to one watt while the computer is being used on battery. Even if the fan was at full speed the whole time, there are few if any fans that would consume more than 2.5W.

Also, I'm not sure, but I remember being told that a hot battery discharges faster than a cooler one. I have no idea if this is true. Don't quote me on this, but I think it might have something to do with the increase of internal resistance with heat. But I do know that heat is quite bad for batteries. My guess is that the power saved by a warmer passive cooled laptop is negated by the negative effects of heat on the battery.

The problem is clearly with power saving features, not cooling.

 

Ah, very interesting JPZ.

I have been toying around with disabling USB hubs on my laptop. I do use my 3 USB ports for mouse keyboard and USB Key..but when i disable the USB Root for bluetooth, all my USB ports don't work.

You mind taking some screen shots of ur device manage and which USB hubs u are disabling?

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

Sorry, I forgot to mention that it is specifically the one usb 2.0 hub that draws 4W-5W in my Z96J.

Anyway, I now keep everything which I am not using disabled in the device manager.

I can take some screen shots another time, perhaps. I don't use any usb devices on the go, so I haven't messed around to see if I can save the 5W but still use usb devices.

What difference does it make in regards to your power consumption when you disable the usb hubs? It would be best to note the difference between usb hubs enabled and external devices plugged in and when the hubs are disabled.

 

Everybody rushes their products out without proper testing, ASUS is just more careless about it. When the useful (selling) life of a given notebook model is 6months, there's barely any time to do proper testing... Same goes for most electronics nowadays (notice how many phones have software bugs w.r.t. a few years ago?)

I'm not sure about the fan power draw; it's a mechanical system that has to spin against friction, so there will be some power draw. I don't know if it's 5 watts, more, or less. If it's 5 it can indeed make a serious difference to the battery life (given that other components in a well-designed notebook can draw as little as 12-15W in power-saving modes).

And yes, the Dell XPS1330 and the Sony SZ are on my shortlist for a good notebook. I've seen the SZ in a store and wasn't so impressed with it,but it was the cheaper version.