Laptop with good battery life

G

ggplay

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 5, 2011
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Are there any laptops that have batteries with 100+WattHours and aren't ridiculously expensive?
 
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I don't know what a KwHour is with respect to a laptop, but the new Macbook Airs are ridiculously power efficient. I think ZDNet measured the 13" at 15 hours of battery life. As more Haswell laptops hit the market, this will become increasingly common, so you might want to wait a couple of months. Apple usually gets first dibs on new Intel chips and then other manufacturers get them in late summer / early fall.
 
Yeah, it might be better to say how many hours of battery life you'd like to get out of it, because some laptops are much more power efficient than others. Unless battery capacity is more important for some reason.
 
As mentioned, the new MacBook Air 13" supposedly gets 12 hours of use out of a single charge which is pretty insane. I wish Windows laptops could get close to that, I know with my Lenovo X1 Carbon I am lucky to get 3 hours before I have to plug it back in (granted I always disable all power saving features for the sake of performance).
 
As people have hinted: grab the 13-inch MacBook Air model that has the storage you need, and be happy. Most testing suggests that Apple is genuinely accurate with the 12-hour claim, and even lowballing it a bit. If you haven't used a Mac before, buy yours at an Apple Store and ask about Personal Setup (it's free, as I recall). Lots of existing users can also help you out.
 
the macbook air gets great battery life because of its dual core 1.3 ghz processor (albeit probably with HT). 50WattHours is more than enough for this processor.

Personally, I'd prefer a quad, and 15" (or 15.6" which seems to be a common size) 1080p, which is why I'd prefer 100WattHours+. Integrated GPU is preferred because of low power usage.
 
ggplay said:
the macbook air gets great battery life because of its dual core 1.3 ghz processor (albeit probably with HT). 50WattHours is more than enough for this processor.

Personally, I'd prefer a quad, and 15" (or 15.6" which seems to be a common size) 1080p, which is why I'd prefer 100WattHours+. Integrated GPU is preferred because of low power usage.
Click to expand...

This might be tricky, although I'd see what the eventual Haswell-based MacBook Pro with Retina Display is like. That screen is power-hungry, but there's also a big battery to offset things. I'm (very unofficially) expecting Apple to shoot for 9-10 hours on a 15-inch model. If it manages more, I'll be delightfully surprised.

Keep in mind that most smarter laptop designers have graphics switching, so a 15-inch MBP wouldn't lean on dedicated graphics while on battery power unless it's necessary.
 
Haswell (Crystalwell, Broadwell and thereafter) will, undoubtedly change the landscape of mobile computing with regards to the dichotomy of power-performance/battery life, but as of yet the options are slim.

You may find larger, performance minded laptops (such as Maingear Nomad 17) with 7500 mAH+, but very few performance oriented laptops with 100 WHr, most likely due to the weight. The HP Elitebook 8460p may be one exception, by delivering 32.5 hours of battery life with an upgradeable 9-cell100 WHr battery pack, LED panel, 160GB SSD and fully optimized system.

Again, as others have said, and as mentioned above, the type of processor, architecture and intended usage will ultimately be the biggest factor in battery-life/WHr ratings.

If you want better hardware choices, though, and still need too get the 100WHr battery life, have you considered an external battery pack? Many can be found from 10,000 mAH - 20,000 mAH for less than $100. Intel does have a stable of high performing low-TDP chips that have just been announced and there is very little hardware using it, so if the brick is too cumbersome ( I know how you feel!) I would just hold out for a little while longer.
 
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