CurseTheSky
Diamond Member
- Oct 21, 2006
- 5,401
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Has anyone tested the extra battery actually gives a total of 8hrs though? In the notebookcheck.com battery test this HP gets 1hr battery life when stressed. The alienware gets 3.....
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-HP-Envy-14-Beats-Edition-Notebook.43071.0.html
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Alienware-M11x-Subnotebook.26453.0.html
And I bet there is a significant difference in terms of battery life between all the different CUP options. the i5 gets 1hr when stressed, imagine the i7....
While I generally love Notebook Check's reviews, something is definitely wrong with that full load battery life test.
Battery life was one of my top concerns for the Envy 14 when I bought it, since HP's original BS estimate was something like 7+ hours on the internal battery, 14 hours with the slice battery as well. After numerous tests by people on the notebookreview.com forums, the real numbers are more like 4-4.5 hours with the internal battery during light load (web surfing, reduced brightness), and 2-2.5 hours during heavy load.
Here's the key though: if you want better battery life, do a fresh reformat when you get the laptop. HP installs a decent amount of junk on it by default, and the number of background processes running keeps the CPU at a constant 1-3% load, which sips away at your battery power. After a reformat and install of just the drivers / programs I wanted, I was sitting at 0% CPU usage during idle, and my battery life increased by about 30 minutes. Furthermore, this notebook has switchable graphics. When you're on battery, switch to the Intel graphics (you can set the switching program to prompt you when the AC adapter is plugged in or removed). The ATi graphic chip isn't too bad at sucking down the power, but it certainly isn't as good as the Intel portion on that side of things.