TEST CHART: Power consumption of various activites on Acer Timeline 1810T!

Just did some tests on my new laptop:
(No, I don't write this software -- but some people are mighty interested in detailed power consumption statistics)

The BatteryBar Pro software has a Watt-Meter...
I decided to play with the power consumption of my new Timeline 1810T 11.6" laptop (Core2 Duo ULV 1.3 Ghz, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD). These are really high performance laptops in a netbook-size form factor.

GENERIC ACTIVITY
...Backlight minimum, WiFi+BT off, Power Saver unless otherwise indicated
4.5 watts - Idle in Power Saver, backlight turned off (Fn+F6)
5.0 watts - Idle in Power Saver
5.5 watts - Idle in High Performance
13 watts - 100% CPU, Power Saver
14 watts - 100% CPU, Max Performance
10.5 watts - Copying 1 gigabyte file between two folders via drag & drop

INTERNET ACTIVITY
...Backlight minimum, WiFi on, Bluetooth off, Power Saver
5.5 watts - Idling on WiFi on a static webpage (Chrome browser, Power Saver)
7.0 watts - Surfing the Internet on Wifi slowly (Chrome browser, bursty scrolling, occasional click, no Flash)
8.0 watts - Downloading a file to disk from static web page
10.0 watts - Webpage containing a continuously-moving Flash animation.
10.5 watts - Using YouTube over WiFi, standard-def, Power Saver
13.5 watts - Using YouTube over WiFi, high-def, Power Saver
15.0 watts - Surfing the Internet on Wifi rapidly (Clicking lots of links very fast, scrolling lots, moving mouse fast)

HD VIDEO FILE PLAYBACK
...1280x720p, 15Mbps, AVCHD H.264, video clip recorded from Panasonic Lumix ZS3
13.5 watts - Picasa, via COREAVC, Battery Saver, 80% CPU
14.0 watts - Picasa, via COREAVC, High Performance, 70% CPU
13.0 watts - Windows Media Player windowed, no OSD overlay (GPU decoding), Battery Saver, 20% CPU
13.5 watts - Windows Media Player fullscreen, no OSD overlay (GPU decoding), Battery Saver, 20% CPU
12.0 watts - PowerDVD, windowed, Battery Saver, Vista Basic (GPU decoding)
12.0 watts - PowerDVD, full screen, Battery Saver, Vista Basic (GPU decoding)

POWER INCREMENTS
...Similiar in both Power Saver and High Performance, unless otherwise indicated. For WiFi, on a 5 bar strength network.
+0.1 to 0.5 watts - Add if bluetooth turned on. Fluctuates. (Same in Power Saver or High Performance)
+0.3 watts - Add if wifi turned on, static web page (Power Saver)
+1.5 watts - Add if wifi turned on, static web page (High Performance)
+3.0 watts - Add if wifi turned on, downloading a file at medium speed from static web page
+5.0 watts - Add if wifi turned on, Adobe Flash
+10.0 watts - Add if wifi turned on and clicking lots of links very fast
+1.5 watts - Add if typing fast on laptop keyboard in Notepad
+2.5 watts - Add if typing fast on Bluetooth wireless keyboard into Notepad
+3.0 watts - Add if windows 7 file indexing disk access during otherwise idle moments
+3.0 watts - Add if Wildly moving mouse pointer arrow hovering over icons on desktop, during idle boredom moments
+1.0 watts - Add if 100% CPU during High Performance instead of 100% CPU during Power Saver (huh!)
+2.0 watts - Add for maximum backlight instead of minimum backlight
+0.2 watts - Difference between backlight steps, there are 10 steps
+3.0 watts - Playing high-def instead of standard-def
+0.2 watts - Fan speed VeryHigh instead of Fan speed stopped
+0.75 watts- Ethernet cable connected (idling) [EDIT - NEW]

CONCLUSION
...Conclusion for Acer Timeline 1810T...
- Power Saver Mode makes lots of sense if using WiFi, saves a lot more WiFi power when idling in Power Saver
- If your WiFi is turned off, High Performance apparently uses extremely little extra power.
- HD video playback uses less power on GPU than CPU (at least for Intel GMA4500 GPU versus Core2 CPU @ 1.196Ghz Power Saver)
- Use PowerDVD, Windows 7 Basic, Aero turned off, Power Saver scheme, for longest HDTV playback.
- If WiFi is turned off, High Performance uses very little extra power on ULV Core2 CPU
- Scroll in fast bursts rather than continuously some people do a continuous slow scroll when reading webpages. This can steal an hour of battery life on the Timeline 1810T!
- For longest Internet power, resist the temptation to constantly move the mouse cursor (out of boredom or fidgeting) or touch scrollbars when reading a page of webpage. You can gain more than one extra hour of battery life because fidgeting can consume 3+ watts on laptop. Scroll in fast bursts instead, or use PgUp/PgDn. It actually saves enough power to add more than an extra hour of battery life according to calculations.
- Feel free to go to backlight level 2 or 3 instead of minimum brightness. The first 3 steps makes almost no difference to battery life! (+0.4 watts when going 2 steps up from minimum which is several times brighter.)
- Aero uses a lot more power if you drag lots of windows around, but makes no difference if you're idling or just typing.
- Definitely avoid keeping webpages with Adobe Flash open. Close all unused browser windows, they eat up power just running in the background.
- These numbers are for a stock Acer Timeline 1810T with Core2 Duo 1.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD.
- The 8 hour battery life is realistic on Acer Timeline under typical WiFi Internet usage on Battery Saver mode (a little gmail, a little newsreading, a little youtube)

WHY DO THESE TESTS?
It's easy. The numbers are measured from he application "BatteryBar Pro" which has a builtin wattage consumption meter, to tell you how much power your laptop is consuming in realtime.
- fuel consumption equivalent - Reading the current laptop consumption (in wattage) is as convenient as reading the MPG (miles per gallon) meter in a modern car. (Though the relationship is inverse: Lower watt numbers are better.)
- fuel tank size equivalent - The size of the 'tank' is the capacity of the battery (same as battery amps-hours times battery voltage). BatteryBar Pro reports this in watt-hours. The default included battery for the Timeline 1810T is 63 watt-hours (about 63,000 milliwatt-hours), which means theoretically it can power a 60-watt lightbulb for a smidgen over 1 hour.
- It allows you to test laptop, to "hypermile" it for the maximum miles per gallon, or at least to be aware what software consumes more power than others.
- Get the laptop to play the longest Blu-Ray quality high-def video, by finding the most efficient video player and encodings.
- And knowing how much adjusting backlight hurts your battery consumption,
- So you can decide how to economize: Whether you prefer to turn off WiFi or to turn down the backlight, when your battery bar is getting low in the coffee shop that has no power outlets...
- Although I tested on a Timline 1810T, and other laptop use various differnet amounts of power (large laptops consuming 20 watts), the power fluctuations is interesting to know, just like knowing that accelerating a car hard uses more fuel than accelerating a car softly.

TESTING METHODOLOGY
- BatteryBar Pro v3.3.2 on Windows 7 Home Premium
- 1 watt = 1000 milliwatts in "Discharge Rate" in BatteryBar Pro
- Test by
...Execute activity
...Wait for battery bar to settle (2 refreshes), then
...Read the next 3 wattage values in "Discharge Rate", then
...Average the 3 values, then
...Round off to the nearest 0.5 watt
- In some cases I had to read the battery bar only after the activity in an unavoidable way (i.e. full screen video). I did this by doing the full screen activity, waiting 15 seconds of consistent activity, then immediately restored/minimized and then read the watt meter before it refreshed to the next value. I repeated this 3 times to get the average.
- For differences that was obviously less than 0.5 watts, they were usually rounded to nearest 0.1 increment (not very accurate, but shows negligibility of specific item...)
- These are estimates, and your system may vary. Different laptops bigger than netbook-size usually consume much more power.

SIDE NOTE
- At another time, I measured my other computers at home, they used 60 watt, 110 watt, and 180 watt respectively, using a typical Kill-A-Watt meter.
- It pretty much illustrates how efficient small laptops and nettop computers are. You need a low-power media server for your house? So that you can turn off your other power-hogging computers? Use a laptop instead of your old Athlon or Pentium 4 system in your closet as the server (sometimes it's not worth it to recycle those old computers when you can recycle your old laptop). Skype server, VoIP server, DVD server, MP3 server, TivoToGo media storage, MythTV storage box, you name the reason you need to leave that certain computer on 24/7. At 10 watts versus 100 watts for an idling computer, you'll save lots of money in electric bills. Most laptops use less than 20 watts including the power brick while idling with its screen turned off. Efficient ones like idle at less than 10 watts including the power brick conversion inefficiency. Power management can be disabled, so the laptop always stays on 24/7 with the lid closed. For a typical 100-150 watt power hog server computer (recycled home computer), saves approximately $150 per year at 15 cents tax-included kilowatt-hours, or $300+ per year electric costs if you're using a powerhog 200 watt computer with an old Radeon HD2900 or Geforce8800GT power hogging video cards. If you're unfortunate to live in an expensive-electricity country, even more per year of electricity costs may be even saved. Retire that home server computer, use your old/spare laptop as the server computer. Turn off your power hog boxes while you leave the laptop on 24/7. In certain cases, save enough electricity costs to buy a laptop every two years!

RECOMMENDATION OF FUTURE FEATURES
I recommend that the author of BatteryBar pro, add colorcoded battery-consumption rates with adjustable levels, such as green for 5 watt, yellow for 8 watts, orange for 12 watts, red for 15 watts. This will allow users to prolong their battery life. If you're reading a static webpage while the battery bar is on orange, you can easily suspect you've accidentally left a webpage window running Flash in the background (and get into a good habit to close that window more quickly). Or if the current webpage has a Flash animation you can turn off. Or if you're fidgeting with the mouse cursor or scrollbar by accident (wasting almost double battery power sometimes!) then BatteryPro will turn yellow or orange, and will help 'cure' your behaviour of things that will cause the laptop to die before the coffee shop closes or your airplane flight ends. This battery "MPG" style feature would benefit other laptop users to realize what activities are causing short battery lives, and to determine which brand of video player will complete playing that 3-hour disc better than others... It may not be that important to many people, but it would sound like an excellent feature for people who want to easily figure out how to add an extra hour or two of battery life without needing to do trial and error.
(Go vote for "Add option to show discharge rate in taskbar" in the BatteryBar maker's poll at BatteryBar forum ...)

ROUGH ESTIMAGES OF BATTERY LIFE
...Divide the 63 watt-hour battery capacity by the number of watts for the activity. If you don't know what a watt is, pretend it's a car gas tank. Watts are like gallons. Watt-hours are like the capacity of a tank.
- 12 hours of idling with screen on minimum, BT+WiFi off
- 10 hours of mostly static usage (reading documents, PgUp/PgDn rather than scrolling)
- 6-8 hours of typical WiFi usage, depending mix of webpages, using Power Saver
- 5+ hours of 720p HD playback
- 4+ hours of 1080p Blu-Ray playback with 2.5 watt USB-bus-powered Blu-Ray drive

 

A lot of good info mdrejhon, it is very surprising that BT use more power idle then WiFi. Origionally I was going to add a BT module to my 1410 SU2300, but since i don't need BT functionality right now, i will hold off on that. Also have you tried to undervolt your cpu yet? I noticed on my 1410, with screen brightness all the way down, computer idle with WiFi off, HDD idle, I can consistently achieve 3.1watt to 3.5watt power state.

My 1410 have the following spec: SU2300, 3GB DDR2-667 ram, 160HDD, Win7 Premium, WiFi, No BT.

By the way are you using Vista or Win7? maybe Vista use more battery on idle then Win7

 

The Bluetooth becomes useful for Bluetooth headsets (Skype whch works over my WiFi and my 3G) and the convenience of a Bluetooth mouse without an external dongle, is very attractive. Also, my estimates of 0.5 are very inaccurate (error margin of +/-0.2-0.3 due to fluctuations).

My CPU is already running at its minimum voltage of 0.875 volts and the slowest it downclocks to is 800 Mhz during idle. I will need to do hardware modifications to make it run at an even lower voltage, which I don't want to bother. However, voltage doe go up when running at max speed - I will see if I can undervolt the full clockrate. Mine is a dual-core Core2, which probably uses more power than your SU2300, which is probably the reason.

Win7 is more efficient, so likely uses less power than Vista.
I am 99% sure that is not it, but more my SU7300 versus your SU2300.

 

Thats very interesting info.

A question... In real world tests would expect the security package that's used to have a major impact... when I look back on how much disc thrashing/processor hogging that occured with some products compared to say MSE (Microsoft security essentials) then that has to figure highly I would imagine.

 

So from

5.5 watts - Idling on WiFi on a static webpage (Chrome browser, Power Saver)
8.0 watts - Downloading a file to disk from static web page

can I assume that wifi module takes 2.5w itself? what's the result when running these tests with LAN on and wifi off?

 

The LAN was on but unconnected. I'll try to do a LAN test in the near future, but it may not be till next week, as I'm away from home.

Yes, I think it was approx 2.5 watt difference between WiFi on-but-idle and WiFi downloading. Lots of fluctuations. This was in Power Saver, but a bigger difference in High Perfomance. Be noted that WiFi is a very bursty activity, where WiFi stops transmitting while you're reading a webpage.

 

More tests of Bluetooth indicates that the power fluctuations is more like 0.1 to 0.5 watt, averaging probably about 1/4th of a watt when Bluetooth is idling. It's very hard to measure small power drains 0.5 watt or less. Small enough that I don't mind leaving Bluetooth on at all times, for convenience, for easy external keyboard/mouse/cellphone tether/headset.

Also, if I turn off the Bluetooth module via the slider switch, the power drain of the Bluetooth is not a factor in the laptop's battery life...

Ethernet power drain, appears to be approximately 0.7 watt when connected to the Internet and idling. Not too much power difference between WiFi idle and Ethernet idle.