Alienware 17 poor battery life?

I am barely getting about 3 hours and 30 minutes on battery life just typing up notes in class with some internet surfing. Is this typical? I find this rather ridiculous as my M18x can get on average 6 hours, if not 6 hours and 30 minutes of battery life doing the same thing. I thought haswell was supposed to be more efficient.

 

Battery life is not a strong suit for an Alienware 17. It's built for gaming above all else. Your Alienware 17's battery life is as good as you can get in such laptops.

 

That sounds about what I get. It is a pretty good rule of thumb to not expect decent battery life out of a gaming notebook. There are things you can do with your 'battery' profile in settings to improve your battery life, it is a step I myself have not taken so I am not sure how much more time you can buy yourself with that.

I had an M11x for quite a while, and I was able to get that thing to go for a very long time on battery by just turning off the case lights and reducing screen brightness. Play around with it a bit, I think you could get more time out of the battery if you play with settings.

 

Same here. My Aw17 made 3 hours with surfing, and less than 1 hour with gaming. I'm satistifed, i know is a gaming Pc not a tablet

 

Sounds about right for any gaming laptop.

Not sure what the problem is.

 

The problem is that my larger M18x, with a less efficient processor and more pixels to fill (1920x1080 vs 1600x900) is able to get about DOUBLE the battery life of the Alienware 17. Does that add up correctly for anybody else? Even my M17x R4 used to get 5 hours battery life, sometimes even 5:30

 

The batteries are built to be resilient to the pass of time. I've had mine for a year already and it hasn't given me any issues.

 

The Alienware 17 has a 1920x1080 screen as well, not a 1600x900.

Or are you talking about an older model?

And what size battery were those other models using? The Alienware 17 has a 92whr battery.

 

I dare to disagree. My W230ss with i7 4710mq and gtx860m gets 4-5h of battery life in Power Saver and brightness on the lower.
AW14 on the other hand didn't even last 3 hours with the same usage pattern. Alienware is known for a poor system power usage optimization.

 

If you look at reviews on most modern laptops, they typically all get around 3-4 hours on battery.

Some do better (such as your Clevo). But in average, it seems 3-4 hours is the norm these days. Alienware is typically on the lower end of battery life, but usually only by about 30 min or so from the average.

Your example is what we would call anecdotal evidence. There are always outliers.

That being said, it does appear Alienware isn't the best at optimization. For example the Clevo P650SE comes with a 60wh battery, vs the 92wh battery in the AW17. Yet I believe they get similar battery run times.

 

So this is normal behavior for the Alienware 17 then? I might as well sell it buy a M17x R4 or M18x R2 lol, I can't believe I get better battery life on OLDER models!!!!!!!!

 

With AlienFX off, brightness on lowest, and power saver scheme, MAX I get is 3 hours 45 mintues. The M18x gets close to 7 hours and the M17x R4 gets close to 6. Anybody want to trade rigs?

 

What size battery do those systems have?

 

Haswell is a power-hog. 3-4 hours is actually impressive for this size system, considering.

It's normal. No worries. If you reboot and use the iGPU (turning off the dGPU) you can get about 5 hours out of the system on "Power Saver" while in class - been there, done that.

 

Well the older M18x R2 getting more juice out of it with Xfire setup than the 17 with a 1600 panel, damn this is shocking.

 

The R2 has a battery that is 50% larger, and Ivy Bridge is much more "tame."

It was a great machine. I miss mine sometimes.

 

I wish I had that beast...It looks way better than the P570WMx & this battery backup is top notch.

 

Then go to ebay and buy it. Isn't P570 more expensive than it?

 

That seems a little impressive...my R4 wouldn't even come close to that even running dedicated iGPU and power save on low brightness. I think the most I ever saw was about 4.5

I would be surprised if this had any noticeable affect on battery life but it is possible although not anywhere near enough to explain the difference your talking about.

As others have pointed out these new CPU's despite claiming to use less power are power hogs and that is going to eat your battery life.

Honestly if you want good battery life , Alienware isn't really the brand you want. Not trying to put the brand down obviously as I have a 17 and love it but it is just simple fact that battery life is not a high point or selling feature they are known for.

Maybe you have a bad battery? What does the bios say the battery health is at? I am down about 7% health to 93% and I have the 120hz model so no iGPU option for me and I still get 3 hours on power save with low brightness.

 

He's in India so buying off ebay isn't that easy.. Importing stuff is also really expensive...

 

Im in Poland. Importing stuff is probably even more expensive here

 

Highly doubt that.. India has 107% customs duty lol..

 

Aren't laptops free from this duty?

 

****, my AW14 got about 4 hours, what you're getting isn't bad!

 

No everything imported has the damm duty.. Except for food/toiletries, basic stuff you know..