BatteryBar reporting different battery wear and capacity figures

On my m11x R2 the capacity reported for battery wear is different than the design capacity figure, according to BatteryBar:



Is this normal?

 

That's common. Just means your battery has more capacity currently than it's rated for. That's good.

 

I found BatteryBar started getting overly optimistic about battery life after using it for a couple of days.



49817 mWh / 17582 mW = 2.833 hours = 2:50 (H:M)

Definitely not 19:51 (H:M)

 

I've found battery bar to be most accurate after a full discharge. Unfortunately you don't want to have to do that if you don't normally do a full discharge.

That discharge rate never made sense to me either. On my netbook it always calculated to about 4 hours, but can easily exceed five hours, and the battery timer in BatteryBar shows accurate to the actual battery life.

But wow, you must be carrying a car battery around with you? lol.

 

Alright thanks guys.

Also the 8+ hour figure was me attempting to drain the laptop to 14% with the lid shut off. Not the most accurate figure but hey. That 19 hour figure is ridiculous though

 

LOL that's pretty funny.

It doesn't calculate time left based on current discharge rate, though, like Windows does. It constantly logs your discharge rate and bases its estimation on the full history.

In your case, I'd bet you let it sit long enough that the screen turned off, which drops the discharge rate greatly, and since you haven't used BB very long, the time with the screen off is significant in BB's log.

BB's estimation is (only) good if you use the laptop on battery in the same way all the time. If one day you game and the next day you're just using Word, it's going to estimate the middle of those two, which is not going to be accurate at any time. OTOH, if you always both game and use Word on the same battery charge, BB will estimate the full lifespan accurately, while Windows will fluctuate wildly based on which one you are doing at the time.