OK W3J owners, What is your battery life REALLY

I recently purchased an A8Jm and although it's nice, I can't help feeling like I could have gotten significantly better battery life and otherwise similar/slightly better performance with a W3J.

So what's the story? I want to know mainly what kind of battery life you guys usually get with around 1/4 brightness and WiFi on, with battery saving mode. I've heard everywhere from 2.5 hours to 4 hours on the primary 8-cell battery. I would most likely add the optical drive battery as well, so if anyone has both installed and could give me numbers for that too, I'd be grateful. With the primary 8-cell and the 6-cell optical installed, I've heard anywhere from 4 hours to "over 5 hours."

Basically I'm trying to determine if the W3J with both batts can extend batt life enough for it to be worth the trouble for me to sell my nearly-new A8Jm to someone. Also I've heard the W3J is built nicer/tougher, which I am a fan of as well, so any comments on that are welcome too.

 

well for me not full brightness. maybe 3/4, and everything else enabled i get just over 3 hours (does not include using/burning cd/dvd's), but it doesn include normal usage (word processing, internet usage and a little bit of gaming)

 

Also I would probably never use Bluetooth so if anyone runs a W3J with that disabled most of the time I'm interested in your thoughts as well.

My typical "on battery" usage basically consists of Firefox web surfing with HDD caching disabled, instant messaging, 25% brightness, battery saving mode, max battery graphics mode. The closer anyone's setup is to that, the more helpful your numbers will be in my decision making

Also, does anyone know what the mAh and/or Watt-hour rating on the primary 8-cell battery is? Or the secondary 6-cell for that matter.

 

Full brightness, bluetooth off, wifi on, surfing on the net, and itunes in the background... 3:35 hours at 100% battery level.

 

Is that with only the primary 8-cell, or with both the 8 and 6-cell?

 

just the primary battery pack

 

3:35 seems pretty respectable at full brightness...

 

Indeed it does, but I'd like to hear more than one person report such times (preferably several dozen but I'll take what I can get! )

Not that I don't believe ledzepp, I just want to be sure before I go to the hassle of finding a buyer for my A8Jm.

 

i'd really like to know how he got that time at full brightness..i have one and get 4hrs but with the screen on the 2nd to lowest setting

 

Is that with WiFi on or off?

 

thats with it on and bt off..and browsing web/email

 

Nice.

More more numbers, the more people tell me I can get 3.5 to 4 hours with WiFi and primary battery on a W3J, the closer I come to selling my A8Jm.

It would be awesome if someone using both batteries could confirm 5+ hours with WiFi.

 

Depends on what I'm doing of course. But a little over 3 hours is the most I've gotten doing nothing intensive.

Personally I'd rather have a DVI port, I think you came out better.

 

Umm... I would say with battery saving mode on, bluetooth off, and not doing too much intensive work, 3.5 to 4 hours is very doable. Actually, i've used it for that long and i had those times.

With the optical battery, between 5-6 is probably what you'd get. I'm pretty sure of that

 

Watch out though, the battery life displayed in the battery meter is usually wrong unless you have recently done a full discharge. The battery life displayed also varies signifcantly with the tasks you are doing at the time that you look at the battery meter. In order to obtain a realistic and more accurate measure of battery life you actually have to run down the battery and keep time with a watch or something. I'm not saying the posted battery lives are unrealistic, but they may differ slightly with actual use.

Just a wild estimate for battery life with both the 8-cell main battery and 6-cell optical battery.. If the 8-cell can get 3 hours then that would mean around 22.5 mins per cell so the 6-cell would add another 2 hours 15 mins so you should expect 5+ hours with 2 batteries. However, this is just a wild estimate though, the only way to know for sure is to actually run down your laptop with both batteries.

 

I've ran my battery down to 30 minutes before, and I had it clocked at 3 hours and 10 minutes of use when I finally shut it down. So I guess I can't really tell you that it was 100% correct, but it was in the estimate of about 3.5 hours. Of course this was on battery saving mode, no bluetooth, and changed power gear settings to optimal battery.

 

So can anyone else confirm 3.5-4 hours batt life on their W3J with WiFi on?

 

I'm trying to find a good time to do a test, maybe i'll get up tomorrow and do a test. I really just havn't had the time to spend 3.5 hours

 

Wow that would be really cool of you

If it's not too much to ask, could do some light websurfing when you test so that we're sure the machine isn't just sitting there totally idle?

 

ok, ok, ok, i will wake up a little bit earlier tomorrow to start testing. I will do some websurfing as well. Thats probably what i'll be doing most of the time. Well then i need sleep then.

 

From memory I did this a few months ago, but I get around 3hrs main and just under 2hrs optical. so thats around 5 hrs.

 

on average, i hit about 3 hours before i'm at 25% left (according to the battery meter). This is just with the main battery, i don't have the optical

 

I guess I'm wondering what the people reporting 3.5 to 4 hours are doing differently from the people who are saying only 3 hours.

 

what is the gaming battery life with wifi off?

 

Just guessing here but ambient temperature (in AC vs in heat) might effect how often your fans turn on. How much disk activity your software have might effect the power draw. Maybe even how close you are to the wireless router? Little things like that could potentially add up.

I usually get 3 hours, maybe 20 min more if I'm doing nothing but web surfing. About 2 hours if I'm 3d gaming.

 

well those 3 hours for me are with bluetooth, wifi, and lcd always on. A typical session includes web surfing, viewing pictures, installing/uninstalling software, and running photoshop. i should probably turn off bluetooth (but i keep forgetting to) since i dont have any bluetooth accessories

 

Ah ha, good to know. That's very helpful. I would probably have Bluetooth disabled most of the time unless I was plugged in or using cellular DUN on the road.

 

sabrewulf wat kind of battery life are u getting with ur A8J? I am testing mine rt now simply running the battery down with wifi on, brightness on 2nd lowest and simply surfing the web, word documents.

 

With those settings, I get about 2:45 to 3:00 flat, depending.

 

strange..i coulda swore i remember seeing that the a8jm gets similar battery life..anywhere from 3:15-3:45

 

I'll do a test tonight and report back.

 

Semi-OT: I actually saw someone post on NBF that for his A8Jm he got 3 hrs 40 mins with optical mouse, no wifi... I asked him to confirm that it's not 2 hrs 40 mins.. and he insisted it was 3 hrs 40 mins... I've never managed to get even 3 hrs 15 mins ...

 

Im testing rt now. At 9:52PM its gonna be 3hrs even. Right now at 9:28PM windows says 32min left.

So that is about 3hrs 10 min

So i should guess with wifi off i would easily be able to get 3hrs 25 - 30 min

 

I haven't actually tested with WiFi off b/c there's almost no point in using a notebook without WiFi (at least for me) but judging by my batt life with WiFi and what Windows tells me when it's off, I'm guessing I could probably get 3:30 with WiFi off and a full charge.

 

yup same, cos im gonna get abt 5 - 10 min over 3hrs with wifi on.

I think thats simply awesome for the A8J. I was looking at the hp dv2000z/t for my gf and that thing craps out after 2hrs 30 min as per HP customer support.

Thats with integrated video...goooooo asus!!!!

 

yeah, if you didn't see the test i did with the W3J this morning, I got about 3 hours and 40 minutes with Wifi on.

 

Yea that makes sense cos the w3j comes with a 8cell battery

17 min of battery left as per windows @ 9:45PM

 

but aren't they both rated at 4800mah?

 

i thot more the number of cells more the battery i maybe wrong

 

Maybe my 5400.3 Seagate HD is a factor, since this is supposed to be more similar to the power consumption of a 4200rpm.

 

Aye. The amount of RAM you have installed also plays a factor, I believe. More RAM = higher power consumption.

Also, try enabling hard disk spin down. Different hard drives can consume different amounts of power as well. Not just different speed drives, but different brands and models will consume different amounts of power.

I don't use Wifi on battery that often. I normally use my laptops for coding or completing homework assignments(Word docs). I also take my lappy on the road and other places where there isn't even wifi access.

I would sugest that rather than selling you A8J, just buy a spare battery. I'm sure that would be cheaper than selling the A8J and buying a W3J. A second battery shouldn't cost too much... and you'll double your battery life.

Speakers can also drain battery life... make sure they are muted if you are not using them. Microphones will also do the same.

 

Yeah.. kinda agree with JPZ here... it's probably cheaper and easier to get a second battery than sacrifice a few hundred dollars and try sell your A8Jm ... the only difference is you'll have to turn off your notebook, put new battery in and turn back on... a few minutes of downtime compared to a few seconds in the W3J

 

Well but maybe he likes the w3j more and went with the a8j just to save money, but now since the w3j has better battery and has the "oooh aaaaah" factor he wants to go for that.

However, i've gotten quite a few "oooohs" and "aaaahs" abt the a8j, cos ppl think it looks so sleek and minimalist. haha its a understated beast

 

Different voltages, the A8 battery is 11.1V whereas the W3J is 14.8V.

 

its the fact that you have it at full brightness and still get 3:35 that amazes me

 

Maybe he got 3:35 at full brightness using the optical bay battery in addition to the standard one?

 

Don't get me wrong, I like the A8Jm. But the battery on it is a pain to remove, so it's not exactly travel-swap-friendly. Also, with the W3J, I wouldn't need to swap at all, meaning no hibernating to switch batteries. I just put both in at the same time and let 'em run. Finally, it would be a bit cumbersome having to charge two batteries for the A8Jm separately vs the W3J where I would probably just install both batteries and rarely if ever remove either (I almost never use optical drive except to make a virtual-loadable image of anything I might need the first time I use it)

If I can't find a buyer for the A8Jm, then I'll just keep it. It's not the end of the world. But if I can, I'd much prefer the W3J at this point If I had only done a little more research on this great forum before buying, I would have known that to begin with

By the way if anyone wants to buy a like new A8Jm for $100-$125 less than retail, check out my for sale thread - http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=70345

 

Before you sell your A8Jm, I remember seeing that there was an Issue, I think with the W3J, where the notebook wouldn't switch over the the optical battery. The laptop would just die instead of draining power from the optical battery. You should make sure that this has been corrected before losing any more money on your A8J purchase. As you said yourself, "If I had only done a little more reasearch on this great forum before buying". I learned the hard way too, with my purchase of the Uniwill in my sig.

 

hmm...still wondering

 

Maybe his definition of "battery life" is different. I know people who will leave their computer on for 30 minutes, let it hibernate for an hour, come back and use it for an hour, put it in standby for 20 minutes, use it for another 40 minutes, and then say they got 3:30 out of the battery, when they were actually only using it for 1:10.