Poor battery life?

I'm hoping to get a new laptop in the near future and hands down Asus seems to be the best bang for buck laptops (going to school - but also a gamer - I'm going to be on a budget). For their prices (~1200 CDN) I have not seen Core 2 Duos (T7200+) and 8600 G/GT (though most come with only 1gb ram I can upgrade easily) on any other manufacturer.

However it seems that battery life is... serverly lacking, especially in the one review on this site of the F3Sv-A1 (1 hour!?). I've read many threads and it seems to be common. I'm wondering if anyone can comment on this?

Lately I've been looking at the F8 series (14" and 8600 GT) and although better, it is still rather lacking (according to the review on this forum).

So I'm just looking for comments on suggestions... trying to be an informed consumer so if anyone also has suggestions of other models/makes, or anything I would appreciate it

 

I dont think you can have everything, either powerful GPU or Longer Battery. You have to sacrifice one or the other. Unless you want to wear a military backpack to carry your laptop to school with a huge battery pack. I suggest you look into integrated graphic card

 

ghettocowboy is right, but it is true that ASUS has a serious problem to solve regarding batteries. Their battery life is horrible because their laptops typically use up 20+ watts when idle, even on power saving modes (compare this to ~7W on my Fujitsu S6210). Also, on some laptops the battery controller chip is screwed and the battery will only last ~20 charges, which is laughable (ASUS R1f or V1s for example, search for "V1s battery wear" on the forums).

I would NEVER buy a ASUS laptop without trying it out first, so I can check for myself the battery life and battery wear issues (in fact, I will probably stick with Fujitsu -- my 5-yr old S6210 can still pump 2 hours off its main battery, 3 hours with the modular battery added).

 

I have a 14'' W3J with ATI 256mb X1600 GPU and 2,33ghz T7600 CPU, I can still sqeeze 3 hrs out of the battery with powersaving mode and its over a year old

 

im going to guess that the f3sv reviewer had a faulty battery because most other people with the f3sv are getting 2-2.5 hours out of their battery

 

Fittersman thanks for that reply... it makes me a lot more comfortable buying Asus.

Do you guys think I can get through a 3 hour seminar with the F8? What about the F3Sv (although I doubt this 15" will)

 

not sure about the F8 but unless you have a backup battery or a 9cell you wont be able to get 3 hours out of the f3sv

 

Do you know what your classrooms are like? At my undergrad University they were big on people having laptops thus every classroom was equipped with a powerpoint and an ethernet jack at every seat. I'd imagine most Universities are starting to go this route as basically every Uni student has a laptop.

 

I don't think so... well, not comfortably, anyway. You'd probably have to run the screen on the absolute lowest brightness, turn off wireless/BT, and have the CPU run at the lowest speed (or undervolted).
Most university classrooms should have outlets though... so you should be able to plug it in, should you feel the need to.

This is a little off topic, but my old Asus M6Ne (15") is 3+ years old... and it can still get ~4 hours of battery life on the main battery. The whole "Asus notebooks with poor battery life" is definitely more of a recent development... within the last year or year and a half or so. I really hope Asus gets their act together and fixes this...

 

Even with power management, I doubt you will be able to get through a 3 hour seminar.

To be safe, if you really need 3 hours of battery power, buy a laptop with a modular bay (that's a socket on the side of some laptops where you can but an extra battery, the optical drive or an extra hard drive) and buy a second battery to put there. Almost any laptop will last 3 hours that way. But if it is an ASUS, I would definitely test it before I paid for it (because of possible battery wear issues).

 

+1, I had my M6N until October and it ran like a champ to the day it was stolen

 

Herkaputt is correct, the issue with Asus notebooks is that they drain on average ~25 watts idle with dedicated graphics.
All of the Asus Santa Rosa laptops generally get 2-2.5 hours with dedicated graphics, and most of their laptops have dedicated graphics.
I personally believe it is due to thermal issues causing the fan and the cooling system, which drains approximately 3-5 watts on idle.

The Asus Merom and previous laptops did ok in battery life. Getting on average 2.5-3 hours depending on the model, and in some cases more battery life.

The V1S would be the most ideal laptop in terms of a blend of performance and battery life, however the V1S suffers from a battery problem, where the modular bay battery kills the main battery for some reason. If this problem were to be fixed. I imagine you could achieve 4 hours of battery life or close to that.

Other than that, in my opinion one of the best 15.4" gaming and high performance laptop would be the XPS M1530, because it gets good battery life, has good features, games well and cost slightly less.

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Thanks,

MysticGolem