XPS 15 Battery Life

Hi! I am thinking about purchasing this laptop however after watching a review I'm afraid of it's battery life as the guy reviewing it said that the 6 cell battery only lasts 2 hours. Can anyone please confirm if this is true? (If not can anyone tell me the battery life for it while doing these activities : while gaming; using the laptop just for browsing and music ; watching movies)

 

That's almost surely not a good review. A 9 cell battery in the XPS 15 can last 6-7 hours just idling/minor web surfing (not sleeping), especially if you force Flash to run using the Intel integrated graphics and not the discrete card. A 6-cell battery should be about 2/3 the life of the 9-cell.

Now gaming might be closer to 2 hours, because you're using the bulk of the computer's power. But that's still better than you would have had on the previous generation of notebooks.

 

If the review was for an XPS l501x, he is right. The models from last year with the old quad-cores did not have Optimus, and so got crap for battery life if you had a quad on it. Not the case with the 502x, the 6-cell should be in the 4-hour range.

Naturally, if doing more intensive stuff than web browsing/word processing the life goes down. Movies are probably in between in life, depends on if you are using the dvd drive or reading off a HDD image. think c.a. 3 hours on the 6-cell I would guess.

 

Thanks for the replies Now I might actually go ahead and buy it xD

 

They really are solid systems. I love my XPS 17, getting 6ish hours on a 9-cell battery with a FHD screen and a quad-core CPU? That's just nuts! I got real excited back in December/January when I heard Sandy Bridge was imminent and would have the Optimus on quads. My dream machine at the time was a quad-core system with a solid graphics card that could get 4-5 hours on battery (if not gaming) and play all my games solidly. It's even better than that!

 

I know and I really like it The only thing that is slightly holding me back is the fact that I am unable to get the FHD screen (Unavailable where I'm purchasing) and because I'm afraid it will be a little too heavy to carry around everyday

 

No FHD is a killer on the 15 from what I hear the 768p display on that system is junk...but you could always do a screen swap, lots of people doing that in the 501x screen swap thread.

As for weight, I don't have nor have seen the new XPS 15. That said, my XPS 17 with the 9-cell weighs about the same as my old Inspiron 1150 14" laptop that I carried to college near everyday for 5 years. It was heavy for that, sure, but the 15's weight doesn't look bad on paper. In a 15" size you aren't going to save much weight except with an overpriced, wimpy MAC system