PLEASE CONTRIBUTE DATA: Battery Life and Usage

I see lots of information flying around these forums about batteries, battery life, battery use, etc. Lots of it conflicting or plainly not true information. I don't profess to be an expert by any means, but as an avid user I have a general idea. In any case it'd be best to get real world data, and in the end I think it would be helpful and educational for users here at NBR.

Therefore, I recommend using this thread to post information all using a common procedure which I outline below. Since this is a laptop forum I believe we will find a good size and accurate sample of laptops and different usage.

Please try to keep this thread limited to this topic and primarily post results. Please post all other battery related information in the existing battery thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...et-upgrades/91846-notebook-battery-guide.html

For the procedure I suggest using BatteryCare because it's free and has a solid battery calibration procedure at the website. Although I recommend making a donation, even a few bucks, if you like the program and find it useful. (We need to encourage more donate-ware)

Download BatteryCare here: BatteryCare
See Calibration guide here: BatteryCare - Proper laptop battery usage guide

I / We appreciate as many volunteers as possible with all makes of laptops. IT IS CRITICAL THAT YOU CALIBRATE THE BATTERY TO GET ACCURATE INFORMATION.

Install BatteryCare, then please follow the calibration procedure noted above and then report back here the following information:

(1) Brand and type of laptop, basic specs like CPU, GPU, RAM (i.e. HP DV6z A8-3510MX, 6750m, 2x4GB DDR3 1600)
(2) Age of laptop (and battery of course)
(3) Your type and rough % usage plugged in (i.e. web/office/basic tasks 70%, encoding 10%, gaming 20%) and hours per week
(4) Your type and rough % usage on battery (i.e. web/office/basic tasks 100%) and hours per week
(5) Average ambient temperature of laptop environment (i.e. temperature of room it's used in)
(6) Wear level * - JPG of BatteryCare wear level would be nice but just listing % is fine too.

Feel free to report anything else that may be of significance to battery wear. And remember to turn off any timed sleep or hibernate during the discharge process except for the hibernate or shutdown setting at critical battery level.

*Wear level can be found by right clicking the BatteryCare icon in your system tray and click "Show", then click "Detailed Information". To take a screenshot click that Window, then press Ctrl-Shift-PrtScrn then paste that in your favorite graphics editor, MS Paint is fine, save as jpg, and upload to image storage site like imgur or attach as image in post.

I will do my best to consolidate information in an easy to read format. More data the better, new machines, old machines, as long as you know the age and general usage patterns of the battery.

Thanks!

 

reserved for future use

 

reserved for additional future use

 

(1) HP DV6z A8-3510MX, 6750m, 2x4GB DDR3 1600
(2) Received 8/25/2011 - 9 Cell 100WHr
(3) Plugged in 90% of time used ~ 25 hrs/week 80% browsing/netflix, etc, 20% gaming
(4) Battery 10% of time used ~ 8 hrs/week 90% browsing, netflix, etc, 10% gaming
(5) Ambient temp ~ 22C
(6) Wear Level 3.07% Full calibration performed, however not sure why BatteryCare isn't showing a full discharge.

 

Sager NP 8170 - I7 2760qm, 6990m, 16gb 13333 ddr 3 ram
(2) November 27, 2011
(3) Sofwatre development/Vmware/web surfing almost on 24/7 - 90%, gaming 10%
(4) VMware, Office apps on battery 100%
(5) Wear level* -2.08% - never been calibrated

 

Thanks, I just updated the list with 6 steps now, lol. Can you run a calibration procedure and report back?

 

(1) Asus G73JH INtel I7 820, Ati 5870M, 6 GIG 1333
(2) Age of laptop - both 1.5 yrs
(3) web/office/basic tasks 50%, gaming 50% 15 hours
(4) web/office/basic tasks 100% 15 hours
(5) 20 C
(6) Wear level* -Before calibtation HWinfo and + battery care agree 18.65 before calibration

Spoiler

(I use my machine 50 % of the time on battery and usually run it down to 10%, then recharge while using it) I always power off when not in use & turn off power strip (no I am not an eco geeko)
Hibernate is off (never used it) so I will run down to 10% then reboot and let it sit on BIOS screen till battery is zero.
I went to use Sleep today, found my machine totally unresponsive, only recent change was batterycare install

 

1) Lenovo ThinkPad T420, Intel Core i5-2520M, Intel HD 3000, (2x 8GB) 16GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM, Samsung 830 SSD + Fujitsu 500GB HDD.

2) Bought new since April 2011, about 10 months at time of writing.

3) Web Browsing, Office Work, Graphic Design & Music Listening - 80%, VMWare Virtual Machines - 5%, Gaming - 5%

4) Web Browsing, Office Work, Graphic Design & Music Listening - 100%

5) Approx 20c

6) Wear Level 2.7%, 87 Cycle Counts recorded. Battery calibrated once using Lenovo Power Manager software.

Notes:

* Battery is a 9 cell (93Wh) made by Sanyo, which is known to be quite shoddy in the ThinkPad world.
* Custom charging thresholds set on system, meaning it won't charge the battery even when AC is in until it depletes below 35% and will stop charging once it reaches 95% charge capacity.
* Last recorded usage, battery lasted almost 7 hours.
* Hibernation is turned off due to SSD in place, system won't turn to standby unless inactivity for over 1 hour.

 

(1) MSI GT780DXR, i7 2630QM, GTX570M, 3x4GB DDR3 1333Mhz
(2) 6 months (since last septemper, used in october)
(3) %80 web browsing and youtube %20 gaming (of any kind)
(4) gaming on the go and web browsing by %50-50
(5) 18c with the AC on, 36c with the AC off
(6) %7.8* as of writing, picture took while it was 8.5%, the new report will be within 2 hours

 

Thanks guys. One more thing, with the amount of use, can you add approximate hours per week it's used in that state. Thanks. This is a work in progress...

 

I drain mine once per week! until the system shutdown!

 

That's probably killing your battery.

 

With regular use? Or just to calibrate? There's no need to drain it just to drain it, only once every few months or so for calibration. There's only 300 or so battery cycles before severe degradation. From what I've read, one cycle can be 20% use one time, recharge, 50% use next time, recharge, 30% use another time and recharge, which amounts to 100% or a full discharge cycle. But you need to do a single full discharge in one setting to 5% or less to properly recalibrate.

 

no just regular use! I do on-the-go gaming with discharge rate of 30w with low powersaving settings!

 

(1) Sony VAIO S (VPCSA2FGX/BI) i5-2410M, HD3000+6630M, 1x3GB DDR3
(2) Received 9/9/2011 - 52,170 mWh
(3) Less than 50% plugged in, 75% in STAMINA mode (Intel HD 3000 GPU) doing basic stuff, 25% in SPEED mode (AMD Radeon HD6630M GPU) doing heavy task, including games.
(4) Mostly doing basic stuff in STAMINA mode
(5) Ambient temp ~ 22C (air conditioned) - 30C (outdoor)
(6) Wear Level 5.9%

Last around 2-4 hours with Battery Care enabled (3-5 hours in normal use)

 

1. HP Envy 15: Core i5 430M, 4GB DDR3, 320GB HDD, & HD 5830.
2. 1.5 years. 6 Cell battery.
3. 90% Web/Office/Basic Tasks. 10% Gaming.
4. 95% Web/Office/Basic Tasks. 5% Gaming.
5. 70F/21C
6. 0.18%(HWMonitor states 0% wear)

 

1. HP DV6-6001TX: i7-2630QM, 2x4GB DDR3 1333, 750GB+750GB, HD6770M+Intel HD3000 ~ 6 Cell Battery
2. 10 Months - Received on 28/4/2011
3. 60% web browsing/music, 25% gaming, 10% Photo/Video editing, 2% encoding, 3% etc ~ 100hours/week.
4. 100% web browsing/music ~ 10 hours/week.
5. 28c
6. 9.31%

 

(1) MBP 13'' 2011 - i5 2415m, 8gb DDR3 1333MHZ, Corsair F120
(2) 5 months
(3) Office 90%, Watching videos 5%, Gaming 5% - 16h per day (week days) 6h per day (weekend) = 92h per week (addendum since I work in the stock market, office related tasks are always coupled with web browsing and instant messengers)
(4) Office 100% 20h per week
(5) 20-30c
(6) 5% wear 126 cycles gone already
(7) Battery life - OSX 8-10h - Windows 7 pro 3-5h

 

will there be any prize for the highest wear level ? maybe a new battery? J/K you should get the prize HT, you force us to learn new stuff!

 

lol. No prize, just information.

 

Dell m6600 I5, 5gb, SSD, ATI m8900


I get around 2-2:30 just basic web surfing/etc

 

(1) Acer 3820TG i3-370m, 2x2GB DDR3-1066, HD5650/Intel HD graphics
(2) 14 months (both)
(3) 24 hrs a week plugged in 60% coding 10% watching videos rest documents/ web browsing (Always on discrete graphics)
(4) 10hrs a week - see above (always on Intel graphics)
(5) Avg ambient temp 20- 25 C
(6)

 

1. MSI GX660, i5 480, 5870m, 6GB RAM (2+4) 15.6 inch 1080p 1SSD and 1HDD No switchable graphics, IGP isn't available at all as far as I'm aware.
2. Laptop is... 1 year 6 months old I believe. (October 2010) As is battery.
3. 6hrs+ every day plugged in. 60% Office/Web 40% Games
4. 12hrs a week I estimate, 99% Office/Web
5. Normal temps, ~20-25C
6. 16%

I'm mighty impressed with only 16% wear after 18 months.
I should note:
I have modified my GPU BIOS to run at .8V instead of .9 while on battery power, doing this cut my power consumption by 10 watts (!). It can still play HD videos just fine, though I never attempted a 3D game while it is like this. I pretty much get a whole extra hour of life just for doing this. If only my laptop had Intel graphics...

I would recommend anyone who has an unswitchable ATI chip to do this, but only if you feel confident.

Also, I use BattStatt, oldskool. Though even I think there is something fishy with 16% wear in all that time, I need to calibrate. The fact it says 0 cycles is also a reason to be wondering.

 

for some reason MBAM is blocking the download....

 

Weird. It asks to install a stupid game during install (Super Collapse?) that you can uncheck, otherwise no malware or virus.

 

1.Vaio TZ298NXC/[email protected]/INTEL 945GMS/2GB DDR2/120GB SSD RENICE K3VLAR ZIF PATA + 64GB SSD SAMSUNG + 250GB HDD FUJITSU
2.Bought September 2009 - Battery Manufactured August 2007.
3.Web browsing/office/music - 50/30/20
4.Web browsing/music/movies - 50/20/30
5.25C
6.19.0./. Battery care set to 80./.



P.S. Removed batt only once to swap(upgrade SSD).I'ts on A/C 24/7

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/649590-batterycare-0-9-9-0-released.html

 

Spoiler

Hello everyone,
I've been following the battery guide posted here for nearly 5 years now and I thought I'd share my results, which I must say revealed some very interesting not-so-regular numbers!

(1) Gateway P-7811FX, P8400, 9800M GTS (65nm - 65W TDP), 2x4GB DDR3 1066MHz (I neglected to mention this upgrade -was 2x2GB @1066- in my email), 200GB @7200rpm + 240GB SSD
(2) 5yo (bought late August 2008, S/N indicates factory batch of July 2008)
(3) Web/office/basic tasks 60%, Flash-based apps 10%, HD video 15%, gaming 15%) total of 80-100hrs/week
(4) Web/office/basic tasks 60%, Flash-based apps 10%, HD video 15%, gaming 15%) total of 2hrs/week (I use the battery very rarely, but when I do, I just do what I always do)
(5) 20-30 degrees Celcius, with Zalman NC-2000 cooler since day... 10 (give or take a couple of days!) (again, forgot to mention below that the cooler is powered by the laptop)
(6) 12.81% (now here's where the fun is at! This figure was 14,46% BEFORE the calibration -which by the way did not 'count' on battercare, just like I 've seen reported here by others, but instead of increasing, it actually dropped)! We're talking about a <13% wear following the aforementioned guide over 5+ years!!! Crazy?!


Below, I am copy-pasting my e-mail to the creator of BatterCare with my own analysis and thoughts. There is a link inside the quote, with more screenshots from Batterycare (if links from external hosters are not allowed please go easy on me ).

Spoiler

Well one thing I have to repeat after these results (I have said it before over these years) is "Thank you Notebookreview"! Thanks to you I have saved quite a few $$ that a new battery (or even 2 of them?!) would have cost me by now, had I not read the suggestions I found here.