SSD and battery life, confused

I'm reading mixed things on this. What is the consensus on this here (if there is any)? Do SSDs prolong, drain or do not change battery life? I have read reviews where all 3 has been concluded. tomshardware showed with data that the battery life remains unchanged. some people over at macrumors say that an SSD killed 8-9 hour battery life down to 3, and ive seen others say its more efficient so battery life has been substantially prolonged.


Whats the deal here?



Which ones better for battery life and being problem free: Kingston http://www.newegg.com/product/produ...hBargains-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA&Item=N82E16820139135

or Corsair?

 

First point; Not all SSDs increase battery life or are energy efficient. Now for me going from a 3 year old 5400 rpm Hitachi to my OCZ Agility 2, my battery life went up ~15 minutes idle and 45 minutes heavy load. Now my case maybe rare as upgrades from a new 5400 rpm drive to an SSD might not yield any additional battery life as 5400 rpm drives these days are vastly improved from 3 years ago.

I recall htwingnut had an issue with one of his SSD giving him horrid battery life in a netbook, don't remember which though.

 

I have that Kingston model in my Sony netbook. Provides around an additional 45-60 minutes of battery life. Using Sony's battery care feature, I can get approx 4.5 hours on an 80% charge with the SSD. Before with the hard drive could only get around 3.5 or little over.

 

Kingston eat your battery for B'fast( V+100). Due to their aggressive GC method. Check Anandtech article for more info. I recommend SF based card.

 

The answer is, they can do all three depending on what SSD you have. Not all SSDs are created equally. Some offer top notch performance but with performance comes power consumption while older generation Jmicron's were noted for being very poor performers compared to HDDs. From what I've read, the best SSDs for maximizing battery life used either Samsung, Indilinx, or Toshiba controllers. The Intel, Marvell, and Sandforce controllers were better performers (at least on benchmarks) but consumed more than those SSDs (some models are comparable to HDD power consumption figures).

 

Odd my Agility 2 has a Sand Force 1200 controller and it dramatically increased my battery life. Perhaps it was due to a failing 3 year old Hitachi 5400 rpm hard drive, but I saw a near 30% increase in battery life..

 

From the power consumption tests I've seen SF-1200 drives are pretty decent in power consumption, irregardless of how great the performance is. I think Vertex 2 and Corsair Force are even slightly better than the Agility 2 (not a ton).

 

From what i saw on Anandtech, StorageReview and other places, Sandforce 1200 controller ones use the least amount of power, even compared to Intel G2s. They offer good performance also but that's debatable based on what you use your system for.

 

It depends on what notebook, what SSD, what usage and what HDD you're coming from.

Also the way of measuring is important. People use wildly varying ways to predict/measure battery life.

 

Ah thanks for all the help. I think I'll be passing on the Kingston and maybe going with the corsair.!

 

The Tomshardware SSD charts include power consumption measurements for various operating conditions. The Kingston V / V+ series don't look good when under load but have excellent idle power consumption. I've got a V+ (previous series) and it seems to be OK on power.

John