Will decreasing the screen resolution increases battery life?

Posted here because Idk where to post this, I hope anyone can move to other topics.

BTW, will decreasing screen resolution increases batt. life?

Example: I set the original resolution (1920x1080) to 1366x768.

 

Hi Elevators,

Although I don't have actual measurements to back it up, I would speculate that you won't see much (or any) power savings from switching to a lower resolution: The full LCD is still illuminated; and even though fewer pixels have to be rendered (saving a small amount of power) other circuitry (or software) will then be engaged to scale them up to the full resolution (since LCDs are fixed pixel, not like an old CRT screen).

This assumes you are talking about general use. If you're talking about gaming, lower resolution can dramatically reduce power draw.

 

Thread moved here from General section.

 

No but decreasing brightness definitely will.

 

yea, while resolution might reduce cpu usage in games, the desktop performance is tiny.

 

Wow, discovering this thread at this time is a godsend! I have been struggling with a question that would appear to have a similar answer to what you are telling the OP, but kind of on its head. We are looking at getting Ultrabooks for our salespeople all over the country who are always traveling. Narrowed it down to a few and what is key is combination of sturdiness, reliability and long battery life. So the question is: will the same notebook computer with the same configuration (std. Ultrabook Haswell, i5, 8GB, 256GB, but with a choice of two screens: FHD or QHD (2560x1440, both IPS. How much difference in battery life would you expect due solely to the pixel density? Earlier responses here suggest no significant difference. As I understand it, you're saying you have illuminate the same amount of 2D space regardless of whether you light up 2.1 million larger pixels or 3.7 million smaller pixels. Is that about right? I can't tell you how much pontificating without knowledge there is regarding this question, net-wide, yet not a sliver of knowledge-based.

BTW, I hear you about lowered brightness saving battery. I have also read that changing color bandwidth from 32 bit to 16 and lowering sample rate to 40hz from 60hz std can, together, make a meaningful endurance saving of, say, 10-15%.The base case for the QHD version is around 8.5 hrs and would love to get that closer to 9.5 if possible. The question is, will we get much battery savings by having our "Power Saver" profile include setting the screen (using Intel Graphics control panel) at 16 bit color, 40Hz refresh rate, rather than the default 32 bit, 60 Hz? Thank you very much for your help.

 

X1 carbon haswell?

You're unlikely to hit 8.5 hours no matter what the manufacturer says.

As far as the main topic of the thread, all you can reasonable expect is the same battery life, for the QHD screen whether it's at native res or set to FHD. The 1080p panel will probably draw a bit less power than the QHD, but that is most likely due to the screens being different parts entirely.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Right. No way it will change power draw. Get a lower power screen, usually lower res ones will be lower power, and that's about the only way. Dimming helps too. Just a few notches dimmed from full can make a world of difference. All the pixels will still be lit regardless of resolution used, and more pixels = more power.

 

Just to be clear, we are not looking at X1 Carbons, we already have 8 HP Spectre 13T-3000s.*** (see last paragraph.)

Back to topic, we are getting 7.5 - 8.5 hrs for typical mix of business productivity, web, media (bless you, Haswell!) as have the professional published reviews, but we're eager to squeeze another hour if possible, and that's where my question about the QHD screens came from. One additional question on that: you were saying I'd get the same battery life with QHD screens set to FHD resolution, but would you also get the same power drain from the QHDs in native res.as from the FHDs (made by the same manufacturer) running at their native resolution? That's a little different question from the one the OP asked. I've long been curious as to whether high resolution screens draw more power than their lower res. counterparts, in general. Lots of people "believe" (but truly don't know!) that when you have to "push more pixels" the battery drains faster. Is the answer still that you're lighting up a 13.3" screen, and it takes the same amount of power to do it with more small pixels as fewer, bigger pixels? Same question, just asked differently to be sure I understand your response. Thanks again for your knowledge and advice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
***In case anyone's interested, these are little "diamonds in the rough" if you're in the ultrabook market. Not only are they surprisingly well designed and built like tanks (really!), but HP has priced them below market by about $200 for a "loaded" configuration, but have been running these 20% off coupons for most of the time since they released them late in 2013. So we got these computers configured as in my sig.for $1,025, $400 - $800 below all the competitive models out there (in fact, the X1 Carbon configured like these was nearly $2.000, $900 more than we paid for the HPs!). I am not a big HP fan as a rule, nor a consumer laptop fan for business use, but honestly these are all-metal, "unibodies" like MBAs - but better looking with far, far better screens. And they have performed flawlessly.

 

Yeah, you'd get the same (or only trivially different) power drain with the same display set at different resolutions. To think of it simply: no matter what the OS resolution is, your display is still having to drive all X amount of pixels that your display physically contains.

If you want to extent your battery life on a laptop by changing something about the display, lower the brightness. That'll produce the most dramatic difference as far as that component goes.

 

Everyone! I am considering the Asus ZB UX302LG, would that screen make the battery life SHORTER than other standard books?

 

QHD+ is more than enough. Also, it may have scaling prob (same as Lenovo Y2P), unless is the 15"+. Smaller than that, I would want FHD since you all said 768p and 900p is pathetic.

 

Depends if you have a (IPS) LCD or (Am) oled display.