Unofficial Elitebook 8540w Battery Life Thread

I asked about this in the 8540w owners' lounge, but I figured a dedicated thread might get some better visibility and be more useful in general.

For everyone who owns this system:
What are your specs, and what kind of battery life are you getting? Do you have the DreamColor 2 screen? Idle measurements, browsing with WLAN, watching a DVD, working under load, etc. are all useful measurements. Browsing with WLAN is probably the most useful, since it best represents normal everyday usage, but report whatever you like. Don't feel obligated to do formal tests if you'd rather just give a guesstimate for your normal usage; any information is better than no information. It would probably also be helpful to mention your energy profile though. Linux measurements are more than welcome, too!

The review here gives the following measurements for their test configuration (Core i7-620M, Quadro FX880M, FullHD display):

• Idle (without WLAN, min brightness): 4h 22min
• Surfing with WLAN: 3h 28min
• DVD: 2h 31min
• Load (maximum brightness): 1h 30min

However, that's only for their test configuration. I'm considering getting one with the M5800 and the DreamColor 2 display, and I imagine that build might turn out very differently...especially since the DreamColor 2 display requires a larger power adaptor! I'd like to know about what to expect with my configuration. I also figure a thread full of 8540w battery life measurements would be useful in general, so...here we are.

 

First, the DreamColor Display only requires a more powerful adapter than 1 of the display card options, the NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M. Both the ATI/AMD M5800 and the Quadro FX 1800M bump the power supply requirement up to 150w.

Second, speaking on my i7-820/16GB/ATI based 8540w (without DC display) I get between 3 and 5 hours (with the snap-on-the-bottom extended battery) depending on what I'm doing and how prudent I am about using the ambient light sensor and disabling the wireless option(s) I'm not really using.

I also have a Momentus XT in the Optical bay, instead of an optical drive, and an Intel SSD as my primary.

Sorry I don't have more specific numbers behind the battery times, I've just never cared enough to waste an 8 hour day measuring how long it takes to drain the battery under controlled circumstances.

 

Thanks for the feedback. Those are pretty good times, especially for your tricked out configuration. The need for a snap-on-the-bottom battery indicates the "regular" times are probably about half that though (almost in line with the 8740w), which worries me. My config will be significantly lighter though except for the DreamColor, so I guess it's still pretty much up in the air. Any other takers?

 

Call me spoiled, but I currently have a:

Dell M4400 with 1920x1200 RGBLED screen.
Late 2010 MBP with 1680x1050 LED screen.

I love the Macbook Pro, but I'm finding it's good for coding but not for EE work. (I am currently an EE PhD student.)

I'm seriously considering the 8540w since I can upgrade the WIFI and 3G modem to something Mac-compatible with a simple BIOS hack. (This is not possible to my knowledge with the Thinkpad lineup. A request on certain forum to a guy named Zender might do the trick, but then again the Thinkpads have lame screens and aren't technically MIL-SPEC construction.)

Anyway, I don't really want to go backward on screen quality. If the DreamColor 2 display requires a more powerful AC adapter, it must drain the battery faster, right? Does my Dell RGBLED screen do the same thing without my knowledge? (I can run it off a 90 watt adapter although the adapter does get very hot...)

I'm assuming that with an 8-cell primary battery and a 12 or 8-cell secondary I would get 5-7 hours of battery life assuming no 3D programs, no Flash, but WIFI on and e-mail/light web browsing. Is that correct?

Would DreamColor reduce my battery life by 1 hour, 2 hours, or more?


Best,
NighTalon in NYC

 

I just received my brand new CTO 8540w and will be putting it through it's paces this week. I'll try my best to get accurate times for battery life and performance benchmarks.

Here are the specs:

i7 820QM
6GB DDR3
X1800M
DreamColor 2
500GB Momentus XT (Hybrid HDD/SSD) Primary drive
250GB 7200rpm stock as the secondary drive installed in the expansion bay.

I really hope there is an alternative, smaller 150w power brick out there. This thing is kind of ridiculous.

 

Preconfigured system (XT903UT#ABA) with i5-560 and M5800, standard battery. Just unplugged and idling, the battery gauge says 6 hours 37 mins at 100%. At 55% it's saying 3 hours 30 mins. Brightness is at minimum with ambient sensor on.

Edit: Played GTA4 on the train ride home from work. Figured that would be the heaviest drain game I've got installed. In about 40 minutes time the battery gauge dropped from 53% to 24% and indicated 30 minutes life left. So maybe 2 hours playtime from a full charge? Power setting has ATI Powerplay on Max Battery Life. I'll give it a try set at Max Performance later. GTA4 could have used some more power.

Edit 2: Tried another battery run, this time with Powerplay at Max Performance. GTA4 fps doubled, from low teens to mid twenties. Battery life suffers of course, down to about 1 hour 15 minutes. Ouch. Looks like I won't be playing this on battery very often. I've got plenty of other games that will play just fine on the Max Battery setting: Oblivion, Borderlands, Burnout Paradise.

 

8540p
- i5 540m
- nvs5100
- 6gb
- Corsair F120 + Toshiba 1tb upgrade bay
- 1600x900

battery life:
- idle = ~ 6 hours
- light internet browsing w/ 50% brightness = ~ 4-5 hours
- moderate load = ~3-3.5 hours

 

Hmm, looks like my post never saved. Anyway:

With my energy profile set to High Performance with advanced options also individually set to high performance I played some Left 4 Dead (on WiFi), browsed the web, watched a few flash videos and worked in Lightroom 3. My standard battery lasted a little over an hour. Not bad considering the specs.. but pretty horrible when it comes to a regular laptop.

I haven't tested to see how long I can stretch out the battery life with power saving energy profiles and light usage, but I doubt I can get much past 2 hours with this setup.

I just upgraded the 2nd drive bay to another hybrid drive and wonder if that will help save some power.

Either way, this laptop screams. I got it as real work horse and is miles ahead of my almost 4 year old Core 2 Due desktop. I hope to get a Slate 500 for something more portable/battery friendly.

Here are my very powerhungry specs:
i7 820QM
6GB DDR3
X1800M
DreamColor 2
500GB Momentus XT (Hybrid HDD/SSD) Primary drive
250GB 7200rpm stock as the secondary drive installed in the expansion bay.

 

Thanks dutchie08, I am considering an almost identical configuration with you (sort of the disks). If you get to know how long the battery lasts with the light usage, it would be very helpful!

Btw, this very nice thread.

 

vmp, to be honest don't get this configuration if you are hoping for computing with decent battery life.

The battery just isn't big enough to power this thing for long, even with power management.

 

I think they bump it up to 120w, not 150w.

From here:

Recommended AC Adapter
	Intel dual-core processor	Intel quad-core processor
NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M graphics	90W	120W
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1800M graphics	120W	150W
ATI FirePro M5800 graphics	120W	150W