Envy 14 Battery Life Log

This thread is for Envy 14 owners to report battery life.

State your system specs:

Processor
SSD or HDD
Standard battery and/or Slice

Then state what you were doing, Wifi and/or bluetooth on, screen brightness.

Also state the window's power profile they used, I believe there are 4 :
- HP recommended
- Normal
- High performance
- Energy saving

Then state your runtime.

You can use BatteryBar: Osiris Development - BatteryBar, the most accurate battery meter for Windows

Be advised that batterybar will take a few charge-discharge cycles before it reports accurately. However, on your first cycle, it will report the runtime for that cycle.

There will be no chit-chat, in this thread*. Off topic posts will be deleted without warning or user permission. This is strictly a report log to determine runtime. Educated guesses as to runtime are legitimate also.


* Mods can chit-chat because we're special. Teehee.


Notable Times:


i3/i5

• 4:23 achieved by a poster: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6523184-post182.html
• 4:40 achieved by a poster: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6490089-post16.html
• 4:51 achieved by a poster: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6515152-post129.html
• 5:08 achieved by a poster: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6533500-post243.html
• 5:12 achieved by a poster: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6523184-post182.html
• 6:27 achieved by a poster: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6499615-post80.html
• 6:45 achieved with optimization: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6499615-post80.html
• First poster to get 7 hours battery life w/o slice: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6493133-post41.html
• A little over 9 hours with slice: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-envy-hdx/501066-envy-14-battery-life-log-5.html#post6494612

i7

• <2:00 achieved by a poster: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6499450-post78.html
• <2:00 achieved by a poster: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6525651-post198.html
• 2:10 achieved by a poster: http://forum.notebookreview.com/6529711-post212.html
• 3:39 achieved by a poster (No slice) : http://forum.notebookreview.com/6487729-post2.html

 

i7-720
640GB HD
Standard Battery
Clean Install
Bluetooth off
Web surfing, Itunes, Youtube, Full screen brightness

3:39 before going to hibernation

 

Stats:
i5-520
160gb SSD
Standard Battery
Integrated Graphics On
Balanced Power Usage
Bluetooth off
Screen Brightness at 100%
Wireless on

Use:
Web surfing and downloading/installing programs

4:20 on a full charge, 3:56 before going into hibernation.

 

People should also state the window's power profile they used, I believe there are 4 :
- HP recommended
- Normal
- High performance
- Energy saving

 

i5-520
500GB HDD
Standard Battery
Clean Install
Bluetooth off
Power saving profile
Screen brightness at 50%
Web surfing, installing programs

4:20 before going into hibernation

 

I'm assuming that the tests with i5s are with the Intel HD enabled?

 

Can anyone make a battery test with power saver and maximum energy savings ? Also, how much do you reckon the SSD adds to the battery life ?

 

Although I'm a huge fan of SSDs, the energy savings is probably 10 min at the very most.

I'd be interested in some sort of quasi-scientific test however.

 

Actually, it would depend on a whole lot of things. The 'spin up' of a disk is the most power intensive, shortly followed by maximum seek exercises. At idle, the power consumption on an SSD is 'typically' around 1/10th (or less) of a 7200RPM disk. Under full load, the manufacturer of the SSD determines how much less power an SSD will take -- most are around the 1.5W mark. Thus, they will typically soak up about 2/3rds of the power of a 7200RPM disk.

The catch here is this: they only have to remain under full load for a fraction of the time that a 7200RPM disk would. They can read faster, they can seek faster, and they can return to sleep faster. So depending on what you're doing (say, watching a video, or playing in VM's) anything that has low but continuous use of the disk could be FAR more energy efficient on the SSD front.

But yeah, you'd have to get pretty crafty with the power measurement to get it nailed down to a number. I'd say 10 minutes is probably the minimum you'd get out of a battery charge; depending on how many times you boot that machine over the course of a single charge, you might get a half hour or more.

 

this thread makes me a bit sad, I was hoping for closer to 5 or 6 hours

 

Yep. This ≤ 4:30 with "typical" office-ish usage isn't quite what I was hoping for, but I'm still interested in this thing... grr.

 

That would be insane for how powerful this laptop is. With the slice you could get 8 hours+ on a single charge if you're just surfing the web.

 

Agreed but still not bad, though. The TimelineX 4820TG is the only direct competitor to this and it gets about 5.5 under the same usage but it doesn't have the screen of the Envy or the build quality. It is getting slightly less than the dm4t which was actually my guess to begin with seeing as they are pretty much the same internally but the Envy has the brighter screen.

 

I think the only contender out there right now is the IdeaPad Y460 063346U model. It has the i5-520 and the 5650, but with the lesser quality screen and a slower 500Gb 5400RPM drive. Initial reports over in the Lenovo section of this forum suggest that it gets just a tad bit more life with a similarly sized battery, but I'm willing to chalk that up to the slower drive and the lesser screen resolution and higher brightness.

All things considered, four hours seems to be about what you're going to get out of this platform.

 

Yeah I forgot about the Y460.

 

I really don't understand how you can go 4+ hours without finding some sort of plug. For what it has I think the envy 14 battery life is amazing. However anything that have a battery life of over 2 hours I think is enough so taken my opinion as you will.

Anyways

i5-450
160gb SSD
Standard Battery
Integrated Graphics On
HP Recommend Power Usage +1 brightness (around 2 or third highest)
Bluetooth on
Wireless on

4:40 on web browsing before shutoff (I turn off hibernate)

4 hours when watching plenty of videos.

 

Wow, happyxix.

That's the record I believe.

 

About twenty minutes over other users, I wonder whether it was due to less overall brightness or SSD power savings (or both).

 

hm... i thought the i7 and the i5 config would have a bigger diff on bat life... looks like i should have gotten the i7 instead of the i5 520m

 

well someone else's i7 only gets like 2 and a half hours or something.


it may depend on the i7 and that person's luck


Also I've gotten about 4 hours with 100% brightness and some web browsing and stuff on the i5 520m. 320 GB HDD, intel card turned on. Stock install.

This is unscientific though. Not sure how long it really was. Just a guesstimate

 

forget the 7 hours of battery life without the slice HP made claims to

 

yeah. that's not happening.

 

OT: I have this unit and find it gets around 3-3.5 hrs web surfing/office/bit of video on max brightness/"balanced" performance setting.

 

I believe my envy15 gets 3-4 hours battery and 5-6 with slice? I haven't timed it, and batterybar seems to go nuts whenever I try to get readings.

Considering the e15 always has the 5830 going and no integrated graphics, I'm surprised as well with the e14's lack of battery.

The disappointment with battery life has been discussed with the e15 as well. I didn't get it for a super portable laptop, but more of a desktop replacement which has both style and durability. I'll get my head to head comparison of battery life with e14 and e15 (maybe e13 as well if my gf wants to give her machine up for a day or so )

 

Probably. Most people are testing with balanced or max brightness or having hibernation on.

Hence the 20 minute gap. I'm sure if people turn off hibernate they will get the same results. I mean Hibernate is set at 7% on the envy 14 I believe. That 7% could very well be another 20 minutes.

And I'm checking via batterybar

 

I5 450m
320gb HDD
Standard Battery

HP Recommended Settings
Lowest Brightness browsing the internet.

4:43

 

I5 450m
Momentus xt 500gb
8gb ram
Standard Battery
Power Saver
Brightness at lowest
Fresh Install
4:40 Till shutdown. (Hibernate off)
Light web surfing.

Im returning this one due to quality problems. I reordered with a 520m once it is here I will do direct comparisons between the two for performance and battery life. I will be using exact same hard drive with same os install, so it should be accurate.

Really hope they release the slice battery for $100 soon so I can pick one up, I need all the battery life I can get.

 

I'm actually very happy with the times. I knew it would never get 7 hours but some people are geting 4:40 hours. That's great. I'm planning on changing a lot of settings and stuff when on battery for (hopefully) even long battery life. Plus I'm getting an SSD.

Good work guys

 

Hey just wondering, if it usually runs for about 4 hours and 20 mins with i5, and with the battery slice it runs for about 8, then wouldn't getting the dual 8 cell battery option be a better choice?

 

Well the slice actually has more then an 8cell for energy, so it should be around 9-10 hours of battery life, plus you don't have to switch and charge them you just leave it on.

I wouldnt say its worth 200 though, Im pretty sure they will sell them later on for 100.

 

Maybe you do get 7hours in power saving cpu maxpower set to 25% (that's nearly iddle) with wifi off minimum brightness
That's the HP "test" for battery life.
1) Someone needs to try that out.

2) It would be also nice to run tests with turbo boost disabled in the bios to see how much time you can gain by booting without it.

 

So would I be able to get around 8 hours battery life with the dual 8 cell battery option?

 

if you were going to take the battery out and put in the other one yeah you should get abit more then 8. But you would have to turn off the laptop and swap them.

 

I'm not thinking of swapping them manually, there's an option when your customizing the e14 that allows you to choose dual 8 cell battery

 

what they mean by dual 8 cell battery is an extra battery. you cannot use both at the same time.

 

How are you guys recording how long your battery lasted? I downloaded BatteryBar but it seems to just estimate how much charge is left. I want something where I can leave my laptop on and it records how long I've been on battery for. Any suggestions?

 

mouse-over the battery bar icon and it gives you the full lifetime. Once you do a full cycle on the battery, the full lifetime will be the recorded time for that previous cycle. Thereafter, it will adjust it depending on use.

 

That is how all manufacturers test and advertise their battery life.

 

nobody test the i3 370m yet?

 

delete this post

 

I actually did that during school this morning. I got 7 hours with 16% battery life left. Brightness at medium-low, wifi off most of the time except for a few times I had to look up something on the internet, and I used it for light note taking... didn't watch any videos.

Didn't disable turbo boost, it wouldn't be practical.

My envy is a 450m, 160gb ssd, 4gb ram.

Note: this is with a fresh installation of windows 7 with a lot of processes killed based on the "out of the box hp guides"

 

Hope rises again, at last. I have the same configuration as you and I was dying to see someone put a 6+ hours result...

 

Wow, that is very hopefull information indeed.

At least now we know HP didn't completely make up its battery life numbers.

 

256G SSD
520m
4G ram

4:26 according to Battery Bar after a few runs. No Clean install (unfortunately). Wifi on. Bluetooth off. HP Battery saver.

Primarily i was web browsing, listening to music, watching youtube, and emailing.

 

Yea, wifi is the main drain. Im sure you can reach 8 hours with turbo boost off. Running two cores at 2.4 ghz instead of 2.66 won't change anything for your classes light note taking.

Also when you guys are in power saving profile... What do you have in this tab ? The following image is the Intel PRO/Wireless client application under Advanced/Adapter settings from the control panel:


I'm just worried that even if your power management profile is set on maximum wifi savings the card actual setting is not changed... It sounds a bit sh!tty that wifi on/off gets a 3 hours marging even on power saving mode. (especially when maximum wifi usage is around 5 watt per hour... while being 0.2 watt per hour on the best saving modes)

 

You're right, it's still set to high performance when I switch to battery.

 

Nice, would someone mind running an energy saving profile + that setting manually set to LOWEST (maximum battery life) surf the internet for about an hour and read then report the battery left estimation ? Or if you've got time ahead just browse like that (without heavy downloads running) until battery runs out ? Man if this little tweak gets us more than 5 hours of surfing battery life it'd be awesome.

Btw is the slider always on high ? And is the default box unchecked ? Cause if the box is unchecked it means it'll be on high all the time regardless of power management profile. According to intel's description of the settings ticking the default box would enable windows power management profile to take effect (allowing easy and automatic switching, rather than going to that hidden setting page everytime you need battery). If theres a battery time difference with the setting set manually on lowest we may need to do a test run with the default box checked later ^^

Thanks.

 

I'm really curious to see if there is any meaningful battery life difference between the i3-370 and the i5-450. There were a few people in the owners lounge suggesting that the i5 may actually get better battery life even though it routinely O/C's itself.

 

370 and i5 got the same 35w TDP (its the max watt usage under load)
Both lines are iddling at the same wattage per hour.
Battery life is theorically the same on idle, but under heavy load the 370 will last longer since it won't overclock.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/typo3temp/pics/f3d52024f9.gif
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Core-i3-i5-i7-Processors-Arrandale.25085.0.html

 

i5-520m
500GB HDD
Standard battery + Slice
Wifi On/Bluetooth Off
HP Recommended Power Plan:
- switch to 56% screen brightness when unplugged
- switch to integrated GPU when unplugged
- keyboard backlight off when unplugged
Usage: web browsing, some light office application work, some PDF creation and editing

From 100% charge (both primary and slice), yields a little over 9 hours.