Thinkpad T410s Real Battery Life Tested.

I just bought a Thinkpad T410s with 128g SSD, nvidia optimus and 4g ram, and also bought a 3-cell ultrabay battery.

The battery life under windows 7 64bit with wifi on is about 5.5 hours with ultrabay battery.

The battery life under Ubuntu 10.10 64bit with wifi on is about 4 hours with ultrabay battery.

I am kind of disappointed at the battery life, and I should have bought Macbook Air instead considering the weight/battery life ratio.

 

Sell or return your thinkpad and get a mac then.

 

That does seem pretty poor, especially running Ubuntu. Maybe you can test it with Nvidia optimus off? Would that improve battery life?

(More on Nvidia Optimus, T410s and Ubuntu can be found on ubuntuforums.org)

 

Under Windows, do a powercfg -energy diagnostic.

 

I also have the ultrabay battery. I notice that mine is kind of loose and its not flush to the case. Was wondering if yours are any different.

In regards to the battery life I get about 6 hours with the ultrabay battery.

 

By the way. The 6 cell battery is 44wh, and 3 cell battery is 24 wh.(total 68wh)

Wondering why macbook air 13" lasts longer with only 50 wh battery.

 

Smaller screen, fewer ports, fewer connectivity options, different CPU.

Kind of asking why a pick-up truck is less fuel-efficient than a hybrid.

 

My ultrabay battery is kinda lossy too. Your problem is confirmed. >"<

 

Isn't the i5 more efficient then Core 2 Duo? Is it because I have 1 extra graphic card inside i5 CPU?

 

How well does linux run on a MacBook Air?

 

Possibly. The Core 2 Duo could be a lower voltage one, but I'm not sure on that.
EDIT: The MacBook Air's use ULV CPU's.

Optimus is also kind of flaky in that it might turn on when you don't need it to. Try running it in integrated only.

 

MBA has
-smaller screen
-ULV processor (I think the T410s CPU is a normal laptop or LV)
-The graphics chip is more efficient (if you are using the nV chip in the Thinkpad, other way around if you are using the integrated)
-More efficient CPU uArch (C2D is more efficient than 1st Gen Core i#)

 

I have no idea. But Mac is based on Unix system, and Apple has optimized their software. I guess macs can run unix programs.

 

I was wondering because you specifically compared Windows 7 to Ubuntu and were disappointed. It's hard to tell what you really need beyond battery life of 5 hours.

 

i5 is less efficient and C2D in MBA is ULV vs Standard Voltage or LV

For example, we lost battery life X200(C2D)>X201(Ci#)

 

Macbook Air 13" uses 1.86 GHz (SL9400) Intel Core 2 Duo with 6 MB on-chip L2 which has 17w TDP.

i5 2.67 has 35w TDP.

I guess that's the problem....

 

It's not a problem, it's just the way the two systems are targeted. With the MBA you get a battery-friendly CPU (that won't run at full throttle), and with the T410s you get a standard i5 with all of it's inherent characteristics.

 

T420s just makes me not worth the price I paid, Although it has spill-proof keyboard and roll cage. p.s. my friend's Thinkpad failed the spil-proof test when he accidentally dump a cup of water onto the keyboard.

 

If your keyboard is improperly seated or if he tried rotating the laptop (some try to tilt it to dump out the water: BAD IDEA), then it defeats all of the spill-resistance measures.

 

I still don't see why i5 is better than core 2 duo. Generally T410s vs Air, T410s has a fail optimus which consume more power and do less work then the Air's 320M.

 

The i5 has four threads, can turbo, and has a faster integrated GPU. Only the highest end Core 2 Duos can match an i5's processing power. More processing power, period. There are select cases where the i5 hyperthreading will bog you down, but those are rare.

The NVS3100M is about the same as the integrated 320M, once you consider the thermal throttling.

 

Yes, you are right about MVS3100M is about the same as the 320M. However, IMO why need so much processing power? I only use 1 - 3% of the CPU power when I browsing websites and programming.

 

There have been a ton of discussions here and on the web about the T410s and it's value. Battery life has been cited in nearly every review as being mediocre.

If you didn't know what you were getting into, you didn't look very hard.

If you are inside the return period, they why not just bite the bullet and return it or sell it an cut your losses? This thread is already starting to sound like a big complaint when it appears you didn't line your requirements up properly against the machines on the market.

 

I did my homework about T410s, and I have been using thinkpad for years and I really like their designs. On their website it states 4.7 hrs battery without ultrabay battery is kinda......

 

What, really? 1-3% CPU for web browsing? I find that highly unlikely.
And not needing CPU power for programming? Seriously.

If you've been using ThinkPads for years, then you should know full well that the advertised battery life is generally higher than the actual battery life.

Also, avoid Chrome like the plague if you want good battery life. Also Skype. Also anything that powercfg -energy flags as decreasing the timer resolution.

 

Avoid Chrome? How about Firefox? For programming, core 2 duo is more than capable IMO. I'm kinda miss my X201i which has 5 hrs battery life with 6 cell battery...(screen is too small >"<)

 

i5 is faster. A very slow i5 is about as fast as a very fast Core2.

What do you program? I personally find it hard to believe that programming would use only 1-3% CPU.

btw, if you wanted battery life, the T410 sans s or an X201 would be the better choice.

 

I mainly program C/C++ so.....linux or unix-like machine is my friend XD. Text editor don't take that much CPU. Compiling might takes more than 3%. I can wait 2 or 3 more seconds for the compiling....

 

Well I guess our homework techniques are different. Searching for "t410s review" on google returns a bunch of high quality reviews. The first one in the list is from this site.

See Lenovo ThinkPad T410s Performance, Benchmarks and Battery Life

I don't know how you missed this.

You could have just asked one of the owners here about it before you ordered. I certainly would have told you the reality of the situation with the T410s.

 

Well...under win 7 I have above 10 - 20 watt.....>"< Under ubuntu with powertop I have 18 - 20 watt...

 

Compile time is inversely proportional to CPU speed. Compiling generally maxes out your available CPU power. So this essentially means you're not programming fairly simple projects.

Under freshly installed Ubuntu 10.10 I got 3.5hours on a T400 6-cell. In freshly installed Windows, I get 5.5. After installing all my usual stuff, it also drops to 3.5 hours.

 

I generally use a big fat IDE for everything since it makes life easier. For compiling, I though most compilers max the CPU for the time when compiling.

Maybe for Ubuntu devs, support for Thinkpads isn't as high a priority as Lenovo making sure Win7 runs as well as possibly on Thinkpads. I get less battery out of my T400 in openSUSE compared to Win7 if that helps.

 

I got similar result for Ubuntu 10.10 64bit (about 3.3hrs with ultrabay).

 

AFAIK, Ubuntu doesn't selectively suspend USB.

 

Even using powertop?

 

have to agree here. i did a ton of research about the t410 and decided to pass on it. a little research would have saved you the headache of a possible return/exchange. ultimately it sounds like you are searching for reasons to dislike the thinkpad line. you start off by complaining about battery and then say you should have gotten a mac book. you then state how your friends thinkpad failed the spill test and then round it out by griping about the size of x201 screen???

 

Clearly we are speaking different languages.

 

Why is compiling on battery important? You don't have a wall plug nearby? Are you coding in Starbucks or what?

 

The point I want to make is overall Thinkpad has the best material used including carbon fiber and fiber glass led, roll cage tech, spill-proof keyboard, trackpoint, etc. I do not hate Lenovo, and I know I didn't do enough research. I'm just want to compare T410s with macbook air doubting lenovo's quality after taking over from IBM.

 

Why don't you say buy a desktop instead? I do believe some people need mobility.

 

There are definitely ways to increase your battery life. Again, run the powercfg -energy diagnostic, and fix the issues it identifies. Sometimes the issues are like "No sleep timeout" which is more of a habit thing.

Open Resource Monitor, go to the CPU tab, and sort by average CPU. Identify high CPU usage processes.

Optimus test tools finally in users hands - LaptopVideo2Go Forums
This will show you when the discrete card goes on. Under light load, it should never activate.

 

Thanks for the tips...

 

Mobile is not the same as power. I am using a laptop on my couch right now. but it's plugged into the wall for power.

I was trying to understand the burning need to use battery power while coding. I've seen this requirement come up twice this week so I'm trying to understand what conditions you are working under.

If it's at a cafe having a beer I get it. But if you have power close by, why not use it? Performance will be better.

I'm done asking. Later.

 

You guys are kind of harsh, just saying. True though if he likes mac no need to post it here.

 

I doubt that the responses would be quite as harsh if the OP were comparing models that were in the same ballpark. If we're comparing a Thinkpad X series to a MBA, then fine. The T series is comparable to a MacBook Pro, both in power and size, for the most part. It's like another user said, you can't purchase a utility vehicle and expect it to perform like a hybrid econobox. If you look at the T series' most direct rival, the MacBook Pro, you'll likely find battery life to be fairly similar with the basic batteries, with a potential win to the T series when paired with the Ultrabay battery.

 

Nevermind, found a solution to extend battery life under ubunto. Just disable NVS graphic card in BIOS. It squeeze out extra 1 - 1.5 hrs of battery life. now power drain is less then 10w woot!!!!

 

*facepalm*

There's no viable Optimus support in Linux.

 

Sad, but true. Thank you NVIDIA... (If you don't want to release drivers for your hardware, fine -- at least provide some decent specs like your rivals do... there's a whole community of driver devs that would actually work to write the drivers for you if only you would release specs. Reverse engineering is slow, painful work, which is why Noveau is making such slow (albeit *very* impressive) progress.)

Edit: And yes, yes I *did* just nest brackets in casual conversation.

 

The graphics on the T410s aren't great; they're slower than the 320M despite being a dedicated solution, and they're slower than the Sandy Bridge integrated GPU too. In fact, compared to the Arrandale integrated graphics that the T410s has, the discrete GPU is only about 1.5x as fast. The major advantage of the NVIDIA GPU is driver compatibility.

That said, the MacBook Air uses LV (13") / ULV(11") Core 2 Duo CPUs. Even the fastest MacBook Air option (13" with the upgraded 2.13GHz CPU) is way slower than the i5 you can get in the T410s.

The T420s, which should be available tomorrow, has the second-generation (Sandy Bridge) Core CPUs. CPU-wise, they're even faster than the Arrandale i5 (about 20%). Compared with the base 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo in the the MacBook Air 13", the i5-2520M is around twice as fast (or more). GPU performance is also reasonably similar between the 320M and the Sandy Bridge integrated GPU, although the 320M has more consistent performance and better drivers.

Based on the results from the X220, the T420s should also have considerably better battery life than the T410s. The X220 obviously has a smaller screen than the T420s, but otherwise it's very similar (same CPUs, hard drives, etc.). With the 63Wh battery reviewers are reporting real-world battery life of around 7.5 hours, which works out to about 8.5W. That means that the T420s with the 44Wh 6-cell battery (and no bay battery) should realistically get around 5 hours of battery life. With the UltraBay battery (76Wh total) expect around 9 hours of battery life.

The T410s/T420s in my opinion are fantastic machines. You get all the performance (full power CPU) and utility (bigger screen, big touchpad, optical drive, lots of ports) of the bigger, heavier T410/T420. The downsides are battery life and increased cost.

 

Totally agree with you...