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    Two hours battery life out of my T520 i5

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by orangejuice, Mar 25, 2013.

  1. orangejuice

    orangejuice Notebook Enthusiast

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    With the standard sized battery I get around 2-3 hours of battery life out of my T520 since I got it the first day. Currently I run a stock Windows 8 (Windows 7 before with similar runtime). Settings are always maximum brightness, WLAN and energy saving power mode, Intel SSD and removed ultrabay. Yesterday I read a post from another user having a battery life of around eight hours on a T530 i7 with the larger battery.

    Will I notice a huge increase in running time when using the large battery?
    How can a different cpu/chipset (T530) perform so much different in bettery life than my sandy bridge / i5?
     
    orangejuice, Mar 25, 2013
    #1
  2. power7

    power7 Notebook Evangelist

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    9 cell battery will give you +50% battery life to what you're currently seeing.

    As to numbers, it's not about chipset differences, and more about expectations. 8+ battery life with 9 cell and 15" laptop (big display is power hog) is about setting brightness to 50% or less, and using the machine in typewriter mode with it being idle most of the time. Start using the machine for something more taxing than reading and browsing - and it not be even close to 8 hours, even with 9 cell battery.

    Check that your GPU (if you have it) is off, that you don't have background processes consuming a lot of CPU (like antivirus etc). Lenovo Power Manager (it's for Windows 7, but is installable on Windows 8 in compatibility mode) will tell you approximately how many watts the machine is consuming at any given moment.
     
    power7, Mar 25, 2013
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  3. Renee

    Renee Notebook Virtuoso

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    I have W520 with a nine cell that the battery life time fell instantly to about an hour. As I recall there is nothing that can be done about it but buy a new battery.
    Renee
     
    Renee, Mar 25, 2013
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  4. Jarhead

    Jarhead 恋の♡アカサタナ

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    IIRC, there were two different suppliers of batteries for these Thinkpads. Sayno, as I understand it, make the crap batteries that end up doing stuff like what OP and Renee describe (as I understand), whereas the other (LG, iirc) is pretty high in quality and shouldn't have major issues. My W520 9-cell is about two years old and still gets about 4-5 hours of battery life at 50% brightness, Intel graphics only (Optimus disabled), and light Internet browsing. Need to go check what battery I'm using on it, however, since I forget which brand it is.
     
    Jarhead, Mar 25, 2013
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  5. Kaso

    Kaso Notebook Virtuoso

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    ThinkPad batteries by Panasonic are generally considered best.

    (Unlucky me, I get Sanyo batteries for most of my CTO ThinkPads.)
     
    Kaso, Mar 25, 2013
    #5