battery life for thinkpads

Can anyone attest to the battery life advertised for thinkpads?

as everyone knows years ago you could never believe the ads. But these days I feel like they are a lot more accurate under reasonable scenarios? ie 70% brightness doing normal day to day.

are people getting the 6-8 hours advertised with a 6cell?
Also some of those ultrabooks with 3 cells are advertising like 9+?!?! that can't be?

 

The battery life on ads are often gross overestimations not achievable even if you hibernate your laptop all along.

However, thinkpads do tend to have better battery life than other brands, and some (eg X and T series) offer slice batteries that can boost up your battery life to around 15 hours of normal usage, ie web browsing. A 9 cell x220 can last for 8 hours too.

 

While the battery life estimates are based on best-case configs, and admittedly unrealistic use scenarios they are definitely achievable under said conditions.

For example, x220 with a 9-Cell battery is rated for "15 hours", and my x220 could definitely do 15 hours if I left it idle with the screen brightness at 1/15.

Obviously I didn't actually try leaving the laptop on for 15 hours, but I did test for a consistent 5.5w idle power, and with a 94WHr battery, 94/5.5 = 17.1.

EDIT: 2410m with 4GB and a single Intel G2 SSD.

 

9-11 in my configuration in the sig, the x23o I have is 9.5-12 on the 9 cell with slices both are in the 17.5 - 25 hours ( real times, but depending on use. normally 75% brightness on IPS screen, SSD and HDD plus running a couple browsers and light photo editing )

 

When my T500's 9-cell battery was new, I could get around 7.5-8 hours on battery with constant light use. My X120e gets 6 hours on its 6-cell with light use. My brother's X230 gets 9-10 hours on a 9-cell with light but constant usage at around 3/4 brightness. I'd say Lenovo's estimates are usually pretty fair, leaning a tad on the optimistic side.

 

It's not just Lenovo. Most battery life estimates I've seen, regardless of the manufacturer, tend to be overly optimistic.

 

My now gone X220t was rated for 8-9 hours on 63 WHr battery, with an Intel 320 series 160 GB SSD, 2520M, and I could hit 10 hours on like 2/15 brightness, I had the same idle wattage as Commander Wolf 63/5.5 = 10+ hours