x220 battery life

Hi. Most of us have had our x220's for a few days now, and I wanted to start a thread to discuss the battery life, since this was one of the main selling points of this laptop.

I have the i7 with a 6-cell and an intel 320 ssd.

With wifi on, brightness set at about half way, cpu speed set to balanced, I'm averaging about a solid 6 hours with regular daily usage.

How is everyone else doing so far?

 

Had about the same with an HDD i7 8 GB memory. The brightness was set to 13 as well. Most work was with web browsing/forums and a couple of uploaded photos. CPU was balanced

 

9 cell, i5 2410, 6GB, SSD

For light web browsing with low brightness (<5) I'm seeing 11 as viable. Hard to say as I can't kill the damn battery, though!

In medium power modes with brightness up, 8-9 hours seems normal. Maxing brightness lops about an hour off from medium brightness, IPS + bright = power sucking.

 

Damn, I'm thinking I'm gonna need the 9cell, or the slice very soon. Nuts, I knew those reviews were too good to be true.

 

I was talking in another thread how I'm getting about 6-7 hours on 6 cell, 2520, 4gb, 320 7200. Brightness is usually from 0-3 lol (my screen is super bright even in sunny room).

This is off a clean install, not using Power Manager which isn't even installed. I'm using Windows Power management, pretty much everything is default... I'm set to Balanced. Will normally just run my computer from around 8am on full battery. No shut downs until the battery needs charged. So there are times when I'm preparing food and such the computer is basically doing nothing. I'd say probably 45 minutes total nothingness. I leave it on at these times just to get an accurate reading (wall clock).

My usage is office, browsing, some youtube (720), photoshop, site editing... no gaming at all. I usually have to plug into power around 2:30 or so.

Some other notes. Fingerprint reader is active (difference?), wireless off, on ethernet, pad and nub active, no bluetooth.

I honestly think after the fan issue is solved we will be seeing 8 hours.

 

9 cell with word, IE9, media player running music and outlook im getting around 11, with the slice im between 19 and 21 sofar I still want to tune it up more and tweak settings

 

I'm getting roughly 8-10 hours on my 9 cell i72620 8gb msata ssd+hd. That's on "maximum battery" setting with light browsing & word with brightness @ 9. I could probably push 11 hours with lower brightness and no wifi. On maximum battery the processor is at 800MHz most of the time, so I don't think the extra potential clock speed of the i7 has much of an effect.

 

Is it possible to undervolt the Sandybridge processor (using something such as RightMark CPU clock) for even greater battery life?? It worked fine on my centrino laptop...

 

AFIK not yet, sofar putting an SSD on a 7mm diet and pulling the mechanical drive seems to me our main battery increase.

I do hope we can undevolt at some point soon just to play with it. My MBP's desperatly need it when bootcamped

 

I have a i7 with 8 gig ram and 128 gig SSD, 9cell , I usually am getting 12 to 13 hours. however most of my work is through RDP. I just got a 4 cell since this is my month off and I don't want to be carrying around the 9cell when its not needed. I just got it today so I will report back how that works out.

ETA I can tell you the lightness difference between the 9cell and 4cell is amazing !!
ym

 

Uh huh... 0-3 is good for a dark room! In a *sunny* room, I'd need it at about 7-8, minimally.

 

Short answer is no.

 

I'm only getting around 5 hours with a CLEAN install and 6-cell battery.

Having wifi on and brightness set to around 7, constantly surfing, chatting, skyping, watching a few youtube 720p videos, sometimes listening to musik.


I'm using Lenovo Power Manager and have installed nearly every driver. Am I doing something wrong, do you have some tips for me?

 

your about right for the 6 cell. make sure your flash is fully up to date for youtube as that eats battery a bit more. also depends on your music app. craptunes tends to eat battery badly on windows, fubar2000 or ancient winamp seems best.

battery life is extremely depandant on the apps you are running

most of us with the around 10 - 11 hour range are running 9 cell units with SSD

 

Thanks for the info.

I'm using Google Chrome, where Flash is already implemented. But I'm keeping it up-to-date. I'm using WinAmp at the moment, so I think the apps are quite okay. Although I think Skype eats a lot of battery^^ But if I really need more Battery Life I think I can do it with the Power Manager, turning down the cpu and end background processes. BTW, I'm also using a SSD in combination with a HDD as the drive for my media..


But I still have one question:

Many of you are recommending to change the charging settings of the battery to ensure your battery will stay good for a longer time.
In the Power Manager I have ticked "Automatically optimize battery life expectancy".
What does this setting do exactly? It's for people who don't really use their battery 'cause their Thinkpad is on the charger all the time, am I right? Will this setting dynamically choose whether I'm always on the charger, so it will end charging with about 90%, OR whether I'm needing the battery, so it will fully charge it?

Because in my case, I will often be in both of the situations. Sometimes I need a fully charged battery, and sometimes I'm using the charger for some weeks or even longer...


Omg, I hope you've understood everything, I'm not a native speaker as you might have recognized

 

Just FYI, I'm getting 12 hours with the default 5400rpm HDD, so you don't really have to use SSD to get 10+ hours on the X220 with 9-cell.

 

Chrome also eats battery life. Skype too if you have it running in the background.

Consider Firefox 4 (or better, Pale Moon 4/Firefox Nightly 6) or IE9 (it's not that bad aside from the browser chrome appearance).

 

The battery meter with lenovo power manager is also somewhat conservative. Have you actually tried running the battery down fully, and keeping track with a clock?

 

Yes I did, today^^ It's nearly exactly 5 hours until I'm between 5 and 10%.
I'm not so disappointed with this result, but I'm wondering why the Factory Install seems to stay-up longer :-S (I read it in reviews and users said it). Maybe I can change anything in the System?

But please guys, try to answer my question above:

 

no you dont, but I tend to run screen brightness up and run a bit more intensive apps. none of us will ever get the same results. if I just run word and a terminal emulator on a LAN, dead low on screen brightness and no wireless, I have managed a full 15.5 on the 9 cell. but to me that is not real world testing or situations.

 

Going against the flow, I'm thinking of ordering a X220 with 4-cell battery, even though it costs a few £'s more. Reason being is that I want the machine to be as light as possible and there is a 150 grams difference between the 4 and 6.

Yeah, I know it sounds an unwise choice but I when I take a notebook out to the local library or internet cafe, I don't usually use it for more than 3 hrs max, usually less. I figure if I get the i3-2310, 5400 drive and keep brightness right down, I should still get a good few hours out of it. Perhaps?!?

Does anyone else on this forum actually have the 4-cell or will I be the first?

 

Your "consideration" missed WiFi, the major battery sucker!

Please, as my UK friends say, don't be weight "penny" wise and time "pound" foolish. Get the 6-cell.

 

Get the 6-cell. With 4-cells, you'll have fewer cells to wear level over and will probably suffer reduced overall battery lifespan.

 

It is only a five ounce difference between the 4 and 6. I guarantee there is five ounces either on your person or in your bag you can get rid of/ downsize. I would rather do that then get the smaller battery... personally. The best weight to lose without any sacrifices in personal functionality is around your waistline lol.

 

Automatically optimize battery life makes the changes invisible to you. The only way you'll know if it's on max life span mode is the outline around the battery icon in the taskbar changes.

The way it works is as follows: The power manager monitors your battery usage habits. If you
a) Use the battery nearly all the way down, it will FULLY charge your battery (it will show 100% on the meter and if you go to the advanced tab in the Lenovo power manager you should see that it's capacity is full).

b) If you use the battery lightly or not at all (I'm not sure what the exact threshold for lightly is, but for the sake of this conversation, lets call it 50%) for a period of a week or so, it sets maximum lifespan mode. In maximum lifespan mode (at least last time I used it) the battery WILL STILL SHOW 100% FULL in the taskbar. This can be decieving. It can lead you to believe you are getting less totaly battery life the first time you drain the battery fully. If you go into the advanced tab however in the power manager you'll be able to see that "100%" actually means only like 80% charged. Once you use the battery beyond the point that's considered "light usage" the power manager will then actually fully charge the next time.

If you don't like this behavior, I suggest you manually control the charge numbers. Charge it fully when you know you'll need the battery life, otherwise use some more conservative charging numbers.

 

Thank you very much for that exact description, infinus!

I think I like this behavior, seems to be a quite intelligent solution for me. I'm starting to like the Power Manager

 

Ok, 6-cell wins -)

Incidentally, does using a 3G mobile dongle use up a similar amount of juice as wifi does?

 

more actually

 

Indeed. Potentially a *lot* more, such as if you're in an situation where the card is constantly doing hand-offs between various towers (e.g. train travel).

 

A 3G USB dongle can potentially use up to 2.5W (the USB limit). An internal 3G modem card might even use more power. However, I lot will depend on range and amount of traffic. If you aren't actually using the internet connection then the idle power consumption of both WiFi and 3G will be reduced compared to their peak consumption.

John

 

My order includes both a 9 cell and a 4 cell.

I will use them as my appt schedule demands. While packing for a trip taking both is not a problem. And my days activities will determine which I carry with me.

Perry

 

I just got around 5.45 hrs from a full charge, timed via the clock. Using a 3G USB dongle (stationary) for 3.45 hrs of that time. Browsing only. One reboot.

X220 i5-2410, HDD 7200, 2GB, Bios 1.12, default factory install, 6-cell, IPS Brightness 7, Wifi and Bluetooth off.

Need to compare without using 3G.

 

Is anyone having battery issues but me? I have the i7 2620m, 8gb of ram, 120gb vertex 3, intel 6300 wireless card, and usually set my brightness between 5 and 12. I am only seeing between 4 and 6 hours of life on "maximum performance" with bluetooth on and wireless card off. The reason I don't use battery saver is because the performance gets noticeably slow for me. The only programs I have running are dropbox, firefox, microsoft word/powerpoint, and occasionally photoshop cs5. I was expected the 10-12 hours that most reviewers claimed for the 9 cell battery. I regret not opting for the slice battery as it's $230 seperately, but if this is what I get for the 9 cell, then I'll definitely need more.

 

No way you are getting 10-12 hours on maximum performance, sorry.

 

How many watts does that equal to? I'm suggest setting your profile for lenovo recommended or balanced. This will let your cpu rest when not needed and that technically should give you more battery life. And btw you most likely can get the slice for less than 200.

 

I don't expect to get 10 to 12 hours on max. performance, but reviewers like laptopmag claimed 12 hours of internet browsing. Regardles of the settings I use, I can't match their claims. Even with battery optimized settings, I'll get around 7 hours (with sucky scrolling performance)
And where can I buy the slice battery for under 200?

 

Something may be wrong there ArtistDave, but we don't know from the info you've given. Typically I thought 6 cell users are reporting 5-6 hours typical use with web browsing and wifi.

 

Is there a way to check if I have a defective battery? Battery life is the only reason I bought this laptop (other than keyboard/display) and to see it get barely more than my previous laptop is disappointing.

 

You probably need to monitor watts in use and have task manager up and see if any programs are running and preventing the cpu from sleeping. It doesn't take much. Even something like a hardware monitor that's polling every second can keep things from going to sleep.

 

Open Power Manager (battery icon on taskbar) and click on the Battery tab. Look at all the info there. Condition, Full Charge Capacity and Design Capacity.

 

On Maximum Performance with Wi-Fi on I'm only getting 3.5 - 4 hours myself. To be perfectly honest, I'm not overly impressed with that number, but I do run at high brightness pretty much all the time.

 

Perhaps the IPS panel is largely responsible and needs to be turned down to 7 or below to realise decent battery life?

 

Actually, I think I just found the culprit. With my Logitech Anywhere Mouse receiver plugged in, the battery life literally drops 20 - 40 minutes. That's pretty shocking to me to discover that it (seemingly) uses that much power. Anyone else experiencing this?

With the receiver plugged in, I see approx. 4:15 remaining with high brightness (15) and CPU performance set to Turbo and Deeper Sleep enabled (which allows the CPU to drop to 800MHz at will, but also allows it to ramp up to 3.2 GHz whenever it sees fit to complete more demanding tasks). With the receiver unplugged, the battery life jumps to 4:30-4:45 on average. Again, with 93% battery remaining.

Wow--now I'm up to 5 hours. I can't believe how much of a difference that tiny little receiver makes.

Shocker!

 

Watching the time readout isn't the best way to debug these things. There are a couple things you can do.

To test your battery, use the lenovo power manager and run a calibration. That will tell you precisely how much energy the battery can store. That tells you without a doubt whether your battery is functioning to spec or not.

Next you need to figure out your power drain for your profile. For that, I recommend the advanced tab in the power manager while on battery. Pull it up, let the machine sit idle for a few minutes, and see how many watts the machine is consuming. The X220, from what I think I've read, should be around 7 watts. If you are pulling more..... something is keeping the machine from sleeping/idling when it can. Then you can try plugging things in or shutting things down and see how that affects your wattage read out. The watts readout is much more up to date than the hours remaining. There is some amount of averaging that goes into that number that may make debugging a little more difficult. If the way you like your profile setup gets you only to 13-14 watts, then you won't be seeing the 9-10 hours of battery life you want.

 

I have been watching the wattages. Mine typically hovers around 10 or 11, with occasional spikes of course to considerably higher numbers. I think that's pretty good considering my power settings of high brightness and high performance pretty much everything.

 

Yes, I do. In real world usage, I get 11-12 hours on the 9-cell, at 10/15 brightness. Of course, I've done a few tweaks inside power manager, and manually configure power saving features for the Intel Wifi card inside Device Manager, as well as tweaking SpeedStep configurations inside the BIOS. You'll never get 10+ hours with the normal HDD without some intense tweaking.

 

Maybe you could outline your tweaks, if that isn't too much bother.

 

Using it for 3.5 hours on a 9-cell dropped it to 70% remaining. Should mean that I'll get ~10 hours+ on a full charge.

This is on balanced mode, brightness 12-15 varying. Core i7 with a mSata SSD + 250gb HDD.

 

The dongle for my Logitech M205 mouse is rated at 5V 55mA which means 0.275W. By itself, that isn't going to make much difference to the battery time. I've seen Bluetooth significantly boost the power consumption through an increase in CPU activity. Might you be running any Logitech software which is causing a lot of extra CPU activity by constantly checking for mouse input?

John

 

Hmm, indeed. Perhaps this has something to do with Power Manager's estimates instead. It looks as though I am not the first to stumble across this little enigma:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/accessories/522121-logitech-unifying-receiver-power-usage.html

I don't personally have a Fluke meter handy, but I'd imagine that'd be the best way to find out. Oddly enough, it does make a reasonable difference in battery life estimates via this Lenovo software though.