x220 battery life

You can get a second opinion on power drain from a program such as HWiNFO32. However, there's no good reason for programs to mis-report the power drain since the power coming from the battery is reported, I believe, by the battery itself. Power Manager's estimate of power consumption while on mains power is, I think, a less accurate estimate. It's less than the power at the socket by more than I would expect to be conversion less in the PSU.

John

 

I had ok battery life, 4-5 hrs with screen on 10 when I first received this.
Now i am getting 5.5 - 6.3 hours consistently with screen on 12 wifi, excel, outlook always on and my out look is push email ( Ex server).

I got rid of all the Lenovo software except for the finger print reader.
I am still waiting for my 9 cell.

 

I'm going to have to disagree with the conclusion in that thread. They left far too many things out of consideration.

I'll copy my thoughts:

First off, the Lenovo software reports the power coming out of the battery. No, it's probably not absolutely accurate, but I'm pretty sure it has more resolution than a kill a watt.

Second, this goes beyond just the dongle. I notice a similar increase in power usage on my machine with nearly any active USB device plugged in. It's not just the power used by the dongle, but also the USB hub not being able to be put to sleep. You have to power the entire hub as well as whatever is plugged into it. I can certainly see this being a small 2 watts.

Lastly, the test on AC is a poor test. 1, you used a kill a watt, which is not the easiest thing to 2 watts on. 2, you did it on AC when the machine isn't trying as aggressively to put things to sleep. The USB hub may have remained fully powered during that test.

So I'm going to say this is all inconclusive. I agree that the dongle doesn't take 2 watts to run. But if it's the difference between a powered USB hub vs a sleeping USB hub..... the jury's out.

 

This is totally in line with what I am seeing now, too. I have the i7.

 

Did you remove all the Lenovo software as well?

 

I am currently deciding between the i7-2620 and i5-2520 with 6-cell battery. Is there any knowledge how the bigger CPU affects battery life in everyday usage (Internet, Office, Flash etc.)?

 

Some day, I would like to see a very long battery life (over 10 hours) with max brightness, full cpu/gpu power/Flash/Movies and games, and not have to play the "Lower the hardware settings" in order to achieve longer battery life and those manufacture battery life spec sheets that say you can get up to so and so battery life.

Oh well ! Some day perhaps.......:SLEEP:

 

I appear to be getting 9 to 10 hours. I have an absolute minimal install. That is just the Lenovo drivers that I absolutely need. (Card reader, USB 3, BT, chipset and OSD and quick keys stuff) No extra Lenovo stuff and stock windows HD driver (I get hang ups with the Intel RST). I also did some Blackviper services tweaks. I have the i7 and 8GBs of RAM. 9-cell battery.

 

Well I don't play games on this, but I was able to get ~10 hours with brightness on max half the time, watching a 720P video for an hour, half an hour of flash, and the rest of the time browsing the web/displaying bright colors. I didn't lower hardware settings either so it was on a near-max-performance profile.

 

No, I kept most of it. I dont use access connections, password keeper, auto lock, active protection. The other stuff i kept.

 

I seem to be getting the same - with the i7, 9 cell. I'm actually kind of disappointed. I was expecting to easily get over 10 hours - especially with aggressive power management and my screen set to around 7.

Is anybody with the i7 able to squeeze more than that?

 

With light-regular usage, I can pull 6 hours out of the 6-cell.

I'm a bit dissapointed too, as the laptop was hyped to have better battery life. I keep thinking that I'm missing some battery-saving setting.

 

Wait..... the machine is labeled as "up to 23 hours" and you are disappointed with 9-10 (without the slice)? Assuming "up to 23" that means "up to 11.5" on a single 9 cell. Since I'm pretty much 100% that NOBODY uses a machine in the ideal way that will get you the "up to" part..... how is 9-10 hours a disappointment?

I don't mean to sound negative here but I think you guys are being a touch unrealistic.

 

Well the claim is actually quite believable. Using my Intel 160GB SSD, my idle wattage is 6.5W, so I can actually get 13 hours with the 9-cell, assuming that I'm doing light tasks, like surfing the web, and reading documents. This is with 10/15 brightness.

 

The stock factory install has a registry tweak for maximum power saving for Intel Wifi in Windows 7, so that may be helpful to install.

 

But that's kind of my point, I mean at this power usage level half a watt makes a difference of 10 percent or more in run time. If you went from 6.5 to 7 watts you'd theoretically drop just over an hour off your run time! It's an ideal number. If you are actually doing anything significant or turning up the brightness, or more importantly, using the machine on any kind of balanced or performance setting, you aren't going to get 10+ hours.

 

One more observation, just trying to bring some realism in here. Many people have reported that something as simple as having a USB device plugged in can raise power usage (due to the USB bus being active) by anywhere from 1-2 watts. Assume a worst case of 2 watts, using the number you just provided that takes you to 8.5 watts usage, and shrinks your plugged in time to 9.9 hours. So something as simple as plugging in a USB device can knock over 3 hours off your time. When you are in the single digit watt usage range, you can get HUGE swings in run time from some of the most simple of things.

 

But I do get 10+ hours in real world performance. This is with web browsing, document editing, and email checking.
It's good to use an SSD for this, as well as tweaking the time before the SSD goes idle. Right now my battery reads 7 hours, at 62%, and with active posting.

 

Max power pulled by a USB port is 1.5W, IIRC. So you can quickly unplug after you're done. I can't see plugging in a USB device the entire time of using the laptop, but that's just me.

 

That's great! I just want to make people aware that something very simple can be the culprit. Maybe they have a hardware monitor polling something every second and keeping it awake. Maybe it's a usb dongle that's sucking some power. Or maybe they are on a balance/performance profile, I don't know, but it take very very little to drop that number significantly. Some websites alone can knock your run time from 13 to 7 hours just by a small flash applet that keeps looping.

I hope everyone can get their machines there but you really have to keep an eye on what's running on the machine.

 

5 volts * 500 ma for USB 2.0 is a max of 2.5 watts.

 

Yes, I can definitely agree with you. Even the Intel-released TurboBoost monitor increases your wattage by 1W with the constant polling of CPU speed. You have to be smart about what's on your machine (or you can just be whatever, and don't care too much about battery, I guess )

 

Ah good to know. I guess I remembered it wrong then.

 

I noticed that as well! I actually set mine to load using a task in task manager. I set it to not run when on battery. This way on startup if I'm on battery it won't load, if I'm plugged in it will load!

edit: regarding the turbo boost monitor.

 

Does the X220 get better battery life with a clean install, or with the Lenovo software on it?

 

I don't want to waste time arguing with you - but I am disappointed at the 9-10 hours when it's touted as 13+ hours with the 9 cell.

I'm willing to bet nobody gets close to 23 hours - even with the 9 cell + the slice.

And as far as I know - the slice is a 6 cell battery - so the run time wouldn't be divided in half as your 11.5 hour estimate is. By your math - the 9 cell battery should provide 13.8 hours - or 13 hours 48 minutes. I don't get close to that - so I believe it is quite realistic to be disappointed.

 

What is the registry setting?

 

Ah, you are right, it's a 6 cell. I have a W series so I have a 9 cell slice. I really don't mean to be argumentative, I just wanted to show that at the wattage range these laptops are operating in, it's VERY easy to diminish run time, and only being very vigilant about what's running and consuming your resources will get you near the 13 hour mark. Zepher said he did it. My W520 gets about 8-9 on a 9 cell, which is near the "up to" figure given for it. I had to limit the things I had running in the back ground and use a custom profile similar to the max battery profile, so it's throttled back all the way. That said however, web browsing by itself can make my run time drop by 4 hours simply by a flash video loading. This is more the point I wanted to make.

You will find this with Lenovo, HP, etc, etc...

My 9 cell slice + 9 cell battery on my W520 with a quad core CPU and NVS2000M nvidia w/optimus gets me around 18 hours. I have to imagine if you scrutinize how much cpu time everything on your machine is consuming and work on it that you can get 10+, but you really really really have to keep an eye on what's running and consuming your resources.

 

^^^ I agree with that. These sandy bridge processors... You can EASILY wipe your battery away. I wish there was a way to keep the processor throttled even more.

 

It would be nice if one of the browsers had a setting to turn flash on/off. That might help save battery for some people.

 

Firefox!!!! Download the plugin flash block! Every flash item on the page will simply show a "play" button. You have to click the play button to enable the flash item.

 

ohh nice! I didn't know about that! I'll download it later when I get the x220t. That'll probably save battery and reduce heat!

 

I've been using that for years for this very reason. However, even with FlashBlock running, I find that having Firefox open with, typically, 30 tabs, still provides the biggest CPU load.

The Low Performance setting in Power Manager may lock the CPU down to minimum speed. However, this may not save power because the CPU will run for longer before it can go back to sleep. The key to reducing CPU power consumption is to avoid unnecessary CPU activity. You can get a useful guide to what is using the CPU by adding the CPU time column on the processes tab in Task Manager. Also select Show processes from all users.

Other factors in power consumption are display brightness, whether you are using WiFi or 3G and distance to router / transmitter, Bluetooth and USB devices.

John

 

I used to be getting 4.5 hours with my 6 cell battery.

After disabling CPU Power Balancing in BIOS to get rid of the high pitched noise, I'm getting 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Way to go Lenovo!

 

Make sure MSCORSVW.exe has finished precompiling .NET binaries; your CPU usage will be maxed out while it's running. Not sure if it pauses itself on battery power though.

 

Chrome and Opera have this ability built in. Wish FF did too.

 

Uh... what exactly do you expect will happen when you disable a power saving mode?

 

Someone who has had over a dozen notebook in less then 10 years, I have only found one that comes close to that and it was the Asus UL 30A-X5. Advertised 12 + hours and I was getting ~ 9 hours with the full settling.
I would have kept that notebook if it wasn't for the cheap plastic feel and the finger print magnet.

 

who knows of that registry tweak they applied for the intel wireless?

those of you getting 10+ hours, what are you typical watt usage? Mine seems to hover between 7-10

with wifi off, I gain like 3~ hours of bat life, haha.

I also notice GPU seems to be 100% all the time, should that be?

 

I'd like to know the wifi tweak too. However, on the GPU issue, I've done a bit of research, i think, yes, the gpu will run at a stock 650mhz, unless it turbos up to 1300 for games. I think it would fluctuate more if you had a nvidia or ati gpu.

As for your watt usage, that's what I'm clocking in at.

So far, on average, it appears to be about 1 hour per cell. So the 6 cell comes in at about 6 hours with normal, human like usage, wifi on, brightness half way, balanced power mode, etc. With the 9 cell, Id expect to get about 9 hours, and the sheet battery is a 6 cell... So, that would tack on about 6 extra hours.

 

IIRC, some people are getting closer to 8, or at least 7 with the 6-cell. Perhaps?

 

On battery, I have everything turned wayyy down, to be fully battery optimized. ON AC, it can go full boar.

Right now, sitting idle, it says 15:17 hours left on a 9 cell...but I bet i'd only get 9-10, which is pretty reasonable .

Turning up the brightness definitely destroys the life though! would love to see this wifi tweak.

 

Maybe its different for me, but I can still get ~9-10 hours with brightness on 12/13 (close to max). This is with moderate web browsing, watching videos for ~30min, etc.

 

Launch all of your usual on-battery applications, get them to do whatever it is they usually do, and while they're working, run the powercfg -energy diagnostic. Look for anything bumping platform timer resolution in the report. (Chrome, I'm looking at you. @_@)

 

If people are actually managing 7 easy hours on the 6 cell, I want to know exactly what separates their setup and usage, from mine.

Really, at this point, 6 hours of decent usage is do-able, but 7-8? You must have the brightness down to 1-2, and wifi off.

EDIT: Interesting, made a new discovery. If you're running a SSD in your x220, make sure you install the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver. It appears to have boosted my battery life a little. I'm using an intel 320 ssd.

 

I could be wrong. Just seem to remember being told that my 5 3/4 hours was on the low side.

 

IDK man, I think 6 hours on the 6-cell seems to be standard. With light-medium web usage, 8 bright and wifi on.

 

Just dug out this post from a few weeks ago:

 

Yeah, I know what he said, but I haven't had anyone else confirm that 9 hour battery (6 cell), other than he.

Do you have an SSD installed? I will note that I do appear to be getting better battery life now that I have Intel Rapid Storage installed... but nowhere NEAR 9 hours. LOL

Oh yeah, I'm also using a factory install, with only lenovo drivers and the latest 1.16 bios.

 

7200 HDD, 1.15, original factory install, power-sourced optimised (deep sleep enabled, low system performance)