Is my laptop's battery life acceptable?

[walterbyrd_59]

I think I can still return it, and I'm thinking about it.

The battery life on the HP G62X is rated at 5.5 hours.

To test the battery life, I took the advice of a poster on these forums. I charged the system to 100%. Then I played a dvd, full screen, sound all the way up, and my wi-fi was on. The system shut down after 2 hours and 15 minutes, less the half the advertised battery life. When I brought the system back up, the system reported that I had 7% of battery life left.

I was hoping to get, at least, 50% of the advertised battery rate. Instead I got 41%. Is this typical? Is it acceptable? Should I return the laptop?

 

[hunter315]

Thats not at all how they test battery life, you gave it a pretty rough scenario for a laptop, i assume you had screen brightness all the way up too? The battery life is rated at idle conditions, 10% brightness, minimal CPU activity, wifi off, just sitting at the desktop doing nothing. Your test cannot be compared to theirs by any measure because it wasnt at all controlled. Now if you were just typing in a word doc or browsing the web i bet you will get closer to 4 hours.

 

[walterbyrd_59]

Yes, the screen brightness was all the way up. Indeed it was a rough test. But, I was only looking for 50% of the advertised battery life.

Under the circumstances, do you feel that the battery life was acceptable?

 

[ScrewySqrl]

for what you did as a stress test? yeah, 2.5 was pretty good.

 

[walterbyrd_59]

> for what you did as a stress test? yeah, 2.5 was pretty good.

It was more like 2.25 hours. But still close enough, I guess.

 

[hunter315]

Its like buying a new car and going 100MPH on the highway and getting only 40% of the stated highway mileage and wondering if you should return it because it doesnt live up to its claims. If you operate it that far out of the tested parameters you cannot expect to come close, if you do, you need some help.

 

[walterbyrd_59]

Again, I was not expecting 5.5 hours, I am just a bit disappointed at 2.25 hours. I was hoping for 2.75 hours, I would have been very happy with 3.0 hours.

If everybody here thinks 2.25 hours is acceptable, I will let it go.