Looking for a laptop with battery life

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cyberjip

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1. What is your budget?
Under $2000, $1000-$1500 preferable.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
14-15"

3. What screen resolution do you want?
Does not really matter, although 1920x1080 would be nice.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Portability is key, as it is for work.

5. How much battery life do you need?
8-10 hours would be preferable. The more the better.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
N/A

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Mainly word, many instances of chrome, and occasional video editing and programming (with occasional parallelism). Also would like to be able to watch HD movies without issue.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Does not matter.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Would like a new laptop, site doesn't matter as long as it's reputable.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
4 or so years.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
Does not matter, although bluray reader would be nice.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
Brand does not matter, although would like a PC.

13. What country do you live in?
US

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
Would like a quick computer, that can handle many applications being open at once, but my overall priority is great battery life. Have built rigs in the past ,but when it comes to laptops I am lost. Would also prefer the laptop to not be too bulky, as is the case with the ASUS Gaming Series.

EDIT: Posted in proper format
 
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Brett928S2

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Hi :)

8 TO 10 HOURS.... lol

You will have to carry a spare charged battery...or two...

Forget manufacturers figures...the average you will get even from a high cost laptop is 2 to 4 hours.... assuming you are using it for anything...

And I sell lappies....so its an honest answer...

All the best Brett :)
 
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cyberjip

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Well when I had a macbook pro, the battery actually lasted 8-10 hours doing normal activities. I understand that there are certain activities that I cannot do sustain battery life, but my main point is that I would like a laptop with good battery life. I was wondering if there was a PC equivalent of it, that does not have the $2300 price tag. If 8-10 is not possible with any non-mac while doing simple activities such as word without internet, then I would just like to know a laptop that has a good battery, yet is still useful. The more life the better really.
 
jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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I can only think of 1 laptop with 8 - 10 hours of battery life... the 12.5" Lenovo X220. It can last up to 8 hours if you get the one with a SSD instead of the traditional HDD. The resolution is a bit low at 1366x768, but since the screen is only 12.5" any higher resolution might make things a bit difficult to read unless you have really excellent vision. The X220 is very light starting at 3lbs. However, there is a catch... there is no optical drive whatsoever; you will need to purchase an external optical drive if you want one. With the addition of a "slice battery" (maybe another 0.5 - 0.7 lbs of weight), the X220 is rated up to 23 hours of battery life.

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/x-series/x220/

It's successor; the X230; is expected to be released next month according to Lenovo's website. It's more or less the same ultrabook laptop with the new Ivy Bridge CPU, and a 1366x768 resolution IPS screen is going to be standard rather than an option. With the "slice battery" it is rated with 24 hour of battery life.

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/x-series/x230/

Alternatively, there is the 13.3" Lenovo X1 laptop starting at 3.7lbs. You can get up to 10 hours of battery life if you use the "slice battery". Again, no optical drive.

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/x-series/x1/
 
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cyberjip

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Since it seems 8-10 is unreasonable, what laptops are available around the 6-7 hour lifespan? I would really like the 1080p screen, and am willing to sacrifice a few hours for it.
 
jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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You know what? I forgot about the 14" Lenovo ThinkPad T420s. It is rated up to 10 hours battery life with a "bay battery". The bay battery goes in place of the DVD drive; I suppose the bay drive is one of the options or accessories you can add to laptop (i.e. additional cost). The screen has a resolution of 1600x900.

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/t-series/t420s/


It's successor, the T430s, is "coming soon" which probably means in July. It will likely be the same laptop, but with an Ivy Bridge CPU and an updated Up to NVIDIA® NVS 5200M 1GB switchable graphics as an option. It's rated at 6 hours of battery life. Interesting that there is no mention of a "bay battery".

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/t-series/t430s/
 
jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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There's the 15.6" ThinkPad T520 which seems to encompass everything you are looking for....

+ There is an option for a 1920x1080 screen
+ Up to 25.6 hours of battery life with "Slice Battery". No mention of battery life with just the standard battery though.
+ It comes with a DVD drive.

- No option for Blu Ray Drive
- Weight excluding Slice Battery is 5.6lbs

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/t-series/t520/


Again, there is a successor, the T530 that is coming out next month which will be using the new Ivy Bridge CPU.

http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/t-series/t530/


As an owner of an IBM ThinkPad T40 from 2003, the ThinkPads are more or less bulletproof. It still works to this very day. But the single core Pentium M 1.5GHz CPU is a bit sluggish nowadays. Even surfing the net with it there is sometimes a bit of lag. Yes, even internet browsers are more resource demanding than they were 9 years ago.
 
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cbrunnem

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this is mostly true but i just wanted to say my laptop can easily get 5 hours doing chrome with 3-5 tabs open.
it has a i7 so i would say its higher end speed wise
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834131115



the thing you have to remember about macs is that they have a battery that is normally twice the size of a normal pc battery hence why they get twice the battery life.

if you got a i5 laptop with a decent battery and switchable graphics i could easily see 5-7 hours of battery life as my i7 get 5.
 
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po1nted

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Agreed, I get ~5 hours with my Alienware m17x (i7 w/ SSD) using Intel 3000 GPU and turning the screen brightness down. It is more like 4:45 after a bit over a year of heavy mobile use, but I was hitting right about 5:15 when it was new.
 
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Brett928S2

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Hi :)

To the OP...

If you read the above posts carefully and read between the lines...its ALL about the screen size and quality vs battery power...

So a 17 inch HD screen running a HD movie will probably last 2 hours ish....

A 12 inch low res screen running the net ONLY will probably last 3 to 6 hours...

So you have to decide WHICH size and WHAT quality you require , then work out battery life....but take my word it will NEVER be as good as the manufacturers say...

All the best Brett :)
 
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cyberjip

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I have typically found that reducing the optimal battery life by two hours is what I will typically get. I am mainly looking for a 15" laptop with a battery life around 5-7 hours with wifi browsing. The performance specs would mainly be used while plugged in, but I would still like for it to be able to have good performance when I want it to. 1080p is not required, but it would be useful if a battery could power it for the 5-7 hours with wifi browsing. My job requires me to move between locations a lot, and thus during normal work hours, I would like a laptop that could last me almost all day using mainly wifi, internet browser, and microsoft office programs.

From what I have gathered thus far, it seems the Lenovo laptops have the most potential to meet my requirements, although I am still looking for other brands that can give me decent battery life with a good looking screen. I have had an ASUS laptop in the past, and find their customer service to be excellent, is Lenovo's customer service the same way? I am still looking for many different options, and as I said before I am not planning on using this for gaming, so I do not need some fancy dedicated graphics card, just something that can power HD movies or applications such as Photoshop(with battery life being excluded for these scenarios).

Thanks!
 
jaguarskx

jaguarskx

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Lenovo's customer/technical support should be pretty good. They are generally divided into two categories: Business (ThinkPads) and Consumer (all others). I dealt with the consumer tech support to resolve an issue with my IdeaPad Y470 last year, they were pretty prompt. I didn't have to constantly transferred around and I don't think I was on hold waiting to speak to someone for more than 5 or 10 minutes.

Support for their business class laptops (ThinkPads) should be just as good or better since IBM set the standard for business class support before selling the division to Lenovo. I can't say how good or bad IBM's tech support when I bought my ThinkPad T40 since I never had any issues with it.

I'll likely dump my IdeaPad next year in favor of a 14" ThinkPad w/ 1600x900 resolution or 15.6" ThinkPad with 1920x1080 resolution when Lenovo refreshes their line with Intel's next CPU architecture; Haswell.

If I had to choose this year it be between the ThinkPad T430s, T530, or W530. Most likely the T430s due to it's light weight.
 
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