Results: Average Power Use
I like this chart a lot, because we get to see the average for each test, broken down by tablet.
When it comes to Web browsing, idling on Google’s homepage is clearly the least-demanding workload, while Wikipedia ranks second. Meanwhile, sitting on tomshardware.com imparts a fairly heavy load on each platform.
But look at how each tablet responds as the task shifts from light to heavy. In all cases, the Tegra 3-based Surface uses significantly more power than the other three solutions. When viewing google.com, both of the Qualcomm-based tablets offer the lowest power consumption. On Wikipedia, the Atom-based Acer slots in between the Samsung and Dell tablets. By the time we hit Tom’s Hardware, both of the APQ8060A-equipped systems are using more battery power than Acer’s W510.
Then there are the two video-oriented workloads. Playing back Iron Man is a measure of the video decode hardware's efficacy. The overall picture looks a lot like sitting idle on the simple Google homepage, actually. Samsung’s ATIV Tab even manages to use less power than it did with IE 10 open.
Shifting over to YouTube combines video playback with a fairly demanding webpage. Here, all platforms experience pretty significant spikes in power consumption. The Tegra 3-based Surface fares worst, followed by the XPS 10 and ATIV Tab, in that order. Interestingly, the Dell demonstrates slightly better power attributes in the browsing tests, while Samsung’s tablet is particularly strong in video.
