Notebook Battery Life Performance
As end users, we never just read or write data to our drives. Even if we did, power consumption varies based on the workload we apply. After a write takes place, the SSD consumes additional power executing background tasks like garbage collection, TRIM and wear-leveling. An SSD that consumes x watts processing sequential data, y watts churning through random data and z watts at idle might not facilitate better notebook battery life than a competing drive found to use more power in those same tasks.
Rather than looking at numbers of nearly insignificant value, we want to present the bigger picture.
For more information on how we test notebook battery life, click here.
Bapco MobileMark 2012 v1.5 Notebook Battery Life
In the specifications section, we mentioned that the Ignite 480GB idles as low as 10mW in DEVSLP mode. That may drop after an upcoming firmware update. However, you can't be guaranteed a corresponding battery life increase. In our real-world service time results, we showed how long certain tasks took to complete. Once it finishes, the drive goes through its clean-up process with garbage collection and wear-leveling, drawing even more power. This is why our consumption measurements are reflected in run time, rather than isolating the SSD's corner case power use.
The service times we observed were average compared to the other SSDs in this capacity class. But the battery life of our Lenovo T440, even with DEVSLP enabled, fell flat. Hopefully Patriot can address its low score through an update.
Power Restricted Performance
Performance takes a back seat when running on battery power. Today's notebooks maximize run time by slowing the system buses, processor clock rates, DRAM speed and so on. In this chart, we look at overall system performance in a reduced power state. As you can see, the tested drives fare almost identically, though some SSDs distinguish themselves slightly.