Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Battery & Thermal Tests
Battery Test - Tomb Raider 2013 Battery Rundown
To test battery life, we set each laptop’s battery profile to balanced while running Tomb Raider’s built-in benchmark at the lowest detail preset. The frame rate is locked at 30 fps through GeForce Experience’s Battery Boost to limit the strain on the battery. Meanwhile, a script running in the background monitors and time stamps the system’s battery percentage. The laptops are set to hibernate once battery levels reach 5 percent. We test the battery life at 200 nits.
The Blade features an 80Wh battery, which is impressive considering how thin it is. The large battery in conjunction with the Max-Q GTX 1070 earns the Blade the number one spot in our roundup, outlasting the Equinox by over half an hour. The Acer Predator Helios 300 takes second place because of its small 48Wh battery.
Thermal Testing
With a chassis this thin, there’s only so much space that can be dedicated to the cooling solution. Sure enough the Blade scores came in hot, with an average of 74.3° C (as measured by HWInfo) and maxing out at 80° C. As stunning as the Blade is, the thin chassis comes at the expense of cooling, and this may deter customers living in warmer regions.
MORE: Best Gaming Laptops
MORE: Gaming Laptop Previews
MORE: All Laptop Content
Nvidia plans to make major investments in Thailand
GlobalFoundries helps pay off student loans to retain and attract semiconductor talent — qualified US employees receive up to $28,500 in student debt relief
Linus Torvalds is "fed up with buggy hardware and completely theoretical attacks" — Linux kernel creator lashes out ahead of proposed kernel code modifications
