Intel Core i7-2820QM – Sandy Bridge For Notebook PCs

Battery Life Benchmark

Battery life is hands down the most important feature on notebooks, so
before we show you some numbers let’s take a look at how we got our
battery life numbers.

To test the battery life, we let both notebooks idle in power saver
mode with the wireless turned on and the monitor brightness all the way down. We recorded from the second when we unplugged the power till when Windows 7 reached roughly 7% battery life. This is the
point where the system hibernates shortly after you see the much hated
pop-up seen below.

In order to get an idea of how long the
battery would last under a work load, we played the Blu-ray movie Inception in balanced battery mode with 100% screen brightness until the notebook went into hibernation mode
again.

Results: The Compal notebook we are using for Sandy Bridge has a 4800mAhm 71Whr battery. The HP DV4-1555dx comes with a 6-cell battery that is rated at 4200mAh,
47Wh. This puts the HP DV4-1555dx at a disadvantage when it comes to
battery life as it has a lesser reserve. The HP DV4-1555dx was unable to
play the movie Inception from start to finish as it is a two hour long movie, which is frustrating in real life. The Compal notebook with the Intel Core i7-2820QM Sandy Bridge CPU was able to last 3 hours and 29 minutes on the battery in balanced mode with the screen brightness at 100%. The ASUS K42F was not tested here since the Blu-ray drive is no longer working. Yes, we plan on contacting ASUS to get it RMA’d.