When did laptops start lasting 10 hrs?!

[JEDI]

My last laptop was a pre-covid refurb Dell.
After (finally) replacing the battery, it lasted 2 1/2 hrs.

That Dell finally died late last year.
I got a Lenovo with amd Ryzen 5 Ai.
specs say the battery lasts for 10hrs?! (haven't tested it)

How the heck?!

 

[Ritaliti]

The biggest factor is the shift to ARM-based and efficiency-focused chips. AMD's Ryzen AI series (which you have) and Apple's M-series chips both moved to architectures that sip power compared to anything from even 3-4 years ago. Your old Dell was probably running a 15-28W Intel chip that would boost way higher under any load – modern chips are much smarter about scaling power to what's actually needed.

.... and maybe the battery is just bigger 😀

 

[DavidC1]

My last laptop was a pre-covid refurb Dell.
After (finally) replacing the battery, it lasted 2 1/2 hrs.

That Dell finally died late last year.
I got a Lenovo with amd Ryzen 5 Ai.
specs say the battery lasts for 10hrs?! (haven't tested it)

How the heck?!

The real advancement came in 2013 with Intel's 4th Gen Core Haswell platform, when they and the industry decided to take a system-wide approach to reduce power. Haswell improved battery life by ~50% compared to the predecessor.

System-wide is correct, because the CPU acts like a leash in a horse carriage buggy and when and only when rest of the components are at low power, the CPU can finally reach a low power state. I know from playing around with Haswell and newer systems that a single mis-behaving component prevents the CPU from reaching the lower power state. In one laptop, replacing the WiFi module from Realtek to a Intel one reduced CPU idle from 1.5W to 1W.

The Dell XPS 12 I had used 3rd Gen Core and it lasted 5-6 hours. The Haswell successor got 8 hours. Over the next few years until 6th Gen Skylake they got better at implementing the new changes, and they managed to get another 20-30% out of it, reaching the magical 10. AMD also inherited many of the changes, thus they get decent battery life too.

In the x86-land even Skylake could do a lot more, because in 2013-2015 Intel had a separate mobile-focused lineup called Atom that could do ~50% more battery life at the same capacity. They used that expertise to build Core Ultra 200V series "Lunar Lake". The recently introduced Ultra 300 series "Pantherlake" is similar to that and gets another ~50% over ~Skylake lines.

The latest Dell XPS 16 with 300 series "Panther Lake" gets 26.6 hours WiFi browsing: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-16-review-Two-steps-forward-one-step-back.1251724.0.html

@Ritaliti

The biggest factor is the shift to ARM-based and efficiency-focused chips. AMD's Ryzen AI series (which you have) and Apple's M-series chips both moved to architectures that sip power compared to anything from even 3-4 years ago. Your old Dell was probably running a 15-28W Intel chip that would boost way higher under any load – modern chips are much smarter about scaling power to what's actually needed.

Buddy, 15-28W you are talking about is at high load like games and rendering. Even Pantherlake does the same thing. Battery life tests are mostly under light and bursty load like video playback and browsing. You could go to Windows and set it so your chip doesn't use more than 5W at max, but that won't improve battery life under light load.

Intel Atom pre-2013 were 3W chips, yet still had terrible battery life. Because the system couldn't idle low. It wasn't addressed seriously until 2013.

 

[JEDI]

DavidC1,

My old dell 3379 (around 2020) only lasted 2.5hrs with new eBay battery.

Hm.. Google says the 3379 battery life should be 7-8 hrs.

I'm guessing the supposed 3cell 42Whr battery was only 1 cell?

 

[DavidC1]

DavidC1,

My old dell 3379 (around 2020) only lasted 2.5hrs with new eBay battery.

Hm.. Google says the 3379 battery life should be 7-8 hrs.

I'm guessing the supposed 3cell 42Whr battery was only 1 cell?

2.5 hours? Is that on load like gaming or rendering? High workloads like that are just dependent on TDP settings, so if you lower that you'll get better. That's just a matter of installing Throttlestop and capping TDP to say 7W.

Battery life tests are on bursty workloads like video playback(youtube too) and web browsing. If it's 2.5 hours there, and your battery is actually 42WHr, then that's really poor for a 6th Gen U chip, if that's what you got. That's kinda interesting you say it's 2020, because 6th Gen U came out in 2016. Maybe they had surplus stocks being sold that late.

My 7th Gen Y did 4.5W under Youtube playback with a 42WHr battery, with about 9% degradation so really 39WHr, meaning 6-7 hours, battery not being drained to 0%. Also I keep screen brightness fairly low, not just for battery life but for my eyes as well. About 30% on my Lenovo Yoga 710. On the 27-inch Acer desktop I have it at 5% and it's more than bright enough for me. Thanks to that my 1440p 27-inch display uses only 13W.

With HWInfo open in the background, after Windows desktop loads and settles, your CPU Package Power should be at 1W or less while idling. 6th Gen U can do 0.5-0.7W. If not, then it's not working properly.

If you do full brightness then expect web browsing/video battery life to drop from 7-8 hours to probably 4-5.

Mind you if you had that for a while and installed a new operating system(like Windows 10) without installing all the drivers it'll prevent devices from powering down when they can. Even OS itself will affect that figure. What else have you changed? Did you swap out something like WiFi? Or got a new SSD?

I have a 4th Gen Haswell here and in Windows 10 it idles at 4.8W or higher. In Windows 8.1 it idles at 3.8W. Too bad its considered obsolete because from that perspective 8.1 was great on this device. Plus 8.1 starts and is noticeably more responsive than 10. Ideally you want an OS which existed when the system was introduced, but that's not always possible.

I'm guessing the supposed 3cell 42Whr battery was only 1 cell?

That's not how it works. You need 3 cells to make it even function, because you need the voltage 3 cells generate. What you mean is maybe it isn't the 42WHr they claimed it was. Somehow I doubt that's the case. Going from 7 hours to 2.5 hours is like 42WHr actually being 15WHr, and in the battery world they consider 80% as "end of life", and 15WHr is like 30%, which is considered uselessly dead.

 

[aigomorla]

they can last even longer when you have a 27,000mah TSA approved power bank with Power Delivery 3.0.

I think i pulled almost 25 hours on my surface pro with a single power bank, and was able to recharge the power bank in under 30 min with a PD charger while drinking coffee between my lay away. Never doing that kind of flight ever again, but had no options as it was the only available ticket in a time of emergency.