MSI Wind U123 and ASUS 1000HE Show Netbook Evolution

Battery Capacity Testing

One of the charms of the netbook format is the promise that the little computers can provide very long battery life by using less powerful processors that consume extremely low power compared to current top-performing CPUs. Netbooks have quickly developed a reputation for sipping power and truly providing the ability to power a flight-long session or a work session for a full 8-hour workday. This has been helped along by manufacturers who have been beefing up battery capacity in more recent netbooks and claiming increasingly longer battery life in their specifications.

Of course you didn't come to AnandTech to see a list of manufacturer's claims, you came here for real world test results. Like notebooks, the battery life claims in netbook specs really don't provide the kind of information most buyers are looking for. Why specify battery life with the netbook wireless LAN turned off as most manufacturers do? The most visited websites use flash imaging, so why test with just non-flash websites to inflate battery life numbers? Do you really care about how the battery lasts with very long idle periods? We believe most want to know how long a battery charge lasts when a netbook is used as most people use them. Therefore the AnandTech battery life test is conducted with a wireless internet connection constantly on, viewing pages that contain some flash images among the text.

In AnandTech notebook battery testing the screen brightness is calibrated so that is equal on each tested notebook. The netbook is a particular challenge in this regard, since the highest current netbook screen resolution is 1024x600. We have several versions of standardized brightness calibration software, but the lowest resolution supported by any package is 1024x768. Since it makes little sense to test battery life with an external display we addressed this issue by setting an ASUS 1000HA to the middle of its brightness adjustment scale. Other displays were visually matched to the mid-level brightness of the ASUS 1000HA screen.

All hibernation and power management schemes were disabled on the netbook, and a wireless connection was established from the netbook under test while the battery charger was still attached. We connect to a script at anandtech.com that cycles among a group of standard anandtech.com pages that contain text, charts, graphs, and flash elements. The pages are continuously cycled at a fixed interval. The charger is then disconnected and a stop watch started. The test is run until the netbook shuts off due to low battery power.  This is the same Battery Test run in our recent MacBook Pro article.

Results are reported in hours and minutes and provide a comparison of battery performance under common usage at the most demanding conditions. Please keep in mind that the AnandTech battery life results represent a realistic usage scenario. If you use an Ethernet connection and rarely use wireless your battery life will be slightly longer. If you surf the web with long intervals of inactivity, your battery life will again be longer. If you disable flash, battery life will also improve.