Saturday, April 11, 2009

LCD on the Wall, Which Netbook Battery Lasts the Longest of Them All?

batteries_netbook

On the hunt for a travel netbook? After testing out early models with squished keyboards I decided to wait for a model with useable size and 10" seems to be about perfect. I originally thought I wanted a fully loaded netbook until I realized that wasn't the point. Netbooks are not intended to replace laptops. They are intended to be ultra portable with prices making them nearly disposable. Netbooks are perfect travel companions for photographers who need to dump the days pictures onto a backup external hard drive and review images on a screen larger than the thumbnail preview on the back of their camera.

Since a unit's size is an important feature, how much juice can you realistically expect from the form factor? Find the list of which models last the longest after the jump.

A recent article was posted with a chart of netbook battery life of popular netbook models. They identified the MSI Wind U115 Hybrid as the pack leader (thanks to it's 6-cell battery and use of SSD hd to save power) however, other upcoming models that look promising such as the Samsung NC10, the Asus 1000HE (E for extended battery) and the Dell Mini 10 were not tested.



































































ModelLife
Samsung NC10N/A
Asus 1000HEN/A
MSI Wind U115 Hybrid6:56
Asus Eee PC 1000HD4:12
Asus Eee PC 9013:59
MSI Wind U1003:40
Asus Eee PC 1000H3:33
Asus N10J3:05
Dell Inspiron Mini 93:05
Asus Eee PC S1012:41
Acer Aspire One AOA1102:19
Toshiba NB1002:14
HP Mini 1001TU2:05
Lenovo IdeaPad S101:55
Dell Inspiron Mini 121:47

It's interesting to note how poor the Dell Mini 12 performed. The larger screen and higher resolution is likely to blame. This highlights an important decision future netbook buyers will need to consider: Longer battery life or a better looking screen?

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