Time for More Battery Life Metrics

Battery life is extremely important to any mobile technology user, but good info can be hard to come by. Notebook vendors toss around simplistic battery life claims that don’t reflect real-world scenarios. I don’t see any reason why they can’t provide their customers with more information about battery life.

I’ve been talking about this issue for the past couple of days with Pat Moorhead from AMD. You can see one of those conversations here:

Nigel Dessau, AMD’s chief marketing officer, compared notebook battery life to miles per gallon in a recent blog post. Fuel efficiency is expressed in city/highway/combined miles per gallon, providing buyers with a good sense of what they’ll actually experience.

Before I bought my new car I saw the below fuel efficiency ratings. After  4,000 miles the car has gotten exactly 18 MPG according to its computer. I’m satisfied with my car’s fuel consumption because it’s pretty close to what is advertised.

But notebook manufacturers typically advertise notebooks’  maximum battery life. While it’s technically possible to achieve these numbers, it’s unusual to regularly to get as much run time out of your notebook as manufacturers advertise.

I completely agree with Nigel Dessau and Pat Moorhead of AMD that the industry should do a better job informing consumers about how long notebook batteries will last in the real world. The AMD guys recommend using a battery benchmark tool that is more processor-intensive than the tool most OEMs use, but I think the best way to provide accurate info is to simply provide metrics that reflect real-world usage.

Why can’t notebook companies run some real-world tests and label boxes with something like the below?

Manufacturers who advertise the least power-hungry configuration of their notebooks leave those who order notebooks with dedicated graphics cards, high-speed hard drives and other extras completely in the dark.

For example, Apple states the following about the new uni-body MacBook Pro on its product page:

“Use the new NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor for great everyday performance with up to 5 hours of battery life.¹ Or switch to the discrete NVIDIA 9600M GT graphics processor for the fastest, smoothest, clearest graphics yet.”

Apple doesn’t bother listing the best-case scenario battery life if you use the NVIDIA 9600M GT GPU. The footnote at the bottom of the page reads:

“Testing conducted by Apple in October 2008 using preproduction 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo-based MacBook Pro units with a Better Battery Life setting. Battery life depends on configuration and use. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information. The wireless productivity test measures battery life by wirelessly browsing various websites and editing text in a word processing document with display brightness set to 50%.”

No, I don’t expect to get five hours of battery life from my MacBook Pro when I’m editing movies or importing photos, but the ‘5-hour’ label doesn’t come close to reflecting my real-world experience.  My MacBook Pro runs two to three hours when switched to integrated graphics and between  one and two hours when utilizing the power-hungry GPU. I obviously didn’t buy a pre-production model and my MacBook Pro has a different processor. I always run multiple applications and keep my display set to between 70% and 100% brightness.

AMD put together the below comparison chart of two different battery benchmarks. 3DMark 06  is more resource intensive, while MobileMark 2007 gives you a better sense of the absolute maximum battery life if you’re not doing a whole lot with it. As its name implies 3DMark 06 runs through tasks such as rendering 3D scenes.

How would you like companies to advertise battery life? Sound off in the comments below, or let some industry marketers know at AMD Blogs.