Is no one interested in a 15" notebook that has ultra high battery life instead of raw performance?

[tybert7]

I ask this because every time I stumble upon some amazing looking 15" notebook with a massive battery, I see things that I know will cut into that battery massively. The latest example was me checking out the Asus site to see what kinds of 15" models they had available.

I came across the zenbook 15

ASUS ZenBook Pro UX501VW - Features

4k screen - great option
96wh battery included - phenomenal top end battery capacity.


cpus? only an i7 quad
gpu? only a 960m

This same notebook with a core i5/i7 u series part would use much less power, even moreso sans the dedicated gpu.


With that battery you might be able to break 8-10 hours of use with the right chips, but does virtually every person who wants a 15 with a large battery ALSO want a dedicated gpu and quad core energy sucking intel chip? Because that seems to be the ONLY way to get a 15" notebook with a larger capacity battery.


Every time a u series part is used it's usually on a smaller form factor with a smaller battery. HP released a 15" specter with a 15w part and a 4k screen, but they were chasing thinness and weight so instead of a 96 or 85wh battery... it's only a 66wh battery....

Why won't someone just make a 15 a bit thicker to squeeze a jumbo battery with an efficient intel or future zen apu part?

 

[pxc]

It seems that many of new laptops with very long battery life use low power Core M chips. But there are modestly sized 15" laptops with long battery life like the Dell XPS 15 with 84Whr battery option, which weighs under 4.5 lbs. To keep it affordable, skip the 4k display option.

 

[tybert7]

It seems that many of the very long battery life laptops use low power Core M chips. But there are modestly sized 15" laptops with long batter life like the Dell XPS 15 with 84Whr battery option, which weighs under 4.5 lbs.

And it is saddled with the full 35-45w tdp part so it burns through energy there faster, along with the dedicated gpu. If someone is not doing heavy workloads on the notebook, or gaming, it's wasted power that serves no purpose but to eat up battery life.


I think higher end chromebooks will be more likely to target this segment first. dell and hp have more upscale 13" chromebook options, once they go 15" I think there will some non low rent versions that have greater than 10 hour battery life for general browsing / typing / media playback work/use

 

[Deleted member 245375]

I have a Dell Latitude E6400 + 9-cell + 12-cell slice that still gets me 19+ hours of useful battery life (with a profile I created and 30% brightness) so, it's basically 6 years old nowadays and still has the original batteries from 2010 and it still outlasts anything else I've ever tried. Yes it's heavy but I don't stand around holding my laptop trying to use it so, when it's on a flat surface I don't give a rat's ass how heavy it is, all I know is that I can charge it up and it just goes on for a long damned time.

I don't necessarily care about the latest and greatest technology, especially considering it just doesn't last nearly as long as I think it should considering how supposedly efficient things are nowadays and with improvements in power technology.

So me something that will give me 19+ hours of usable battery life that runs a real operating system (please, ChromeOS... nope) and then I might be interested. I've yet to find or use anything that comes anywhere near what this E6400 is capable of doing in terms of battery life and it's a 'lowly' Core 2 Duo but it damned sure gets the job done just fine by me.

 

[pxc]

And it is saddled with the full 35-45w tdp part so it burns through energy there faster, along with the dedicated gpu. If someone is not doing heavy workloads on the notebook, or gaming, it's wasted power that serves no purpose but to eat up battery life.

No, that's not how CPU or GPU power usage works. Under lower loads, the CPU works in 1) lower voltage, 2) slower clock and 3) powers down unused portions of the chip. The GPU does similar things, if it doesn't have auto switching mode to swap between the iGPU and dGPU.

As a worst case hardware configuration, for comparing battery life in "typical usage" (meaning basically web browsing), Ars tested the high end XPS 15 with Core i7-6700HQ, GTX 960M and power hungry 4k display with the 84Whr battery and found it lasted over 8 hours in the web browsing test. Dell XPS 15 review: A bigger version of the best PC laptop [Updated] An SSD-equipped near-base model with 84Whr battery option, 2.7GHz i3 processor, iGPU only and 1080p display would be just want you wanted. Dell claims up to 17 hours battery life in that configuration, but 40% display brightness is too low IMO.

 

[tybert7]

No, that's not how CPU or GPU power usage works. Under lower loads, the CPU works in 1) lower voltage, 2) slower clock and 3) powers down unused portions of the chip. The GPU does similar things, if it doesn't have auto switching mode to swap between the iGPU and dGPU.

As a worst case hardware configuration, for comparing battery life in "typical usage" (meaning basically web browsing), Ars tested the high end XPS 15 with Core i7-6700HQ, GTX 960M and power hungry 4k display with the 84Whr battery and found it lasted over 8 hours in the web browsing test. Dell XPS 15 review: A bigger version of the best PC laptop [Updated] An SSD-equipped near-base model with 84Whr battery option, 2.7GHz i3 processor, iGPU only and 1080p display would be just want you wanted. Dell claims up to 17 hours battery life in that configuration, but 40% display brightness is too low IMO.

But the idle power usage of an i7-6700HQ + a 960m is still higher than a i7-6500u series part is it not? And when it does need to perform tasks, the u series part has lower peak power usage. Seems like that is an area where power usage can be gained.

 

[livfree]

Personally... I'd love a 15" notebook with reasonable power but also a big power pack. Say quad i7, 960m, 16GB RAM, NVME SSD, 1440p touchscreen (not 4k!), and a huge ol' battery.

 

[jimh425]

I much prefer a 13.3. It's significantly smaller and lighter which makes it fit in many more places. I've also had 11.6 and 15 models.

As far as battery goes, keep in mind that newer CPUs sip power, so the large batteries really aren't required when you're portable. I can easily make an entire flight in the US or to Hawaii with plenty of power left. My notebook is a HP x360 with i7 and SSD and FHD. But most flights have AC.

If you can plug in, you can use a relatively small power adapter on these thin notebooks. Still lighter than a giant battery.

 

[tybert7]

Personally... I'd love a 15" notebook with reasonable power but also a big power pack. Say quad i7, 960m, 16GB RAM, NVME SSD, 1440p touchscreen (not 4k!), and a huge ol' battery.

I think I have have found a stopgap to keep my current 15" from late 2011 in the running (sandy i7, 8gb ram, no performance issues but battery life around 2 hours or less now) until the pc makers get their heads out of their ass.

EDIT: tried to link something on amazon but it would not show up, here are the keywords to search

MAXOAK 50000mAh 185wh

 

[project86]

Personally... I'd love a 15" notebook with reasonable power but also a big power pack. Say quad i7, 960m, 16GB RAM, NVME SSD, 1440p touchscreen (not 4k!), and a huge ol' battery.

This sounds perfect for me as well. I've got a few 13 and 14 inchers but 15 is the sweet spot for me when it comes to doing more serious stuff beyond browsing, email etc.

I don't even need the 960, integrated is fine though I suppose the 960 would switch over and go inactive when not needed.

Somebody make one of these and I'll buy it today!