Thinkpad Tablet 2 - Initial Impressions

[bemymonkey]

I've been doing some additional battery tests. Consistently burning 12-13% an hour at 50% brightness when doing basic tasks like web browsing. This is much better than my previous results and is consistent with the results I've seen of other clover trail tablets.

Actually that figure seems a bit high. The same thing here (browsing with mid brightness on the clover trail ATIV) only drains about 6-8% per hour... I'm guessing you'll see a huge improvement after a few driver updates... maybe that was the reason for the shipping delays.

[mios2]

I've been doing some additional battery tests. Consistently burning 12-13% an hour at 50% brightness when doing basic tasks like web browsing. This is much better than my previous results and is consistent with the results I've seen of other clover trail tablets.

Did you use Chrome, Office 2010 or Office 2013 release preview in your tests? If so, using IE and Office 2013 RTM (Trial) would improve battery life?

[noxxle]

Actually that figure seems a bit high. The same thing here (browsing with mid brightness on the clover trail ATIV) only drains about 6-8% per hour... I'm guessing you'll see a huge improvement after a few driver updates... maybe that was the reason for the shipping delays.

6-8% cannot be right. That is between 12-16.5 hours of battery life.

Tom's Hardware thoroughly benched the Samsung 500t and Anandtech benched the Acer W510. These tablets were getting closer to 8 hours while web browsing. That is not only consistent with my results, but makes perfect sense considering the similar hardware.

[noxxle]

Did you use Chrome, Office 2010 or Office 2013 release preview in your tests? If so, using IE and Office 2013 RTM (Trial) would improve battery life?

I used Chrome, IE10 and Office 2010. I tried doing nothing but web browsing in Chrome and IE10, in two separate one-hour sessions. Both burned 12% an hour.

[bemymonkey]

6-8% cannot be right. That is between 12-16.5 hours of battery life.

That's correct, on minimum brightness I'm sure I could hit 15 hours.

[noxxle]

That's correct, on minimum brightness I'm sure I could hit 15 hours.

What are you getting with brightness at 50%?

[bemymonkey]

On 50% brightness, I'm having a very hard time getting it below 50% battery if I take it off the charger when I get up in the morning... takes about 7 or 8 hours of straight use, which I find absolutely insane. Only web and OneNote though... Today I only used the device for about 90 minutes or so (standby the rest of the time, about 7 hours) and the battery is at 91%. Very satisfied ATM...

And as mentioned before, the TPT2 should be getting similar run times as soon as the drivers mature...

[noxxle]

On 50% brightness, I'm having a very hard time getting it below 50% battery if I take it off the charger when I get up in the morning... takes about 7 or 8 hours of straight use, which I find absolutely insane. Only web and OneNote though... Today I only used the device for about 90 minutes or so (standby the rest of the time, about 7 hours) and the battery is at 91%. Very satisfied ATM...

And as mentioned before, the TPT2 should be getting similar run times as soon as the drivers mature...

Well congrats. You are getting better battery life, by leaps and bounds, than what all respectable techsites are reporting...

[bemymonkey]

Remember, most of these tech sites use standardized run-down tests that are very much more strenuous than regular office work. Most constantly reload web pages and stream Flash videos, which will run down a battery very quickly.

I'm sure if I were constantly streaming Flash videos at full brightness, I wouldn't see more than 6 or 7 hours of battery life either...

[ships10]

The best tech site is this very one!
Those guys can be very iffy.