PSA: First wave of FHD Blades possibly shipping soon

All due respect, you've got a greater chance of crossing paths with a real life unicorn.

Just isn't going to happen. I didn't and don't buy gaming laptops (portable or otherwise), based on battery life; because I know it's an oxymoron. Even if by turning the brightness down to 30%, enabling power saver, undervolting, disabling this, disabling that and doing nothing more than browsing Cosco.com, you were able to eke out 4.5-5 hours; it's basically unusable at that point. You're better off with a traditional ultrabook if battery life is on your "want" list.

I very rarely, if ever, use my gaming laptops unplugged. For many reasons. It's just par for the course. I disabled Optimus (another good intention, horrible implementation as far as technology goes) on this new laptop, have high performance power plan enabled and sleep disabled. It runs at 100%, all the time. That's how I choose to utilize my gaming laptops. If I unplug this from the wall, I'd be lucky to get an hour and a half out of it. And I'm ok with that.

 

I am so so so surprised so many people ask about battery life with these gaming laptops. I understand people want multiple uses for them but battery is literally dead last in my priority list for a gaming laptop. If I wanted productivity with mediocre gpu performance I'd get a mac. But I'll never do that again because battery life means nothing when the gpu can't push what I need it to.

 

To be fair, one of the big selling points of the Blade 14" is portability while still providing all the necessary horsepower when needed. Given that Alienware laptops could push 5+ hours with lighter work back in 2011, I feel asking for about the same battery performance from a gaming laptop in 2016 to be perfectly reasonable.

 

Portability doesn't mean long battery life. They are light, small and easily transportable. That's their allure. And as you eluded to, all while providing necessary horsepower when needed. Alienware laptops are the antithesis of the Blade (or similar) laptops. Even today. But back in 2011, an Alienware laptop was basically a smaller desktop. No one's ever confused an AW laptop with "light, small and easily transportable".

Anyway, just as the trade-off of owning a fast, 8-cylinder car is poor gas mileage; poor battery life is the trade-off of owning a small, portable, gaming laptop. Most of us have accepted that.

 

Battery life is a dimension of portability when talking about laptops. It always has been, since a laptop that always has to be near a wall outlet is less portable than a laptop which can go without a charge for a while. No-one here is asking to game for 5 hours on a Blade, but one should be able to browse the web for that long. Why? Because the power density of Lithium Ion batteries has improved since 2011, as has overall power efficiency of computing. In addition, both the 2011 Alienware and the 2016 Blade utilize Optimus. It's really not that far of a stretch, and battery tests of the Blade in reviews elsewhere do indeed get 5 hours in several instances.

 

I understand your point, and they are valid for those shopping for a "portable laptop". And in that regard, you have many, many options that will yield you many hours of battery life.

But the Blade (and similar devices), are a niche product. It's not an XPS, ZenBook, Yoga, Surface Book, Spectre, MacBook, Aspire, etc.... It's a small, light, gaming laptop with hardware and performance near to that of a desktop. With that, comes a trade-off in battery life.

The one review mentioned of 5+ hours of battery life on the Blade, look at everything that was disabled and all that had to be tinkered with in order to achieve that. It was basically useless and at that point, you are not using the product for its intended purpose.

Bottom line: if you want long battery life; a gaming laptop is not for you.

 

Hey guys, looking for some advice on how to eek some extra battery life out of my laptop. I have never been one to go through a lot of settings to try and get good battery life, but I'd like to set up a profile for when I'm on battery to make the most out of it and worry about performance when I am plugged in.

Aside from turning the brightness down and time it takes for the screen to turn off, what are typically the most recommended settings to use or adjust to help improve battery life?

Last night I just got my laptop, charged it up and laid down in bed and was at about 95% charge, turned brightness down very low, if not as low as it will go and turned the brightness on the keyboard off. Only application I had running was the Blizzard b.net launcher downloading WoW. I had the laptop set to shut off on battery after an hour and when I woke up this morning the laptop was asleep and had about 50-55% battery left so it seemed like it drained about 40% in an hour with brightness down, screen off, keyboard LEDs off. Granted this could get me 2 hours or so out of it while is more than my AW 17 would give me (and is not portable at all), and more than my Lenovo s230u gives me (maybe about 30-45 minutes now although the laptop is old) so I am happy I am at least getting more than my current machines, but I'd love to just get a little more. 3-4 hours working hours would be perfect for me for LEDs off or low, brightness low and doing Office stuff or web browsing, if I could get 3-4 hours doing that I'd be happy (yeah yeah I know bought a gaming laptop and wants to improve his battery life shame on him).

I was curious as well if anyone has any experience with external battery packs. I have one I purchased on a trip for my Lenovo because my battery is so awful on that and I have to say I've really liked this battery when I had to use it and it easily gave me an extra hour or 2 on a plane of web browsing/attempting to play Rocket League and other random stuff. Does anyone know if a battery like this would work for the Blade? It had multiple tips which I have not had the chance to go through yet since I just got the laptop but if it has a tip compatible with the Blade, will this be a way to charge it or get a little extra power on the go, or can I risk doing any damage attempting to use it? Hoping someone might have some experience or advice about this. The battery pack in question is https://www.amazon.com/Lenmar-PowerPort-External-Notebook-Adapters/dp/B008EG64PC

 

Want to order in few days

 

From all the reviews I am seeing, the Blade only gets less than 5 hours of battery life under heavy use. I will be doing my own benchmarking when mine arrives.

@Lunatics: I can't say for certain, but battery saver mode in Windows 10 seems to help extend battery life even under moderate use on most machines. Also, heavy use of the wifi antenna will increase power consumption quite a bit.

 

I honestly couldn't agree more with this. Better off waiting for battery technology to improve in the next few years then hope for a fairly beastly machine that gets you hours and hours of battery. I'll take a few hours battery and that's more than sufficient.

 

I'm sorry my friend... it's just not going to happen

Accept it...

 

But you're comparing a thin and light Blade to a fat Alienware, the Blade has utterly minimal space for a battery while the Alienware can put a larger battery in without issue. It's not really comparable. Also, battery technology has remained quite stagnant and these new Blades are getting more power hungry CPUs and GPUs.

 

Get some power packs if you want more juice.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I get 5-6 hours on battery on light use
Blade 1060 QHD

My settings-

Intel - max battery
Power options - power saver - max CPU on battery - 33% max/40 percent max screen brightness/and pretty much every setting on the advance power option to max battery while on battery.

I also have batterybar pro that auto switches to power saver options when I pull the plug out.

 

Thank you sir. That proves our point.

 

@ForzaBlue: I cannot. There are too many variables in play; I must test it for myself.

@SireOblivion: Indeed, I am comparing a fat Alienware from 5 years ago with the newest Blade. Components have not gotten any more power hungry during that time; on average they have actually gotten several times more efficient. The primary difference will be, as you pointed out, the size of the battery. The reference Alienware had a huge 90wh battery. The Blade's is 70wh. However, the blade doesn't need to spin up a hard drive, and for light use and properly configured, the Blade should perform at levels comparable to the specs of the older device but at a much lower level of utilization, allowing it to do the same work with less power.

That's the theory at least. Mileage will vary depending on the type of work to be done on battery and how effective the system is at utilizing the newest power management features of the Blade's components. That is why I noted that I will be conducting my own tests once my Blade arrives.

 

Anybody who got pushed for delivery on their blade (preorder on the First day) got any info on the Razer Sleeve?

 

Hi guys, I've been lurking this forum for a while, reading your experiences on the Razer Blade etc, very valuable!
So a few days ago decided to go for a Razer Blade 1060 QHD but found the page I was directed to after clicking the 'buy now' to be broken. Now the page is fixed but I'm directed to the Razer Blade 970m for much more €'s while first I could check the price of the various 1060 configs in €'s and it said "free shipping to Denmark" (where I live).
So... Does this mean the 1060 Blade is not available to purchase and have send to Denmark?

 

This what I got for the FHD blade 1060 while using the web using Microsoft edge

 

I get 5-6 hours as well but I have to be honest real world performance is more like 2-3 hours. I'm the type that likes to watch movies and youtube on Chrome throughout the day and I have to be constantly online. I also set adaptive brightness so I never know when the brightness goes up.

I have to agree though that gaming laptops are not ultraportables. Of course, try streaming a movie on an ultraportable. Your battery life goes down to a half hour.