Battery Life

We complete two separate tests to assess battery life. For gaming laptops, we first run Unigine Valley's benchmark (1,920 x 1,080, default settings) continuously to give an estimate of gaming battery life. This is performed at half brightness with Wi-Fi enabled, audio muted, keyboard backlights disabled, and the maximum performance mode set in Windows.

The other test, with which we test every laptop, uses PCMark 8's Work suite set to Battery Life mode. This simulates using web browsers, spreadsheets, and other light non-gaming tasks that should give you an idea of how long the battery will last under typical light workload conditions. For this test, we reduce brightness to minimum and set the power setting to Power Saver mode but leave Wi-Fi enabled, audio muted, and keyboard backlights disabled.