Shootouts

Attack of the Mammoths: 18.4-inch DTR Shootout!

By Aloysius Low - 9 Dec 2008

Battery Life and Portability Index

Battery Life and Portability Index

Here's another number cruncher that should give a good indication of how long the units will last when not being a desktop replacement (i.e. when you're using it on the go), which, if you ask us, shouldn't be happening often seeing as how it's supposed to be replacing the desktop with the kind of weight and power they posses. On the whole, our DTR notebooks performed pretty well, lasting more than an hour and mostly either reaching or crossing the two-hour mark. The champion here is the lovely HP HDX18t with a total running time of 2 hours and 23 minutes and was followed by the Acer Aspire 8930G and the Toshiba Qosmio G50 with timings of 1 hour and 57 minutes and 1 hour and 54 minutes respectively.

Power consumption too also remained pretty constant putting the Sony VAIO as the highest in power draw as with the lowest up-time, but results were mostly close except for HP unit which scored the lowest power consumption. HP's slightly tamer specifications certainly had a profound affect in the overall battery life and power consumption of the unit. Of course, HP engineers could have done better power optimization over the competition too for an overall better effect.

We aren't expecting a cool number for the Portability Index benchmark here so hold your breath folks, and try not to wince too much. Despite the expected small figures, the better unit among the 18.4-inch DTR segment is again the HP unit with the best score out of the four. While it's not light, long lasting or portable when compared to the myriad other notebooks in the market, it certainly lives up to these aspects within the 18.4-inch DTR ring of notebooks. In fact all four trumped the portability index of the Dell XPS M1730 hard-core gaming notebook, which is a 17-inch unit. So while they're not as difficult to handle as their physical size seems, they are nevertheless best left tied to your desk.

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