Shootouts

The Ultra Battle: 7 Intel CULV Notebooks Fight it Out!

By Aloysius Low - 9 Feb 2010

Battery Life and Portability

Battery Life and Portability

While performance of these notebooks would be a little lower than your usual full-fledged performance notebooks using Intel Core 2 Duo/Core i5 and i7 processors, the platform using Intel CULV processors is supposed to deliver a much longer battery life for better portability. We took the seven notebooks to task with our usual video looping test on a 720p video.

We don't really expect Intel Atom like stamina given our previous experience with earlier incarnations of the CULV processor platform, so the uptime of little over 2 hours for some units should come as no surprise. What's surprising however are the over 5-hour battery uptime of some of the notebooks - easily lasting long enough that you need not worry about running out of juice when unplugged from your power source. This of course comes with a more hefty battery unit so we'll have to see how it holds up in our Portability Index soon after the jump to see if the extra weight is worth the lugging effort. Note however, that LG T380 relied on an 8-cell battery for its longevity, but the HP Pavilion dm3 is close behind despite using a 6-cell battery - and the answer lies in the latter's more efficient battery consumption.

Our Portability Index is derived via a simple formula whereby battery uptime gets divided by the product of the unit's weight and volume; the higher the score, the more portable the unit is. Given the ultrathin and ultralight status of the notebooks in this shootout, coupled with their decent battery life, we're expecting to see pretty high scores that should easily match up to some of the Intel Atom machines. And we weren't disappointed to say the least. The scores basically show that most of the units were pretty portable, with the exception of the Dell Inspiron 13z that scored lowest amongst our notebooks. The MSI X-Slim X340 while not a marathon runner in battery performance, it comes out on top here thanks to its slim and svelte figure, so that speaks volumes on its portable nature. Meanwhile most of the others fared reasonably with very similar ranking on this index.

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.