Sony Touts 25 Hour Battery Life For Haswell-Equipped Vaio Pro

An anonymous reader writes "Sony claims that both the new 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch models of its Haswell-equipped Vaio Pro ultrabooks are the world's lightest. The 11.6-inch model weighs in at 1.9lb (0.87k , where as the 13.3-incher is a little heavier at just 2.33lb (1.06kg). But it's the battery life on offer here that really makes the new Pros stand out. The 11.6-inch Vaio Pro offers 11 hours of battery life as standard, while the 13.3-inch achieves 8 hours. However, Sony is also offering a sheet battery you can connect to the base of the ultrabooks. On the 13.3-inch Pro that increases battery life to 18 hours, but on the 11.6-inch you get a true day-long amount of juice with 25 hours of battery life claimed."

Comments

BatteryMark 2007

[Jeremy Erwin]

Imagine if automakers got together and started measuring the gas mileage of new cars with a cool test of their own making—one in which the cars were rolling downhill with their engines idling. Suddenly you'd have some pretty amazing claims: Why, that three-ton SUV gets 300 miles per gallon! This subcompact gets 500! In tiny print at the bottom of the window sticker you'd find a disclaimer saying that, well, um, you know, your mileage may vary.

Crazy, right? Yet that's more or less what's happening with laptop computers and their battery lives. Right now, I'm looking at a Best Buy flier touting a $599 Dell laptop that gets "up to 5 hours and 40 minutes of battery life." Down in the fine print comes a disclaimer explaining that "battery life will vary" based on a bunch of factors. Translation: you ain't gonna get five hours and 40 minutes, bub. Not ever. Not even close.

From a 2009 article excoriating the practice.

A computer that can function for ten hours is quite useful, but a twenty-five hour battery life is only marginally more so.

Re:BatteryMark 2007

[Anonymous Coward]

...then consider the life of the laptop... a year from now when the 24 hour battery is back down to a 10 hour battery and a 10 hour battery down to 5 or less. considering that batteries degrade generally in line with their full lifecycle abuse, the 24 hour battery will degrade on a better curve for the usage/abuse patterns.

Re:Waiting for Apple

[antifoidulus]

Say what you want about Apple, one thing you cannot (rationally) debate is that their claimed battery life is among the most accurate in the industry. Multiple reviews from multiple sources have basically all confirmed that Apple's battery life estimates are pretty accurate. Not saying that Sony's aren't accurate, but if you are going to hate, at least hate with facts instead of just making shit up.