Help me understand the difference in battery life

[tlgriffith]

I am thinking about purchasing a laptop. I am trying to figure out what is responsible for the huge difference in battery life between two products. At first I thought the TDP of each hardware component made a big difference but now I am wondering if it has to do with something else (i.e. the screen type, the battery itself, or other). Example A is a custom choice SAGER product which I emailed a sales representative to acquire some info.

Sager NP3240

i7-6500u

14" IPS Matte Display

16GB Kingston HyperX CL9 Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 2 X 8GB

256GB Samsung 950 Pro M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD - as an OS Drive (Primary Drive C)

1TB Samsung 850 EVO Series SATA3 Solid State Disk Drive

Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260 M.2 AC Wireless LAN + Bluetooth Module

I asked a series of questions and there response was this


-NP3240
-3.97 LBs including Bare bone and Battery Pack
-13.39" (w) x 9.53" (d) x 0.87" (h)
-Discharge: at least 1:30 (by 3D), up to 4:00 (with lowest CPU under 2D idle), normal use 3:00.
-No internal optical disk drive.
-Bluetooth—We don’t have the spec here, by check from Intel site found out the AC 3165 is 4.2, -and Ac 7265 is 4.0


Now if I go to HP.com, HP boasts the HP elite book 850 G3 Notebook PC (Energy Star) laptop meets a 12 hour battery life.

Why is that? There is rarely any difference I can see in the hardware. The sager PC has one more SSD and it does not even have a dedicated GPU like the HP laptop.

Is it the battery itself? The display?

If it is the battery, can the Sager PC battery be replaced by a longer life battery?

Thank you

 

[Rogue Leader]

It could be many things, the battery technology itself, the motherboard (HP's may be tuned to turn unused things off quicker saving battery life), the efficiency of the display.

Yes the battery is removable on the Sager, but the batteries are generally proprietary to the device, so unless Sager offers a bigger battery, there is nothing you can do here.

 

[sixbone]

hard to say since you don't list any of the specs of the HP you are comparing it to. The HP lists three different possible CPU options, i3, i5 or i7.

all things being equal, it will come down to battery size and power management features. big names like HP, Dell etc. all shoot for battery life. Don't think Saeger has the deep pockets to match them.

 

[jaguarskx]

It could be many things included components used in the design of each laptop that draws less power.

It seems the sale representative is providing you with battery life estimates based on actual benchmark testing. On the other hand HP (like all other major laptop brands) is providing you with very optimistic battery life. It's best to lower HP's stated battery life by 20% - 30%. The only brand that actually give you pretty accurate battery estimates is Apple.

The best thing to do is to Google reviews of the HP Elitebook 850 and take a look that their battery benchmark tests.