i3-6100U with SSD or i5-7200U with no SSD for battery life?

[elamby44]

Hi all,

I've been trying to find a new laptop for uni this year and have narrowed it down to two possibles.
My requirement s have been long battery life (around 6+ hours for lectures) and minimum graphic capabilities for casual gaming (sims 4 only.) I have a gaming PC at home so I go 'cold turkey' whilst at uni.

The two laptops I've found are:
Acer Aspire F15 F5-573G
Intel Core i3-6100U Dual Core Processor
15.6" Full HD Screen
Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit
8GB DDR4 RAM
128GB SSD + 1000GB HDD
DVD Rewriter
Dedicated GeForce GTX 950M 4GB Graphics
USB3 | HDMI | Bluetooth
F5-573G-334G
NX.GDAEK.003

and

Acer Aspire 5 A517-51G-58DD
Intel Core i5-7200U Dual Core Processor
17.3" Full HD IPS Screen
Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit
8GB DDR4 RAM
1000GB HDD
DVD RW
Dedicated NVidia GeForce 940MX 2GB Graphics
USB3 | HDMI | Bluetooth
NX.GSTEK.001

Which one do you guys think is better or do you have any better recommendations? My budget is up to £900.

Many thanks,
Emma

 

[darkbreeze]

Might want to find out if these both use the same battery model, or if they are completely different batteries. The mAH of the battery might be an even bigger factor than what hardware it has considering you can reduce power consumption considerably using the Windows control panel power options.

At face value I'd say the i5 system would use less power due to the fact that it has only a single drive instead of two like the i3 system has, plus it has a lower tiered graphics adapter, which in turn should use less power as well. Plus, with a larger screen and higher performance CPU it's likely to be a lot more pleasant working on it. The 7200u is also newer, so it's likely that it's more energy efficient as Kaby lake variants had a small increase in efficiency over Skylake.