Asus Eee PC 900 Battery Life

Asus Eee PC 900 James Kendrick over at jkkmobile did a comprehensive battery life test on the new 8.9-inch Eee PC 900 (still powered by an Intel Celeron M) and made some interesting observations.

He tested the Eee PC 900 under a full load (with battery savings and standby off, brightness at 100%, WiFi on) using different batterys and throttling the CPU down to 630MHz from the default 900MHz. Battery Eater 2005 was used.

With a specific BIOS (0302) or eeectl software, when throttling the CPU down to 630MHz, he was able to get from half an hour to almost a full hour more of battery life. That’s quite a performance hit for Windows, but if you are willing to watch what you are doing, it can be worth it.

With the largest third-party battery (6-cell, 7800mAh), running at 630MHz, he was able to get almost 4 hours and 15 minutes, and with the smallest four-cell battery at 630MHz, he hit two hours and thirty minutes.

That last is significant – in the article I posted before this about the MSI Wind PC and its battery life, VR-Zone got around two hours and fifteen minutes. The MSI Wind (with an Intel Atom CPU) was using a 3-cell 2200mAh battery while the Eee PC 900 was using a 4-cell 4400mAh battery. Almost the same battery life on both, with 2200mAh less capacity on the Wind.

Obviously it’s not the best of comparisons since both the Wind and Eee PC 900 were tested under slightly different conditions, but clearly, the Intel Atom is going to be a worthwhile contender when it comes to battery life (performance wise, we’ll have to wait).

Read: jkkmobile