poor battery life on U330

[jrinco11]

hey ya'll -- I've been writing a review on the U330 for a couple days now, and keep getting horrible battery life (horrible in the sense that the rated battery life on lenovo's product page is 3-5 hours, and I keep getting 1.5-3 hours -- others in different forums are getting the same results).

Are these batteries bad?  Perhaps the rated batter life is incorrect?

I have been testing with BatteryEaterPro (which I realize will result in shorter battery times than the lowest rated time), but I've also just done normal usage (power saver mode, intel graphics, 3/10 brightness) and can only get about 3 hours.

(feel free to read more of the review at http://www.jrin.net/2008_09_26/lenovo-ideapad-u330-initial-hands-on-review )

anyone else have this issue?

[nlsqba]

Same battery issues for me...

I did a clean VISTA install - and stil not even close to 5 hours...

I will call lenovo later on to see what they think about this.

[jrinco11]

please report back as to what lenovo says if you do end up calling them!

[Geootsu]

jrinco11 thank you for your review, I am also waiting for my Lenovo U330, after reading your review i am dissapointed concerning about the battery life, so it was just another marketing lie about "up to 5 hours of battery life", hope that Lenovo will fix that problem cause for less money we can buy some HP with the same battery life.

[nlsqba]

I just PM Mark_Lenovo regarding this topic.

[Krik]

This battery life issue is a deal breaker.  I want to return the notebook but 15% restocking fee is too steep.  If I wanted crappy battery life, I would have bought a desktop replacement.  Not a light and thin notebook that this is being marketed as.  Battery life is nowhere near the 5 hours that Lenovo is claiming.

[MrCodeDude]

I'm getting about two hours out of the U330 off a fresh XP installation. This is pretty pathetic, I'm waiting for my S10 to arrive before making a decision, but this may very well be going back.

My dad's 15" Acer gets better battery life after a year than my brand new 13" Lenovo does? How does that work?

[admlam]

Hi all,

I'm the guy who wrote the review for the U330 on NotebookReview.com.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4621

I'd like to hear what Lenovo has to say about the battery life, which have some room for improvement especially compared to the numbers the new Thinkpads are cranking out. So far, it doesn't seem like to feel like a finished product as the power management and fan behavior doesn't feel as robust.

Message Edited by admlam on 09-30-2008 09:09 PM

Message Edited by admlam on 09-30-2008 09:10 PM

[Geootsu]

I am already thinking about canceling my U330 order because of the poor battery life, and ordering some other notebook.

[skripatch]

Battery lifetime depends on many conditions. I suggest that the test were performed with turned off Audio/Lan/Wifi/Bluetooth, with stepped down processor to minimum frequency and on integrated videocard, not discrete one. Can you confirm that using all these conditions you still get 3 hrs lifetime?

Besides I doubt that  one year old ACER 15" can beat even 2 hrs of work.