Battery Life - Gateway and Acer Netbooks: Wonder Twin Powers, Activate!
Battery Life
Pine Trail was a huge boon for battery life in netbooks, with 8 hours being the minimum for runtime on a netbook with a 6-cell battery. Both of the netbooks here have 6-cell 5600 mAh batteries and offer great battery life as expected. Under web-browsing and other processing-light tasks, you can expect 8 hours of runtime, slightly longer than the 1001P (which has a slightly smaller battery). The absolute maximum battery life under ideal conditions is around 11 hours, and HD video battery life is somewhere between 5 and 7 hours, depending on the type of video being played.
Battery life is in line with other similar laptops, though it's interesting that the Acer/Gateway "62Wh" batteries are only able to equal the ASUS 1001P "48Wh" battery. We don't know if the ASUS laptops are truly more energy efficient (probably) or if Acer is just a bit more lenient in battery capacity ratings. It doesn't really matter much either way, as you get whatever battery the manufacturer provides, but it is interesting to see the difference in relative battery life considering all other areas are essentially the same. The different HDD and LCD panel likely account for the small battery life advantage of the Acer 532h over the Gateway LT2120u.
The 6-cell battery sticks out of the bottom of the systems by roughly a half inch, which seems to be an increasingly popular way of doing extended batteries (the ThinkPad Edge has the battery protruding from the bottom as well). I'm not a fan of this type of battery, since it adds thickness, but some people prefer batteries like this for the incline it gives the keyboard.
Another oddity is the bundled AC adapter included with both systems. Unlike most laptops, the adapter is a wall wart instead of in a power brick. While this keeps the cord itself clean, it’s a cumbersome way to make a power adapter. You end up occupying adjacent outlets on power strips or wall sockets at times. I’d much rather see a long cord with a small power brick in the middle like the AS1410 or Eee 1001P.
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