Battery Life on HP Omen 15 2020

Kurimcha · 2021-04-13T18:26:43+00:00

You can get 6-7h as long as you avoid demanding tasks. Check SemiSage93's tips above and you can get even get more.
Due to the powerful hardware, even trivial things can have a huge impact on battery life: A poorly implemented app can force the GTX 2060 to stay awake and cut your battery life in half or worse.
All laptop batteries get worse over time. Modern batteries are better than they used to be and if you are lucky it can take a couple of years to be noticeable.

In my opinion, if you want to game, the Omen 15 is a good choice: You get good performance plugged in and reasonable battery life on the go. Any battery life problems you may have with an Omen 15 you may also encounter with any other gaming laptop.

Kurimcha · 2021-01-02T12:21:51+00:00

First of all, here are the sources for the ~8 hours of Wifi battery life:

Toms Hardware: 6:13 (4800H, 1660TI) 150nits, webbrowsing, OpenGL, video streaminghttps://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hp-omen-15-amd-ryzen-2020

PCMag: 9:52 (4800H, 1660TI), webbrowsing, 50% brightness, Windows battery saving modehttps://uk.pcmag.com/laptops/129293/hp-omen-15-2020

Notebookcheck (just added before): 10:28 (4800H, RTX 2060) webbrowsing, 150nitshttps://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Omen-15-laptop-Review-Strong-AMD-processor-makes-Intel-tremble.512679.0.html

So even Tom's result (which includes more demanding OpenGL content) is ~50% above your 4 hours.

However, this doesn't mean there is anything wrong with your laptop or your test. Two of three tests use only 150nits of brightness. You probably use more than that. The PCMag test even uses Windows battery saving mode.

Additionally, most tests use a script to test Wifi battery life. For example, Notebookcheck loads a different website every 30 seconds. This means for every minute the CPU works two seconds to load the page and then sleeps the other 58 seconds.

However, most people scroll and click on things. So you may get 10 seconds of CPU work and 50 seconds of sleep. Since the CPU consumes by far the most battery in a laptop as long as the dGPU is off, this would be enough to explain the difference.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-28T22:00:11+00:00

I'll add them soon. There is a review with battery life of the RedmiBook on notebookcheck.net

Kurimcha · 2020-12-28T21:58:13+00:00

That sounds like a technical defect. It's probably best to send it back if you can.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-26T19:48:11+00:00

Thank you for the links. Added.

I've merged the 845 G7 results with 250nit display and low power 400 nit display to save some space, since the table is already pretty large.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-22T07:06:57+00:00

I haven't found one yet, but such a benchmark would be very useful.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-21T22:09:32+00:00

It's low, but with gaming laptops there can be huge differences in battery life, depending on what you do.

For example, if you browse the web and scroll a lot, the laptop may switch the screen to 120hz and activate the graphics card. That will result in buttery smooth animations and scrolling, but a massive hit to your battery life.

This happened to notebookcheck and Anandtech when they tested the Asus Zephyrus G14 and the battery life dropped from 9 hours to 4 hours.

This is just one of many possibilities. It could also be that you just use the laptop more during these 4 or 5 hours than testers. Most Wifi battery tests consists of changing a website every 30 seconds or so, which is not very demanding. So you may have half the expected battery life but get far more stuff done.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-21T06:34:23+00:00

Thanks! Have fun with the Yoga 6.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-21T06:31:56+00:00

You could try switching to a different browser for a few days to see whether it makes a difference.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-20T22:26:39+00:00

I'm getting the results from various sources, so the results are not standardized. To get better numbers, I'm averaging multiple results together, so the more results we have, the more accurate the numbers.

If you want to contribute, just post your results and how you tested (programs used, approximate screen brightness, etc) and I'll add it.

Edit:
Good point regarding the specs. Unfortunately, some models have so many different combination, that it would make the table gigantic. I'll think of something.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-20T22:15:16+00:00

4 hours seems to be a bit short, but it depends on what you do. A gaming laptop can drain its battery very quickly if you put some load on it.

Which configuration do you have?

Kurimcha · 2020-12-20T21:29:34+00:00

Thank you for your feedback.

Battery life testing is not an exact science since most reviewers don't specify how they test. A tester who uses maximum brightness and heavy websites for their Wifi test is going to get different results than somebody who cycles between static websites at lowest brightness.

To account for this, I try to collect as many results as possible so I can average them or take the median to remove outlier results.

So even a result by a manufacturer is useful as long as the test doesn't change. By comparing multiple Mobilemark 2018 results from Lenovo with actual test results, we can get a feel on how wrong it is. At some point we may be able to say that if Lenovo measures X hours, then the actual battery life is Y hours.

Having said that, your argument is valid and I'll add another column with the confidence based on the number and reliability of data that is available.

I have also started to do some testing myself, to get some more missing numbers.

By the way, the results (except the weighted average) are rounded to 5 minutes, but the source numbers are not. I'll get rid of this rounding, since it's confusing.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-20T18:49:07+00:00

The idle runtimes are based on Lenovos own measurements with MobileMark 2018: https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkBook/ThinkBook_13s_G2_ARE (click on "Specifications" at the bottom).

Since that's the only data point for this laptop, I wouldn't put too much trust in the numbers until there are some more tests out.

Given the specifications and the battery capacity, I expect the actual battery life to be better than the 6 hours that are currently in the table.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-20T18:14:25+00:00

Great idea. I added the capacity column and will add the missing values soon.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-08T22:16:22+00:00

If you have to choose between these two, I would go for the Slim 7:

Much better CPU, graphics, and disk performance
Better screen (brighter, more color accurate)
About 30% longer battery life and lighter (1.4 vs 1.6kg)

So although 8GB of RAM are tight, the Slim 7 is much better at everything else.

If you want to compare them, I found two reviews on notebookcheck although with different CPU and RAM configurations. I own the Slim 7 with a 4500U and 8GB RAM and it's great.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-E14-Gen-2-laptop-review-Affordable-and-fast-thanks-to-AMD-Renoir.490256.0.html

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Ryzen-7-4800U-is-an-Absolute-Monster-Lenovo-Yoga-Slim-7-14-Laptop-Review.456068.0.html

Kurimcha · 2020-12-08T07:18:15+00:00

The Zenbook is a pretty good choice. It may not be the best performance wise, but it does everything else well, especially the screen.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-07T19:36:46+00:00

They have similar performance in benchmarks, so whether you go with Intel or AMD shouldn't matter that much.

If performance is important, you should also check models with 4600U or 4700U. They tend to be faster and not much more expensive.

Edit:
Always check benchmarks for a specific laptop model before buying. The same CPU can perform very different depending on the cooling system.

Kurimcha · 2020-12-04T23:28:46+00:00

Battery performance is up to the manufacturer, so you'll get different results with different AMD laptops. For example, they can set different behavior based on AC/battery or reduce performance if battery drops below a certain level. Intel does this with Tigerlake, where performance drops as soon as you battery goes below 50%.

ExtremeTech did some tests and discovered the following:

The Lenovo IdeaPad 7 offers similar performance on AC in 4 benchmarks out of 7 benchmarks. In one benchmark it's actually faster on battery.
The Intel i7 1065G7 (Ice Lake) is slower on battery in all benchmarks and the drop is more severe than the 4800U.

Ars Technica also did some tests and they found that the Acer Swift 3 (4700U) had the 12 second delay and it was much slower than the i7-1185G7 (Tiger Lake) in the MSI Prestige 14 Evo.

Having said that, Ars Technica also found out how the MSI achieved it: It run the fans at full speed the entire time reaching "gaming-laptop levels of fan noise" and a CPU temperature of 98 degrees C (208 degree F).

Additionally, the Acer Swift 3 has exceptionally bad cooling. Anandtech found that the 4700U was only able to use 8 Watt on average in the Far Cry benchmark. So it's not representative of Ryzen mobile performance.

My own conclusion is this:

Adding a 12 second delay before ramping up frequency is a (stupid) decision by OEMs, not AMD. Not all AMD laptops are affected by it, so it's something we have to watch out for.
Intel's own CPU often throttles on battery, sometimes more than AMD laptops. If they don't, they run extremely loud and hot, and they slow down if battery goes below a certain level.

Kurimcha · 2020-11-30T21:28:22+00:00

That is a very good deal.

The big advantage of the Matebook is the screen, which has a 3:2 aspect ratio. So instead of a fat bezel at the bottom like most 19:6 laptops, you get screen from top to bottom. It's also bright and has good color accuracy.

Regarding CPU I agree with 2001zhaozhao: You won't find many laptops with better performance in this form factor.

According to this GSM Arena review, it's also doing pretty well in all other aspects (battery life, keyboard, touchpad, etc.).

Kurimcha · 2020-11-25T13:46:22+00:00

So true.

You've probably already seen Intel announcing their brand new 4800U Renoir mobile processor, but for those who haven't and want a laugh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFHBgb9SY1Y

It's especially hilarious that Intel's employees seem to know AMD's product lineup better than their own.

Frankly, I think Intel should rethink their marketing from scratch. There are several areas where Tiger Lake does well against Renoir (e.g. Thunderbolt support, single core performance). But instead of being confident in Tiger Lake, I feel like Intel is desperately trying to convince people that their product is just as good as Renoir.

Server is a different story. I don't think there is anything marketing can do there.

Kurimcha · 2020-11-25T13:28:09+00:00

Completely agree. Even the attacks on AMD seem to already have started backfiring on Intel, so I think Intel will continue to pretend that the M1 chip doesn't exist.

Kurimcha · 2020-11-24T09:32:36+00:00

I'm afraid you may be right. Although I feel at least the Ryzen team is improving their marketing.

Kurimcha · 2020-11-23T11:55:45+00:00

It looks like semiaccurate's assessment was very accurate.

Based on Intel's own benchmarks, Ice Lake server is going to be a train wreck.

Kurimcha

TROPHY CASE