Acer Aspire One 10-inch Production Battery Lasts Less Than 4.5 Hours
February 24th, 2009 by K. T. Bradford 
Previously on As The Battery Life Turns, we tested the battery that came with our review unit of the Acer Aspire One 10-inch ($649.83) and got a result of 7 hours and 57 minutes, which blew away every other netbook battery out there. This was due not only to the number of cells in the battery (6) but the high capacity of the cells (5800-mAh/milliamp-hours).
Oh, but wait.
We then discovered that the Aspire One was supposed to ship with a lower capacity battery — still six cells, but only 4400-mAh. The better battery will only come with the first batch of Aspire Ones, so customers that pre-ordered them may get lucky. Everyone else will get the “normal” battery.
This week we were finally able to test the 4400-mAh battery most Aspire Ones will come with. We previously predicted that it would get between 4.5 and 5.5 hours. The result?
(cue Dramatic Pause)
4:24.
Yes, it is a bit disappointing, but 4:24 is still decent, particularly for a $350 netbook. However, for $50 more you can buy the Eee PC 1000HE ($385.53) that gets more than 7 hours (and has a much improved keyboard).
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7 Responses to “Acer Aspire One 10-inch Production Battery Lasts Less Than 4.5 Hours”
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February 24th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
It would be helpful if you provided power consumption in watts alongside the time the battery lasts. I say this because I find these results rather strange.
The 5800mAh battery from your first test is rated as 59Wh. Since it lasted for 7.95 hours, it means that the laptop’s power consumption during the test was 7.42 watts average (59 / 7.95 = 7.42). That is a very low power consumption, but achievable.
The 4400mAh battery from your second test is rated as 45Wh. It lasted for 4.4 hours, so the power usage was 10.23 watts. A just acceptable figure for a 10″ netbook (8-9 watts should be the good values).
So how come the same laptop on the same test increased power usage by 38% just for using a battery with a lower capacity? A lower capacity battery should give less runtime, but not higher consumption.
Are these tests repeatable?
February 24th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
We’re happy to share the battery test script we use on demand. All components of it are free, but not all are ours to distribute (ex: you have to download from Microsoft). The test is just a script that launches Firefox, visits a site (1 of 60), waits 30 seconds, closes Firefox and then opens it again with the next site of 60. It repeats this until the battery is dead, while writing a log file to the hard drive. We do this over Wi-Fi and at 40% brightness. We used the same test with both batteries.
February 24th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
No sorry, I didn’t express my question correctly. I didn’t mean repeatable by me or someone else (I don’t have the netbook, anyway). My question was more in the line of: If you repeat this test more than once, do you get the same results? Or do they vary from run to run in a significant way?
I just find it strange that by using a lower capacity battery the same netbook uses 10.23 watts instead of 7.42 watts. In other words, I expected that with a usage of 7.42 watts, the smaller battery would last 6 hours, not 4.4 hours. Hhmm, could it be a defective battery?
February 25th, 2009 at 11:17 am
From reading the write up it is not apparent whether the battery was cycled a couple of times before the test was run or whether it was just charged once and then tested. Lithium (and NiCad and NMH) batteries usually need to be cycled at least 4 to 5 times to come up to their actual rating. The first few cycles they generally are at least 20 to 30 percent below their rated capacity
March 8th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Mine came out of the box getting 2 hours battery life. It claimed three. Is there some way to lessen the usage? I’m not doing any more than bringing up a firefox with 2-3 tabs and typing/surfing on them. Does it come with some setting I’m not aware of that I could tweak to get the three hours I expected? Or any suggestions for this?
July 14th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
I just find it strange that by using a lower capacity battery the same netbook uses 10.23 watts instead of 7.42 watts.
August 5th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Feel lucky!! Obviously a different model, but my Acer Aspire ZG5 (8.5 inch I think) gives me not much more thanan hour. Actually my second – the first one was faulty and was replaced by Dick Smith and even the second one has already spent a few weeks back to Acer for repairs. The battery that came with mine is a UM08A31 carries a nameplate rating of 2200 mAh, 23.76 Wh – doesnt tell me how many cells, but I’m guessing 3.