Which?:
When it comes to laptops, battery life can be a key buying decision. But Which? has discovered that the battery life claimed by laptop manufacturers rarely lives up to reality, with our tests finding it often falls drastically short. Which? testing has shown that almost all laptop manufacturers overstate their battery claims. In some cases, the battery life estimates were double what we achieved in our lab testing.
It’s not all bad news, however – our tests found that with Apple MacBooks, you could meet or even exceed the claimed battery life, according to Apple.
Good news for Apple but shameful that other manufacturers’ stated claims fall so far short.
“our tests found that with Apple MacBooks, you could meet or even exceed the claimed battery life, according to Apple.”
Someone should tell the author that this is poorly written. It sounds like this: According to Apple, you could meet or exceed the claimed battery life.
Tech pundits should either be technically knowledgeable or good writers, preferably both. Unfortunately, we often see that they are neither.
Um, isn’t this ultimately a case of fraud?
Let’s say I buy a car, and the manufacturer states that it gets 45 mpg highway/32 city.
After extensive testing, I’m able to prove that the model actually does 24/16.
Wouldn’t that car manufacturer be in enormous trouble with regulators?
Reminds me a bit of the lawsuit that led to hard drive manufacturers adding a bunch of boilerplate about stated vs. practical drive capacity specs.
Fuel mileage measurements are meant to be used as a comparison rather than absolute numbers due to the great number of variables, which can also be said of laptop battery life. The federal government tests 10-15% of car models to see if their results are the same as what the car companies claim.