u115-battery-test

When MSI showed off the upcoming Wind U115 netbook at CES in January with a placard promising 10.5 hours of battery life,  I was a bit skeptical. But according to preliminary tests at Eee PC.de, MSI might actually have been modest.

Johannes at Eee PC.de is in the process of running a battery test. Around 4 hours in, the battery meter showed his battery power had dropped to just 79% and he had an estimated 10 hours and 39 minutes of power to go. In other words, it’s possible that the 5200mAh battery could run for over 14 hours on a single charge.

Later in the day, Johannes posted that the battery meter now shows that he has 47% of his power left, which should provide another 6 hours and 11 minutes of run time. Now, it’s possible that the meter is wrong and that the computer will die in the next few minutes. So check back later for the final results. But it looks like MSI has set a new bar for battery performance with the U115.

The netbook features a combination of hard drive and solid state disk-based storage to help reduce power consumption. It also uses a low power Intel Atom Z530 CPU.

Update: The final verdict? The MSI Wind U115 ran for 13 hours and 15 minutes. It’s worth pointing out that this test was conducted with the WLAN turned off. I can’t quite imagine why you would want to run a netbook for 13 hours without connecting to WiFi. But Johannes plans to un a few more tests over the next few days. The test did utilize about 100% of his CPU for all 13 hours, so it’s not unrealistic to think that you could get 10 to 14 hours of battery life out of this netbook with WiFi turned on, the screen brightness dimmed, and the CPU running a bit slower.

Support Liliputing

Liliputing's primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the "Shop" button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we'll get a small commission).

But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you're using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.

Contribute to our Patreon campaign

or...

Contribute via PayPal

* If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.

Subscribe to Liliputing via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 9,547 other subscribers

15 replies on “MSI Wind U115 appears to provide ridiculously long battery life”

    1. They used one of the more efficient Atom processors, the Z530.

      And then there is the SSD/HDD combo. In the energy saving mode, only the SSD is used, saving further on energy.

      1. I’m willing to bet they are also using a better 6 cell battery as well this time. Something better than the 4200mAh they supply with the U100 now. When you think about it, if that battery was able to get close to 5 hrs. out of a 4200mAh, while the competition was supplying 4800/5200mAh and higher, than a U100 with just a better battery like the one in the Asus E1000HE (6 cell 8700mAh) that sort of battery life doesn’t seem to outrageous.

  1. Of course I will also test other szenarios, of course also with WiFi activated. I want to get some results. Thats why I’m now running the Battery Eater in IDLE-Test. Look for more test results tomorrow

  2. With that kind of life, I would have figured the CPU to be1.3 GHz instead of 1.6, but not so. Very impressive.

Comments are closed.