Asus Eee PC 1005HA Seashell Review

by Shawn Oliver — Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 12:00 PM EDT

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Power Consumption and Battery Life

The Asus Eee PC 1005HA--unlike the 1008HA--arrives with a removable, rechargeable battery that is rated for 10.5 hours of usage in an ideal scenario. That's significantly more than the 6 hour rating given to the aforementioned 1008HA, which ships with a sealed battery that you can't swap out. This change in design is a huge win in our eyes. Even if you never plan on swapping batteries out, it's nice to have that option available to you. It's also much easier to replace a worn battery in the 1005HA compared to the 1008HA.

Battery Info & Performance

Testing with BatteryEater Pro

Our Classic Test here does a great job of putting the netbook through a "real-world" work environment to see just how long your battery will last under pressure. The Eee PC 1005HA lasted just over 6 hours (371 minutes), which is far less than Asus' claims of 10.5 hours, but again--if you turned off Wi-Fi, dimmed the LCD and didn't place the machine under a heavy workload, we could easily imagine this machine lasting for longer than 6 hours. As you can see, the 1005HA falls just minutes short of the mark set by the Eee PC 1000HE (380 minutes on the 1000HE; 371 minutes on the 1005HA). The 1000HE remains the Eee PC to beat in this realm.

Click To Enlarge

Overall, we're pleased with 6.2 hours of life under real-world testing, but it's still unfortunate that Asus is proclaiming that users will see 10.5 hours from a single charge. Only under the most gentle conditions (which aren't indicative of reality, mind you) could we imagine 10.5 hours of life. Let us be clear: 6.2 hours from a laptop is great, particularly from a battery that doesn't really protrude from the machine. But claiming 10.5 hours and delivering 6.2 under real-world conditions is just wrong, and we'd say the suits over at AMD would drink to that notion.