Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t Multi-Touch Tablet/Netbook Review
Power Consumption and Battery Life
Up until now, we've been fairly critical on the IdeaPad S10-3t, largely because of how out of proportion the MSRP is compared to similar machines in this category. But will battery life be the saving grace? Sadly, no. The included 4-cell battery only lasted 2 hours and 38 minutes in our real-world rundown test, and that was with the screen at 65% brightness and Wi-Fi active and online. That's not awful for a 4-cell battery, but it's not stellar for a netbook or tablet. Apple is saying that their iPad will get between 8 and 10 hours while on, and this only gets 2.5. That's a pretty big gap, and while the iPad lacks a keyboard and a full OS, it's still cheaper.
There isn't much room underneath to play with, so we understand why Lenovo chose a 4-cell battery, but it doesn't make this figure any easier to swallow. Saying that your netbook gets 2.5 hours while others from Asus are seeing well above 4 and 5 hours is somewhat disappointing, and it's certainly a tough sell.
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There isn't much room underneath to play with, so we understand why Lenovo chose a 4-cell battery, but it doesn't make this figure any easier to swallow. Saying that your netbook gets 2.5 hours while others from Asus are seeing well above 4 and 5 hours is somewhat disappointing, and it's certainly a tough sell.
;)
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If you really tried, you could probably get 3 or 3.5 hours from this machine, but you'd have to use some serious energy conversation efforts. We suspect that using the touch panel would degrade the battery even further, and remember, our battery test didn't use the touch screen at all. You'll also notice that this battery life figure is far less than the numbers we saw while testing the original IdeaPad S10 and S10-2 (which saw 210 and 331 minutes, respectively). The S10-3t mustered only 158 minutes of use before hibernating.
