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Looks rather nice, but "up to 5 hours battery with real use" for the 14" model is pretty awful, to put it mildly. They should get a lot more running time from a

Looks rather nice, but "up to 5 hours battery with real use" for the 14" model is pretty awful, to put it mildly. They should get a lot more running time from a 47Wh battery than 5h. Only one USB-C port (apparently without charging support?) is pretty stingy, too. And one of the USB-A ports is only USB 2.0? WTF

cs02rm0 6y ago
They're issues, but I think they're fairly minor issues. I paid comfortably more than twice as much for a MBP and I only use one of the USB-C ports, admittedly for charging too. And it's pretty permanently plugged in for power - once in a blue moon I need to be mobile with it. I'd probably have bought two if they were out when I was looking last year. Wish them plenty of success, because there aren't many competitors out there with Linux as a first class OS.
baybal2 6y ago
I would rather be glad them being so honest. We have a laptops with even smaller batteries from major brands who claim 10+ hours battery life. 13 inch LG Gram used to have a microscopic battery, while they claimed 16 hours of life from it. They got into quagmire with press coverage, and nearly doubled the battery size in the next generation. Half of battery life on a modern laptop is basically battery size/screen size, and you can't do anything about it except adding a bigger battery. It's still possible to make a laptop with terrible battery life if you get a single "power hog" part. For an Intel system, a CPU, and its VRM may take less than 1W in idle, but a bad WiFi card, DP-LVDS bridge, USB hub, Thunderbolt chip, SSD, or terrible power supply can easily blow the power budget above 6-9W in idle. Even seemingly innocuous parts like SD card readers, keyboard/touchpad controllers, sensors, wacom chips, embedded controllers can be very bad at idle power consumption, to the extent they take more power than idling CPU.
- lorenzhs 6y ago
  Sure, some manufacturers claim outrageous battery life numbers that noone has ever managed to achieve outside of a lab. But my 2017 X1 Carbon with a 57Wh battery does manage close to 10 hours of actual light-ish use (with Linux). Macbooks' running times are apparently pretty close to what Apple claims, too. But 5 hours advertised running time is just bad, even if it actually manages that much.
  - rcthompson 6y ago
    I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I've never come close to the battery life numbers that Apple claims.
    - tluyben2 6y ago
      Same here... I have brought several laptops back to the store 'for repair' just for that but there is never anything wrong and I really get miserable battery life out of macbooks. Devving + browsing.
      - pantaloony 6y ago
        I bet I could get my MacBook’s battery life down to 5hrs with Slack, Chrome, WhatsApp, and VSCode all running, while “not doing anything that demanding”. Use Safari, use native-code messengers or open them only as-needed in response to alerts on my phone, and use Sublime and it’s back to approaching 10hrs. JavaScript eats battery and Safari is the only of the three major macOS browsers that takes power use seriously. If you live in webapps and Electron you’re gonna have battery trouble no matter what.
        tluyben2 6y ago
        Most things we have to use for work have no native equivalents though. I would be i3wm all the way if I could but most of everything is browser (badly done so even taking more battery power) or Electron. I mean how horrible is postman and yet everyone insists on using that pool of bugs. That said, my linux laptops, where I use the same apps and where I have no safari, have far better battery life. So it is not only that.
    - pantaloony 6y ago
      Webapp or otherwise JS-and-media-heavy browsing in anything other than Safari easily takes 2hrs off my battery life on a MacBook. Chrome and FF are power hogs.
  - toyg 6y ago
CoolGuySteve 6y ago
Yeah, the first thing I noticed is that it uses the high power Ryzen variant, the 4800H, instead of the more efficient 4750U. At load, the difference is 45W vs 15W according to AMD.
- nottorp 6y ago
  Prolly explains the cheapness.
silon42 6y ago
USB-C really needs to support charging + displayport altmode (simultaneously if possible, to plug in something like this: https://www.amazon.de/Cable-Matters-DisplayPort-Multiport-Adapter-Thunderbolt-Schwarz/dp/B06ZY1ZJDQ https://www.amazon.de/Cable-Matters-DisplayPort-Multiport-Ad...)
mnm1 6y ago
They could probably do a bit better, but coming from mbpro land, 5 hours seems to be standard. It's what my old 2013 and my current 2019 mbpro (with 100wh battery) lasts with light use. Nowhere near close to the 11 hours Apple touts and there's no way it would ever achieve that. It sometimes runs out of battery after sleeping just a few hours. Maybe Slimbook's just being honest for once and not claiming ridiculous numbers like other manufacturers, numbers that are simply pulled out of their asses.

cs02rm0 6y ago

They're issues, but I think they're fairly minor issues. I paid comfortably more than twice as much for a MBP and I only use one of the USB-C ports, admittedly for charging too. And it's pretty permanently plugged in for power - once in a blue moon I need to be mobile with it. I'd probably have bought two if they were out when I was looking last year. Wish them plenty of success, because there aren't many competitors out there with Linux as a first class OS.

baybal2 6y ago

I would rather be glad them being so honest. We have a laptops with even smaller batteries from major brands who claim 10+ hours battery life. 13 inch LG Gram used to have a microscopic battery, while they claimed 16 hours of life from it. They got into quagmire with press coverage, and nearly doubled the battery size in the next generation. Half of battery life on a modern laptop is basically battery size/screen size, and you can't do anything about it except adding a bigger battery. It's still possible to make a laptop with terrible battery life if you get a single "power hog" part. For an Intel system, a CPU, and its VRM may take less than 1W in idle, but a bad WiFi card, DP-LVDS bridge, USB hub, Thunderbolt chip, SSD, or terrible power supply can easily blow the power budget above 6-9W in idle. Even seemingly innocuous parts like SD card readers, keyboard/touchpad controllers, sensors, wacom chips, embedded controllers can be very bad at idle power consumption, to the extent they take more power than idling CPU.

lorenzhs 6y ago
Sure, some manufacturers claim outrageous battery life numbers that noone has ever managed to achieve outside of a lab. But my 2017 X1 Carbon with a 57Wh battery does manage close to 10 hours of actual light-ish use (with Linux). Macbooks' running times are apparently pretty close to what Apple claims, too. But 5 hours advertised running time is just bad, even if it actually manages that much.
- rcthompson 6y ago
  I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I've never come close to the battery life numbers that Apple claims.
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    Same here... I have brought several laptops back to the store 'for repair' just for that but there is never anything wrong and I really get miserable battery life out of macbooks. Devving + browsing.
    - pantaloony 6y ago
      I bet I could get my MacBook’s battery life down to 5hrs with Slack, Chrome, WhatsApp, and VSCode all running, while “not doing anything that demanding”. Use Safari, use native-code messengers or open them only as-needed in response to alerts on my phone, and use Sublime and it’s back to approaching 10hrs. JavaScript eats battery and Safari is the only of the three major macOS browsers that takes power use seriously. If you live in webapps and Electron you’re gonna have battery trouble no matter what.
      - tluyben2 6y ago
        Most things we have to use for work have no native equivalents though. I would be i3wm all the way if I could but most of everything is browser (badly done so even taking more battery power) or Electron. I mean how horrible is postman and yet everyone insists on using that pool of bugs. That said, my linux laptops, where I use the same apps and where I have no safari, have far better battery life. So it is not only that.
  - pantaloony 6y ago
    Webapp or otherwise JS-and-media-heavy browsing in anything other than Safari easily takes 2hrs off my battery life on a MacBook. Chrome and FF are power hogs.
- toyg 6y ago

CoolGuySteve 6y ago

Yeah, the first thing I noticed is that it uses the high power Ryzen variant, the 4800H, instead of the more efficient 4750U. At load, the difference is 45W vs 15W according to AMD.

nottorp 6y ago
Prolly explains the cheapness.

silon42 6y ago

USB-C really needs to support charging + displayport altmode (simultaneously if possible, to plug in something like this: https://www.amazon.de/Cable-Matters-DisplayPort-Multiport-Adapter-Thunderbolt-Schwarz/dp/B06ZY1ZJDQ https://www.amazon.de/Cable-Matters-DisplayPort-Multiport-Ad...)

mnm1 6y ago

They could probably do a bit better, but coming from mbpro land, 5 hours seems to be standard. It's what my old 2013 and my current 2019 mbpro (with 100wh battery) lasts with light use. Nowhere near close to the 11 hours Apple touts and there's no way it would ever achieve that. It sometimes runs out of battery after sleeping just a few hours. Maybe Slimbook's just being honest for once and not claiming ridiculous numbers like other manufacturers, numbers that are simply pulled out of their asses.