Benchmarks: Battery Life
Battery life was always the concern. Having a secondary 5.7in, 2,160x1,080 IPS panel tucked below the keyboard ultimately takes its toll, and during our standard video run-down test, the ZenBook dropped into hibernation a little after seven-and-a-half hours. That is well short of our expectations of a 2019 ultra-portable.
We are currently in the process of changing our test methodology to incorporate the new PCMark 10 Battery Profile benchmarks. Three tests will be used; Office, which intermittently uses the writing, web browsing and video conferencing workloads from the main PCMark 10 benchmark; Video, which loops a 1080p full-screen movie file for the duration; and Gaming, which uses the common Fire Strike test to stress the GPU until the battery is drained.
In order to make the results comparable between laptops, each system is configured with a balanced power plan, wireless radios disabled, and screen brightness set as close to 120cd/m2 as possible using a calibration device. It is no surprise to find the ZenBook slotting in at the bottom of these charts; battery life ultimately isn't this laptop's strong suit.
