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  • bubblyboo - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    16 hour battery? Sure with brightness all the way down, dGPU not in use, etc.
  • Manch - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Or instead of assuming, wait for the review and see.
  • Dizoja86 - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    There's no need for assuming. The size of the battery needed to power a 1050 max-q (even without considering the power draw of other components) for 16 hours would be larger than this entire laptop.
  • bubblyboo - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Am I assuming, or are you assuming this laptop has a 150Wh+ battery?
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    The battery will be <100Wh. Anything larger and it's not legal to fly on a commercial aircraft.
  • Manch - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    LOL, I assumed nothing. I literally said "wait for the review and see"

    There is a lot of new tech meant to significantly reduce power draw. Batt life has improved steadily in laptops and other mobile devices. Sometimes they get it, sometimes, not. Don't know if any of it is in this laptop but, when reviews do come out, we will see if they can back up those claims or if it will be with a Barry Bonds ***.
  • namechamps - Thursday, January 17, 2019 - link

    One can make an educated guess. You can't get blood from a stone. At load a mobile GTX 1050 is going to pull at least 40W. The CPU another 30. Lets be generous and say the balance of the system is only 20W. Laptop batteries are limited to 100Wh to be airline compliant. So at best you are looking at an hour of runtime.
  • Mantriur - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    On Linux with a bunch of tweaks and the 1050 in low power profile, I got the idle consumption down to 10 watts. (Couldn't get the Intel GPU to work.) Under full load you're looking at 40 watts upward, around 15-20 watts with Thunderbird, Telegram, and Opera loading a page in power saving mode. Battery has 72 Wh. I get 5-7 hours real world use out of it.

    It packs a lot of punch into an in-flight power capable machine and the battery is huge considering the thing's size. It's a smart package and gets bonus points for near-full Linux support. (Installation needs a bit of hacking.) I really like it. But 16 hours are a pipe dream, even with the Intel GPU and Winblows.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Yup, just like every other run time number.

    Sticking with 1080p60 also helps. Once you've optimized the power draw of everything else, the 4k screen power tax will cost a few hours of run time.
  • Flunk - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    I bet.
  • HStewart - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    People just don't want to believe it maybe something that Intel did with Whiskey Lake
  • Teckk - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    People will believe once they see it tested and analyzed. Just claiming that the increase in battery life and all great things are due to enhancements in Whiskey Lake/just cpu upgrade, makes people skeptical about such claims. Keep things rational.
  • ET - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    Not all the way down. I'm sure it's the usual thing: screen dimmed somewhat (mid-brightness) and web browsing / office kind of activity. So yes, no dGPU in use, and CPU largely idle.
  • Prestissimo - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    Expect 5 hrs on average, 6 at best since the battery will probably be 80 Wh. For 16 hours you would need a 15W U-CPU, FHD screen, and 120 Wh battery.
  • Prestissimo - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    Never mind, Whiskey Lake makes it 10 hours supposing at least 8W of power consumption.
  • HStewart - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    This is 2nd Notebook with high battery life I notice and both of them are Whiskey Lake CPU's. There must be something different about Whiskey Lake CPU's that make a difference. This is quite a think laptop to just say it because of battery.
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Intel launched it's low power panel initiative last year, for sub 1W displays. Those units are now starting to be shown off.
  • HStewart - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    I assume this is because Windows on ARM situation, but I would think could be part of Whiskey Lake. It would be interesting to compare same notebook with 4k display.

    For me personally. I mostly use it connected to display - but it is nice to have option to move it anywhere
  • Prestissimo - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    When 10nm Ice Lake develops and matures, maybe. Until then, U-CPUs won't be much different from 5th gen Broadwell in terms of power efficiency.

    LP displays could change things but are limited in practice due to that nature. What we desperately need for all hardware is a leap in battery technology.
  • Prestissimo - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    When 10nm Ice Lake develops and matures, maybe. Until then, U-CPUs won't be much different from 5th gen Broadwell in terms of power efficiency.

    LP displays could change things but are limited in practice due to that nature. What we desperately need for all hardware is a leap in battery technology.
  • darobin - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Why should anyone purchase a new laptop at this point with Intel's Ice Lake on the map for the next year? It's ridiculous to assume that any of these machines get what the manufacturers are claiming for them. BTW -- if a Lenovo Extreme has 80 watt hours, what could the MSI have? Certainly not 80.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    The spec page is up, it has 82Wh.

    https://www.msi.com/Laptop/PS63-MODERN-8RX/Specifi...
  • jeremyshaw - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    Why "not 80?" The X1E is larger than the XPS 15, and the XPS15 has a 97Whr battery. Lenovo chose to implement a second M.2 at the cost of 17Whr of battery (~20% less than Dell XPS15).

    MSI will probably top out around 80Whr, given this is very similar to the ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 in specs.
  • HStewart - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    This depends on which configuration you get with XPS 15 - lowest end version use 55w battery and my XPS 15 2in1 4k screen has 75w - I get half of battery life but I have 4k screen and AMD discrete GPU on it - without the GPU my power requirements drop in half - it does mot matter too much to me - because I primary used it connect to 38 in Ultra wide.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    I'm probably a year or two from replacing my laptop; but this is very close to what I want for my next system.

    1) Thin enough and with an understated appearance that lets it pass without comment.
    2) 15" slim bezels (so no bigger than the 14" laptops I carried for years at my last job).
    3) A GPU that's fast enough that I can game while away from home without being so large and power hungry to defeat the goal of 1) as long as I turn down the settings and resolution.
    4) All day non-gaming battery life.
    5) High DPI display. I know I won't be able to game at native resolution and will cost me a few hours of battery life tax; but I'm willing to pay because it makes the 95% of time i use it for non-gaming purposes look so much better.
    6) Not a Dell. (My XP13 is on it's 3rd battery in as many years because they keep bulging; all good will is gone).

    This scores 5 out of 6, and being intended as a professional model there's a decent chance next years will offer a screen upgrade.
  • HStewart - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    You must have bad luck with batteries - I have one year old XPS 15 2in1 and two year XPS 13 2in1 and even a 20 YEAR OLD Dell Imspirion 7000 (300 mhs Pentium II ) which at time was the fastest notebook you could buy. I did have a HP notebook that is a brick - place usb drive into it and screen never come on. HP has serious lost quality since days of HP67 and HP41 Calculators
  • DanNeely - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    When talked about on Arstechnica there were a lot of other people with early generation slim bezel XPS13 (not sure if also 15) who reported similar problems. Having 2 fail might be particularly bad luck (#3 is only a few months old, so I'm watching closely but not expecting signs of failure this early); but Dell apparently had something go wrong with the design.
  • GreenReaper - Thursday, January 17, 2019 - link

    Suggest you add hardware AV1 decode support in the graphics subsystem to that. It'll probably be the standard (at least on YouTube) for a while, and help keep it cool and quiet while playing video.
  • Nexing - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link

    No Thunderbolt? No joy here.
    Actually at 2019, I am eyeing 2 x TB3 on the potential replacements to my trustworthy Sandy bridge laptop (where Expresscard and eSata, have been taking care of all my legacy connected devices; like those needing Firewire and also decent speeds with external SSDs.
  • HStewart - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    Even though I yet done it, Thunderbolt - give option for desktop graphics card - in my earlier days that would be a requirement but now things have change. I love having option for 2md TB3 on my XPS 15 2in1 but I only really use one of them - hook up to my dock.
  • Nexing - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    One TB3 is for the screen. The 2nd TB in the world of Audio Pro allows for authentic low latency monitoring or the usage of expensive legacy soundcards using the several connection protocols that had been available; FireWire 400 or 800, Dante, plus also PCIe legacy soundcards via eGPU case. Count also most all sound technicians at shows on the road will ask for a laptop connected to the avalanche of digital mixers. Producers and musicians carry the studio around already and with collaboration on the rise, TB3 seems to be an adequate mid/long term requisite in the Audio Pro world, for as a central tool as a laptop.
  • Valantar - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    Either this has the best palm rejection software in the universe, or it'll be a nightmare to type on. That touchpad is placed and sized so that your right hand _has_ to rest on it. Brilliant.
  • Xajel - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    I was excited, with everything I read more, lack of thunderbolt was meh, I don't know actually but I plan to use a TB dock later so lack of it is disappointment. comparing it to XPS 15 was okay.

    But the biggest deal breaker was the use of U-series CPU's, WTF !! content creation with U series CPU !!

    XPS 15 uses a 35~45W H-series CPU, while this uses a 15W U-series CPU no wonder it can stay this long with a battery this close of XPS 15 and Lenovo P1 or X1 Extreme.

    Nope, this can't compete against XPS 15, and the blame is for Intel for branding those 15W TDP CPUs as i7 same as more powered 35~45W TDP i7's... The marketing is just wrong by just saying, "it's a i7"
  • Prestissimo - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    By no means is the PS63 trying to compete against the existing performance laptops. It's designed the way it is to boost battery life, except 80 Wh with U-CPU (10 hours estimate) won't be a whole lot more than 97 Wh with H-CPU on the XPS 15 9570 (8 hours with FHD) to make much difference.

    Naturally this has an enormous room for improvement, being a first gen product and all. Nevertheless feels good to finally see a U-CPU, powerful dGPU, big battery being paired together in a compact form factor, apart from Microsoft SB2.
  • Maxed Out - Wednesday, January 16, 2019 - link

    Sony sold the creative software group . It is now owned by Magix
  • hfm - Saturday, January 26, 2019 - link

    Lack of TB3 is a dealbreaker on this one.

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