I’ve created a graph showing what I believe to be the range of realistic battery life. The power draw will be affected by both hardware and driver optimizations, as well as the software running on the machine. For instance, my Razer Blade 15 will draw 10-15W on windows, but draw 7W on a custom and optimized install of Linux. I start the graph at 4W because that’s what my Thinkpad T470 draws with my optimized linux install, and it’s difficult to get lower than that. Technically I’ve seen it drop to 2.6W, but it’s not very useful in that state.
This graph tells me that without a dGPU and assuming an avg draw between 8 and 15W, we could expect the max battery life to be about 6-12 hours.
I don’t know how much the dGPU draws on idle, but one comment on reddit suggests 8W for a different and more powerful card. This is significantly lower than the idle 15-25W the RTX 3070 in my Razer Blade 15 draws… but that’s not surprising given the nvidia → amd differences. With this 8W assumption, that same battery life estimate drops to 4-5hrs. Ideally the dGPU is off when it’s not in use, and draws 0W, however this has never been my experience.
As you can see, there is a wide range for how long we can expect the Framework 16 to last. Likely between 4 and 21 hours. Where the FW 16 falls on this graph will depend entirely on:
- Hardware optimizations
- Driver optimizations
- The software running
- Use case
For instance, the exact same OS install/SSD on my razer laptop vs thinkpad can draw either 4W or 7W. In this case, I believe a lot of that difference comes from the display technology in use, as the razer blade 15 display draws a fixed 3W even with brightness at 0% and the thinkpad does not.
The FW 13 seems to draw about 13W at idle according to this post: [RESPONDED] Extreme power consumption at idle while one user reports getting the FW 13 down to ~3W under extreme low-draw: [RESPONDED] Extreme power consumption at idle - #11 by jmariondev