Transformer Prime battery life

[Drillbit]

I am finding it to be surprisingly efficient, even more so than my single and dual core devices. The device is so thin, I can't expect the battery to be more than other tablet devices. I can see my battery consumption curve literally flat even after hours, assuming light use or idle. The "fifth core" idea seems to work very well. As you know, for light background tasks, the Tegra3 will keep all its four main cores idle, and use a backup fifth core to do these menial tasks. I have a feeling that's how the Tegra3 works, like an engine with variable cylinders. The cores kick in or idle off as processing demand kicks on or slacks off. That is, in addition to the clock rate.

The Prime has battery, balanced mode and performance settings. You can chop performance if you happen to select the first two. By default, the tablet is set in the middle or balanced mode. If you want to do benchmarks, you might be in for some disappointment if you see scores lower than posted in the web. That's because of the balanced mode. Set it to Performance mode to see those sky high scores. I usually just leave my tablet on performance mode anyway, and even then it still remains power efficient.

[Mi An]

T3 also handles dynamic backlight adjustment for, at least, video viewing and increases the power efficiency of the screen so much that the savings in lcd power draw is supposed to be greater than the t3 itself uses. I'd wager there are other improvements as well. Tegra 3 saves more power than it consumes, DIDIM technology reduces backlight power by 40% | Android and Me

On PCs, I've never been a speed demon. I always buy a gen behind and lower end at that, and then keep the old stuff around as long as possible. My current desktop build is probably from circa 2009, it wasn't a speed demon when I built it, and I had no particular desire to upgrade the mem/mobo/cpu/gpu yet.

But with mobile, it's different precisely as outlined in the OP. Newer faster stuff is also more battery efficient. We can't seem to create better batteries to save our lives, but our chipsets are definitely more efficient. Even if the 370t doesn't pan out, I've been thinking about holding out for tegra 3 anyway.

[Drillbit]

The 370T or the Nexus tablet would be good. There is also a new Transformer coming out that has the Prime specs, but without the metal casing and so on, so it can be sold cheaper.

[SGosnell]

The Prime battery life is excellent, especially with the keyboard dock. In my job, I spend a lot of time just sitting around and waiting, and consequently I spend a lot of time on the computer. I work 12 hour shifts, and I've spent the entire shift doing little but playing on my Prime, and at the end of the shift the dock battery is usually about dead, but the tablet battery is still near or even above 90%. If I had the tablet alone, I expect the battery would be around 40 or 50%. That 12 hours includes lots of web page loading, playing games, streaming video and audio, and pretty much everything else, and the Prime is usually set to performance mode. If it just sits, it uses very little battery, and most of that is due to email, weather, and other apps polling a lot. If I turned all that off, it would probably last for several days.

[Drillbit]

Man, I think I need to get that dock.

[SGosnell]

The dock is what sets the Prime apart from the rest of the field. It's like having a very thin, very powerful notebook. I use my Prime far more than my netbook, which is my main and pretty much only PC. When I go back to my netbook, I keep trying to scroll with the trackpad, and occasionally using my finger on the screen. Having a notebook with a touchscreen is really convenient, and I don't find much that a PC does that the Prime can't do when the dock is attached, and I keep it attached almost all the time. It's definitely worth the money even without the battery, but with it, it's an absolute requirement, IMO.