What’s a typical work day look like for you? Eight hours? Nine? 10? Perhaps even 12?
If so, we’re sorry. That’s a long, long time to work. Yet there is one PC that can keep up with you and may, in fact, even outlast your marathon work ethic — Microsoft’s new Surface Book 2 15-inch.
We test laptop battery life with a scripted, automated web browsing loop that rotates through several real websites, pausing between each. Most modern laptops do well in the test, scoring at least five to six hours of life. The best laptops can exceed eight hours.
And then there’s the Surface Book 2 15-inch. It turned in an incredible 15 hours and 33 minutes, smashing previous records with ease. Here’s how it stacks up next to five other recently tested laptops that impressed us with their endurance.
It’s not even close, is it? The Surface Book 2 kept on chugging four hours after the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, an increase of 35 percent. The Book 2 also lasts around twice as long as the Microsoft Surface Laptop.
How’s that possible? It’s half raw power, half magic. The power is the sheer size of the battery which, at 90 watt-hours combined between tablet and base, easily exceeds the competition. Yet Microsoft is also putting some secret sauce into its systems. Our reviews of both the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop noted they lasted longer than battery size alone might suggest.
Combine a big battery with a miserly design and, well, the results speak for themselves.
What’s the catch? Well, the battery is split between the detachable tablet and the base, so the tablet alone won’t last nearly as long. You can always re-attach it to the base to recharge, though, so we doubt it’ll be a problem for most.
Battery life isn’t the only benchmark that gave us a shock, either. Check out our Surface Book 2 full review for all the details.
