6. Battery Life and Operating Noise

Battery Life

We test the battery runtime of a laptop by setting the screen to a brightness of 100 cd/m², deactivating the wireless network adapter and letting the system run in three different load scenarios until it runs out of power. Windows tasks such as search and indexing are disabled, as is the screensaver. The screen remains active throughout the test. All power management settings are adjusted manually. We don’t use the manufacturer’s tools because we want to guarantee similar results across brands.

First, we determine the battery life by running Prime95’s torture test, which stresses each of the system’s cores. Next we measure how long the unit lasts when playing back a DVD. Hardware acceleration is enabled if the included DVD Player software offers it. In the last scenario, we simply let the laptop sit idle until the battery runs down, which approximates the use of office tasks, e.g. using a word processor or spreadsheet application.

The Zepto has a Lithium-ion battery with a nominal capacity of 4800 mAh. The battery tests showed that Zepto has focused more on performance than on long battery life. With light usage, the battery holds out for 128 minutes. With the Prime95 Torture Test running on both cores, the battery runs out of juice after about 60 minutes.

Since the Znote 6324W did not include a software DVD player, we installed CyberLink PowerDVD 7 for the DVD run time test. If you want to watch movies on the road, make sure they’re not extended versions or director’s cuts. If the credits aren’t rolling after 88 minutes at the outside, you’ll miss out on the happy ending or the grand finale.

As a result, the Danish notebook can only really claim to be ’mobile’ in a limited sense of the word. If you want to play games or watch a film while out and about, for example, on the train, you will need to make sure you have a seat with a power connection. Zepto itself claims on its Product Page that this is the "World’s Fastest 14.1" Gaming Laptop". It seems the company considers the Znote to be a more of a portable machine to be taken from one fixed location to another rather than a truly mobile gaming system.

Film material used: Battlestar Galactica (2003) - Mini Series (DVD)

Operating noise

On the whole, the Znote remains acoustically unobtrusive. Operation is usually accompanied by quiet and discreet hum from the fan. Fortunately the machine does not buzz or squeak. In addition, the fan speed remains constant, so that you can tune out the noise quite easily, sparing your nerves.

When only the graphics are used, the fan spins a little faster, and we measured 35 db (A) in the 3DMark2006 run. Under full load and when playing processor-heavy games, the little Danish machine makes no bones about the fact that is working hard. This isn’t likely to bother gamers much, though, as they’d probably be wearing a headset or headphones. The loudspeakers, which are very weak where low frequencies are concerned, don’t really cut it for gaming.

(All measurements were made 50 cm in front of the unit using a PCE999 noise analyzer.)