Most consumers pay little or no attention to the processors and other chips that power their computers, and rightly so. In recent years, changes to the design of these chips haven’t made major, noticeable differences in everyday computing tasks.
But this month, chip giant Intel (INTC) introduced a new generation of processors and chips that it claims can dramatically improve something important to almost all users of light laptops: battery life. In fact, it claims these chips, called the 4th Generation Core processors, can boost battery life by 50% while actually improving graphics performance. Intel says the new chips are the first it has designed specifically for the slim, light laptops Windows PC makers call Ultrabooks and Apple calls its MacBook Air line.
These new processors, code-named “Haswell” before the release, have been eagerly awaited for months in an industry that has seen laptop sales suffer at the hands of tablets, partly because tablets typically boast much longer battery life. They have now begun to appear in some computers and this week I tested just the battery life of two new models equipped with these new chips. I focused on battery life since that is a huge factor for many users and Intel says the new chips provide its biggest battery-life gain ever.
Read more at Yahoo Finance/WSJ.
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50% more battery life is not all day. It’s probably 6 hours, or nine at most.