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How much more battery life can you get from an SSD drive?

J

jjahshik32

macrumors 603
Original poster
Sep 4, 2006
5,366
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So, how much more battery life can you get out by using an SSD drive in your 13" mbp?

Anyone here put in an intel SSD or other manufactured SSD with good results?

One reason that I'm thinking about getting an SSD is so that my 13" can go to sleep quicker (is this true?).
 
jjahshik32 said:
So, how much more battery life can you get out of an SSD drive on your 13" mbp?

Anyone here put in an intel SSD or other manufactured SSD with good results?

One reason that I'm thinking about getting an SSD is so that my 13" can go to sleep quicker (is this true?).
Click to expand...

Not sure but it won't be anything drastic.

But getting a SSD because you want your computer to go to sleep quicker? You know you can just change the sleep mode so it doesn't write sleep data on the HD and just keeps it in the RAM and it will go to sleep much quicker?
 
jjahshik32 said:
So, how much more battery life can you get out of an SSD drive on your 13" mbp?

Anyone here put in an intel SSD or other manufactured SSD with good results?

One reason that I'm thinking about getting an SSD is so that my 13" can go to sleep quicker (is this true?).
Click to expand...

Look up OS X sleep mode in google, change your sleepmode to 0, and you'll have a macbook that goes to sleep and wakes up nearly instantly.

As far as battery life, I don't think it would add more than 30 minutes or so.
 
Dan73 said:
Not sure but it won't be anything drastic.

But getting a SSD because you want your computer to go to sleep quicker? You know you can just change the sleep mode so it doesn't write sleep data on the HD and just keeps it in the RAM and it will go to sleep much quicker?
Click to expand...

Hmm I did not know that. But thats not the only reason that I want an SSD drive, pure speed is the #1 reason of course. But I was just wondering about the battery life. I know I read somewhere that 30 more minutes is possible.
 
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I didn't gain any noticeable battery life with an SSD (X25-M G2). If that's the only reason you want one, I would advise against it.
 
Gained battery life depends on your use. With word processing/programming I gained around 30 minutes more battery life with a 1st generation 80GB X25-M. The computer is almost idle when doing these tasks. Screen/keyboard brightness at 50%.
 
Dan73 said:
Not sure but it won't be anything drastic.

But getting a SSD because you want your computer to go to sleep quicker? You know you can just change the sleep mode so it doesn't write sleep data on the HD and just keeps it in the RAM and it will go to sleep much quicker?
Click to expand...

Just don't change batteries without saving if you do that... Of course, if it's a newer MBP, that's a moot point.
 
jjahshik32 said:
So, how much more battery life can you get out by using an SSD drive in your 13" mbp?

Anyone here put in an intel SSD or other manufactured SSD with good results?

One reason that I'm thinking about getting an SSD is so that my 13" can go to sleep quicker (is this true?).
Click to expand...

Where I work, we use HP 6930p notebooks. The ones with SSDs get more than double the battery life than the ones with traditional spindle hard drives.

I know that this doesn't answer your question, but I would think that there would be a significant difference with the Mac too. You're going from a mechanical device with a motor (lots of power consumption) to a device with no moving parts.
 
I get probably an extra hour with my Kingston v series. Or at least I can watch 3-4 Star Trek episodes before the low battery warning shows up with screen on full brightness.
 
Here's something to consider.

A SSD only has "On/Off" modes. Therefore, if idle power usage is at 0.5W and Read/Write/Seek is at 2.0W, then it can only do 0.5 or 2.0W, nothing in between.

A Conventional hard drive have variable modes. When spinning up, it'll start from 0.5W then slowly reach up to 2.0W or whatever the wattage is.

If you don't have a lot of disk access, you'll save battery life. If you do, you most likely won't.
 
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