How's actual battery life on new iPods?

[Ambrose Chapel]

Now that the iPods have been out a couple of weeks and people have had some time to use them, has anyone done a real-world battery life test yet? I'm curious if Apple's 8 hour estimate is conservative or wishful thinking..

Also, since updating my original 5GB iPod to 1.3, my battery life has increased by 2 hours! I was consistently getting 8 hours under normal use, now i'm getting between 9.5 and 10.5. Huzzah.

 

[Mal]

I don't know for sure, maybe I'll test it tomorrow, but I used it most of the time I was at work today (about 8 hours) plus in the car both ways, so probably the 8 hour estimate is a semi-conservative one. That's just my experience.

JW

 

[Ambrose Chapel]

thanks skywalker. anyone else?

 

[alia]

I haven't used it straight for 8 hours without getting home to charge it so I don't know. I do know, though, that if you're a Windows user, be sure and charge it before you sync, because that eats batteries like nuts! And if your battery dies while the ipod is syncing, it will tell you that it's full, even if you have space left. Just charge it up, and it syncs fine though.


Alia

 

[robbieduncan]

It lasted my journey to work, all day at work (although I probably only listened to it for about 4 hours at work) and the journey home. It still has 2 out of 4 bars power. So after 5 hours use (or so) it has around 50% charge. Not bad at all!

 

[maradong]

about 9 hours. 10 gig version

 

[MacFan25]

i havent really listened to it for 8 straight hours, but I did listen to it for about 4 hours the other day, and I was skipping songs around a lot. the battery thing was half way down. so, i would say that if i played it and didn't skip much, I could get 8 and a half to 9 hours.

 

[Ambrose Chapel]

Thanks all. I'm pretty torn as to whether or not I should upgrade my 5 gig. I really wish the new mid-range model was a 20, I'd go for it in a second. Oh well I guess it's still a huge improvement over what I have now..

Please post any more battery tests if you've done them. Thanks.

 

[Mal]

I tested out the battery life yesterday very carefully. It ran non-stop from 9:15 till 5:37, and I didn't skip tracks often or do most of the things that are supposed to drain battery life. I also noticed that when I picked it up off the dock it said it was charged, but I put it back on to transfer something to it, and it said it was still charging, so I"m not sure it was 100% full. But that's good battery life anyways.

JW

 

[Catt]

I'm considering getting a 15Gb iPod but was concerned about the battery life, my MD player pushes 14 hours easily. But 8 should be fine really, my previous MD player only managed 6 on a good day.
Anyway I have a PC Laptop with a firewire 4-pin port and was wondering whether I should invest in a PC-Card 6-pin Firewire port so that I can sync and charge at the same time. Does anyone think that not being able to sync and charge at the same time will be a major annoyance or do you think I'll be able to live with it? Cheers.
Oh and how good is the Apple store in terms of delivery times? I as thinking of buying direct from apple but I'd like to get it asap and there is a store near me that delivers in 24 hours; when it has stock - which annoyingly it doesn't have at the moment.

 

[sanford]

I geeked out and tested mine: 8+ hours straight through on a playlist that required it to spin up the hard drive at least once every pass through the playlist.

Skywalker: If you take it out of the cradle fully charged, then drop it right back in, it restarts the charge cycle. You were at full charge, but it will start trickle charging all over again.

Lastly, this is off topic, but are you people hearing the clicking or popping noise between tracks? Single "pop" between every track on the new iPods?

 

[Catt]

Another thing I wanted to know was about the noise of the new iPods, how audible is the harddrive to those around you? I might be using it in the library and I don't want the hard drive to be too loud.

 

[sanford]

Barely audible. You can feel it more than hear it if you're holding it. And it only spins up about once every 25 minutes. You won't disturb anyone in a library.

 

[Catt]

Originally posted by sanford
Barely audible. You can feel it more than hear it if you're holding it. And it only spins up about once every 25 minutes. You won't disturb anyone in a library.

Thanks,
Does anyone have any links to real life pictures of the new iPods; all the images on Apple's site are computer generated as far as I can see, either that or photoshopped within an inch of their lives. I've seen the original in the flesh and was wondering how the new one compared.

 

[hulele]

Checked my 30G. Almost perfect 8 hours, plus 2 mins bonus. I ran it straight through a playlist that was 230 songs long, it went about 1/3rd down. Fiddled with the buttons a few times (backlight went up), but not skipped thru songs.

One note, however:

I wanted to see how often the drive spins up, and my observation is that it will spin up only between songs (that's pretty obvious), but definitely more often than 20 mins. That might be partially caused by my mp3s being 192k-encoded, but they were definitely not that long (5-7 mins max). So here's my suspition (please, verify it if you can). Ipod fills the buffer with full songs, as much as it can fit. After each song played, it checks if the next one on the drive can fit and loads it (or not, depending on size). Note, this is only after 1 hour of semi-serious observation while doing something else at work. It would probably need a more scientific approach - checking exact sizes of songs and observing the behavior of the drive with more attention. Anyone willing to do that?

 

[hacurio1]

Originally posted by Catt
I'm considering getting a 15Gb iPod but was concerned about the battery life, my MD player pushes 14 hours easily. But 8 should be fine really, my previous MD player only managed 6 on a good day.
Anyway I have a PC Laptop with a firewire 4-pin port and was wondering whether I should invest in a PC-Card 6-pin Firewire port so that I can sync and charge at the same time. Does anyone think that not being able to sync and charge at the same time will be a major annoyance or do you think I'll be able to live with it? Cheers.
Oh and how good is the Apple store in terms of delivery times? I as thinking of buying direct from apple but I'd like to get it asap and there is a store near me that delivers in 24 hours; when it has stock - which annoyingly it doesn't have at the moment.

Also, I don't know why nobody mentioned this before, but the new ipods come with a 6 to 4 pin firewire adaptor. You wont need to get a card. I don't know if it will charge though.

 

[bellis1]

10 Gig

I got a 10 gig and it is pulling about a solid 8 hours. With some sleeps in between it is probably about 10 added up with total use. It works for an entire day of work and I have not run out of batteries yet. I am completely satisfied but I suppose we will have to see how long that battery life lasts. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed but am loving the thing as it is.