Benchmarks: Battery Life
We alluded to Intel having a potential battery life advantage earlier in the review, and those suspicions have proven true. Both variants of the Surface Laptop 3 are outfitted with the same 46Wh battery, yet during our standard video run-down test, the Intel model managed to keep going for three-and-a-half hours longer than the AMD Ryzen. A battery life gain of 43 per cent is, without a doubt, the single most noticeable difference between the two configurations.
We are currently in the process of changing our test methodology to incorporate the new PCMark 10 Battery Profile benchmarks. Three tests will be used; Office, which intermittently uses the writing, web browsing and video conferencing workloads from the main PCMark 10 benchmark; Video, which loops a 1080p full-screen movie file for the duration; and Gaming, which uses the common Fire Strike test to stress the GPU until the battery is drained.
In order to make the results comparable between laptops, each system is configured with a balanced power plan, wireless radios disabled, and screen brightness set as close to 120cd/m2 as possible using a calibration device. Even in this apples-to-apples scenario, Intel maintains a pronounced lead in battery life.