Benchmarks: Vitals and Battery Life
CPU temperature seems impressively low, but do be aware that the Core i7 CPU is quick to throttle during the demanding Blender test. Core temperature shoots up to 99°C within seconds, causing the chip to dial down to 2.6GHz across all cores - the 72°C reported is the average temperature toward the end of the test.
Noise levels also pose little distraction. HP's internal fan switches off at low load, and though it can be heard quite clearly when the going gets tough, the smooth hum isn't off putting.
We use a pair of PCMark 10 benchmarks to gauge battery life; Modern Office, which intermittently uses the writing, web browsing and video conferencing workloads from the main PCMark 10 benchmark; and Gaming, which repeats the common Fire Strike test to provide a worst-case scenario.
In order to make the results comparable between laptops, each system is configured with a purpose-built power plan, wireless radios disabled, and screen brightness set as close to 200 nits as possible using a calibration device.
On the one hand, just over 12 hours of battery life is a commendable return and sufficient for a day's work. On the other hand, we're now starting to see rival laptops deliver a whole day from a single charge.