Benchmarks: Power Draw and Battery Life
Power consumption is in line with our expectations - the GTX 980M is a high-performance chip and, while more efficient than previous-generation parts, still carries a sizeable 100W TDP.
Battery life, however, is shorter than anticipated given the GT72's 83Wh battery. To gauge real-world longevity, we loop a 720p movie clip with 50 per cent screen brightness and all wireless radios disabled. In this scenario, the GT72 managed to keep going for just under four hours.
A consequence of not having Nvidia Optimus technology? Perhaps, and to find out, we switched the laptop to IGP mode and re-ran the battery test. Doing so returned a more agreeable run time of 344 minutes, representing a near-50-per-cent improvement.