One of the glaring omissions from the UMPC product comparison engine here was the lack of battery life figures. It’s one of the most often asked questions and one of the most important benchmarks that people consider when buying a UMPC so as from yesterday evening, the comparison pages now show the battery life figures. These are REAL battery life figures taken from my own testing or from other, trusted sources (not manufacturers claims) and indicate the sort of battery life you can expect from the device. The Min and Max figures are for normal operations (not quiet-state or full-load figures) and are what you can expect under normal, Internet-connected usage. As an example, here’s the comparison page showing the 5 devices that currently have the longest battery life. (click on ‘Show hidden columns’ to see the battery info. Click on the column headers to sort.)

One word of warning on these figures, the battery life figure is not an indication of how efficient a device is. Take the OQO Model 02 for example. I believe its the most energy efficient UMPC to date but it hasn’t got the longest battery life because the designers chose to reduce the weight and size by keeping the battery small. One the other had, one of the devices with the longest battery life, the Flipstart, turns out to be unimpressive in terms of efficiency. It’s only because it ships with a huge battery that it returns longer battery life.

All the drain-rate and battery capacity figures figures are available in the devices specification pages.