A few weeks ago, we reviewed the Samsung NC10 and were just shocked by the amount of battery life it got. We were so surprised that we ran additional tests at different brightnesses just to see how each level affected the system's endurance. We found that, at the comfortable level of 37.5-percent brightness (3 bars out of 8 on the NC10's scale), we got an awesome 6:52, which is longer than any previous 10-inch netbook by over an hour and a half. We also found that at the minimum level of 12.5 percent brightness, we were able to achieve a whopping 7:34, and though not ideal, the screen was usable. Seeing how close we came to the magic 8-hour mark, we got greedy and decided to push the system to its limits by installing a the power-efficient Intel X25-M SSD and disabling the bluetooth radio, just to make sure we weren't sucking any unneeded power. With the high-end Intel SSD installed, the bluetooth disabled, and the battery at 100 percent, we started our LAPTOP Battery Test and crossed our fingers. The test, which causes the notebook to continuously surf the Web until the battery dies, yielded a remarkable 7:55, just five minutes shy of 8 hours!
So what did we learn after all this?
- The Samsung NC10 has impressive battery scores at a wide variety of brightnesses. And it only has a 6-cell battery too. Just imagine if there were a 9-cell upgrade, like the one we've seen on the MSI Wind.
- If you want to spend an additional $600 on an Intel SSD, you can get another 21 minutes of battery life on your NC10. That's approximately $28.57 per added minute of endurance.
- Swapping out the NC10's hard drive is easy if you know how to do it.
