Samsung ATIV Smart PC: Revisiting Clover Trail Convertibles
by Vivek Gowri on March 18, 2013 12:00 AM ESTSamsung ATIV Smart PC: Battery Life
The battery life this platform offers is fantastic. The 31Wh battery gives over 10 hours of runtime in our internet browsing test, which is in the same ballpark as the Tegra 3 Windows RT tablets, but also better than the iPad from a power efficiency standpoint. It’s worth noting that the iPad has a much higher resolution display that results in a significantly higher power draw, but offers almost the same 10 hour battery life with a much larger 42.5 Wh battery.
I do wish that the notebook dock contained a second battery, though. The ASUS VivoTab with the dock has 55Wh of combined battery capacity (30Wh in the tablet, 25Wh in the dock) and is rated to have 19 hours of total battery life. If you get even 75% of that in real world use, you’re still looking at a Windows 8 system with nearly 15 hours of battery runtime, which is incredibly valuable. The lack of a secondary dock has a bigger impact in the Ivy Bridge-based ATIV Smart PC Pro than it does here, because the Pro has relatively mediocre battery life (I’ll get to that in the 700T review) and could really use another couple of dozen watt-hours. Even without the second battery, the 500T still has excellent battery life, but it’s a bit of a missed opportunity to be sure.
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RollingCamel - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
Just want to say TEAM17 make a decent touch-based Worms 2D and it'll sell like hot cakes. No need for fancy graphics just the old school 2D of Armageddon and World Party...nerd1 - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
Too bad it took so long for this not-quite-long review....Personally I really hate any >10" tablet without inking capability, so it is actually great now OEMs are making tablets with active digitizers. I'd like to see the reviews for Thinkpad tablet 2 and Dell latitude 10 too.
VivekGowri - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
Yeah, that was my bad, it got caught behind some other stuff and has spent a long time sitting at the 90% completion state. Will be more timely in future.hughtwg - Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - link
I had a Thinkpad Tablet 2. In general Windows 8 or more specifically the Modern UI has very poor pen support. You can't use the pen to move around the UI like you would use your finger. You have to use the pen to activate the scroll bars. Unfortunately the TPT2 has very poor pen calibraition particularly along the edges of the screen. This makes using the scroll bars in the Modern UI a real pain in the butt. This also holds true for trying to hit the close or resize button on any maximized windows in the desktop. These issues and the lack of a good dock/keyboard are why I sold my TPT2 and replaced with an an Envy X2.nerd1 - Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - link
The main use for pen is inking - I cannot understand the LACK of active pen makes Envy X2 any better device.hughtwg - Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - link
For me the main use of a pen is not having to touch the screen. I use the pen on my Note II 99% of the time and I never ink. While I would prefer a device that supported a pen the difficulty of navigating the Modern UI with a pen made it mostly useless to me.What makes the X2 a better device then the TPT2 is the keyboard , battery life, ports, and larger screen. For me anyway. YMMV.
I am as mad as hell - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
1366x768... that's all I needed to read.VivekGowri - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
You're not going to see higher than that on an Atom-based tablet, nor any of the RT slates. Disappointing reality, but I don't think Clover Trail would offer a satisfactory experience at 1080p anyways - maybe CT+?Snotling - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
Do the test, plug in an old Atom netbook in a 1080p display... for everything except 3D games or HD video, it will be fine (and I'm talking OLD single core Atom) New Atoms are far more capable, especially for HD video.jeffkibuule - Monday, March 18, 2013 - link
My guess is battery life suffers running at 1080p resolution.