How much more battery life would you get with 1080P screen as opposed to a 4K screen?

[lakimens]

Hi,

 

So to be more specific, I'm looking into getting the Dell XPS 9310, just love the whole package from design to performance. However, I also want to have touch, and in my country I do not have the FHD+ touch model to choose, I can either choose FHD+ no touch or 4K Touch.

 

I want to get the 4K model as it comes with much more performance for not that much money, however, I am worried I will be getting low battery life.

 

I've read quite a few reviews and some suggest you only lose 1-2 hours of battery life, but the Just Josh review got me a bit scared as he quoted 3-4 hours of battery life.

 

I thought i'd ask here if anyone has personal experience with directly comparing 4K and 1080P on the same laptop, or maybe you have the 4K 9310?

[jaslion]

Well the 4k screen also is brighter so yeah you do lose 2-3 hours of battery usually. Why the need for touch it's just a regular old laptop and you can't really use touch in a productive way on those?

[Lord Szechenyi]

19 minutes ago, lakimens said:

Hi,

 

So to be more specific, I'm looking into getting the Dell XPS 9310, just love the whole package from design to performance. However, I also want to have touch, and in my country I do not have the FHD+ touch model to choose, I can either choose FHD+ no touch or 4K Touch.

 

I want to get the 4K model as it comes with much more performance for not that much money, however, I am worried I will be getting low battery life.

 

I've read quite a few reviews and some suggest you only lose 1-2 hours of battery life, but the Just Josh review got me a bit scared as he quoted 3-4 hours of battery life.

 

I thought i'd ask here if anyone has personal experience with directly comparing 4K and 1080P on the same laptop, or maybe you have the 4K 9310?

 

12 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Well the 4k screen also is brighter so yeah you do lose 2-3 hours of battery usually. Why the need for touch it's just a regular old laptop and you can't really use touch in a productive way on those?

i didn't fully read OP, but this is only true if it can achieve higher nits (AKA HDR Support)

 

As for Original poster, there isn't much battery life difference, it would really go down to what applications you use.

If you are gaming, its much more demanding (with equal hardware of course) to do 4k then 1090p.

But video playback (mostly) doesn't matter

[jaslion]

Just now, Lord Szechenyi said:

 

i didn't fully read OP, but this is only true if it can achieve higher nits (AKA HDR Support)

 

As for Alan Partridge, there isn't much battery life difference, it would really go down to what applications you use.

If you are gaming, its much more demanding (with equal hardware of course) to do 4k then 1090p.

But video playback (mostly) doesn't matter

What you are saying is just false. A 4k screen is a lot more power hungry than a 1080p one. That has been proven over and over. That and the 4k one can go up to 500 nits whilst the 1080p one (depending on version) is between 250-350 nits.

 

A 4k screen will always consume more power than a 1080p one. What is true is that certain application need more processing power to display at 4k and thus further affect batterylife.

[Lord Szechenyi]

Just now, jaslion said:

What you are saying is just false. A 4k screen is a lot more power hungry than a 1080p one. That has been proven over and over. That and the 4k one can go up to 500 nits whilst the 1080p one (depending on version) is between 250-350 nits.

 

A 4k screen will always consume more power than a 1080p one. What is true is that certain application need more processing power to display at 4k and thus further affect batterylife.

no, what makes a big difference is screen size. 

(and brightness but we already mentioned that, and of course different kinds of screen are also different like LED LCD etc.)

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

no, what makes a big difference is screen size. 

(and brightness but we already mentioned that, and of course different kinds of screen are also different like LED LCD etc.)

That is also true. But again 4k is a higher amount of pixels -> more pixels means more pixels to drive thus more power needed in total. It's really as simple as that. Sure the difference is like 3-4w usually on such a small display but for a laptop that is a MASSIVE impact on battery life as that is 3-4w an hour extra gone. Let alone all the other things it needs to do with a 4k screen.

[Lord Szechenyi]

Just now, jaslion said:

That is also true. But again 4k is a higher amount of pixels -> more pixels means more pixels to drive thus more power needed in total. It's really as simple as that. Sure the difference is like 3-4w usually on such a small display but for a laptop that is a MASSIVE impact on battery life as that is 3-4w an hour extra gone. Let alone all the other things it needs to do with a 4k screen.

True, but (unless stated otherwise in OP, but like i said i didn't read it) unless it's OLED, LCD don't matter that much for pixel count,

i mean sure, it might consume more power, but definitely not enough to make it 2-3 hours less battery life.

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

True, but (unless stated otherwise in OP, but like i said i didn't read it) unless it's OLED, LCD don't matter that much for pixel count,

i mean sure, it might consume more power, but definitely not enough to make it 2-3 hours less battery life.

Again it does just google it. Oled is even worse for that.

[Lord Szechenyi]

4 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Again it does just google it. Oled is even worse for that.

This is why i said that UNLESS it's oled then no difference

Otherwise, i googled it (which is very lazy from you) and i have found no evidence to your claim.

only thing i found was "it puts more load on the gpu and/or Cpu" which i already mentioned and said it makes virtually no difference depending on what you use it for.

(Example: you have a 1660 super in the laptop, watching FHD or 4k video uses about 5% or less in both cases = no difference in power consumption)

[lakimens]

The 4k screen has 4x more pixels which are just there, you can't turn them off.

 

If you lower the resolution, the display will draw the same power, just will put less load on the GPU.

 

It cannot possiblity be the same amount of battery drain for 4X the amount of pixels.

 

I was looking into more specific numbers. However, if it's only 2-3 hours at max subtracted from the 10-12 this laptop could get with the FHD, then I think that's fine for me.

[jaslion]

10 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

This is why i said that UNLESS it's oled then no difference

Otherwise, i googled it (which is very lazy from you) and i have found no evidence to your claim.

only thing i found was "it puts more load on the gpu and/or Cpu" which i already mentioned and said it makes virtually no difference depending on what you use it for.

(Example: you have a 1660 super in the laptop, watching FHD or 4k video uses about 5% or less in both cases = no difference in power consumption)

Well basically it all comes down to how well made the display is but it really is as simple as there are a lot more pixels so there just needs to be more power to run them. Sure the backlight can stay the same and the power of that stays the same but there will be more power needed for more pixels that are run. This has been tested, this has been proved and this is literally the same laptop that got battery tested that is having hours of less battery life with a 4k panel at the same brightness as a 1080p one.

[Lord Szechenyi]

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

Well basically it all comes down to how well made the display is but it really is as simple as there are a lot more pixels so there just needs to be more power to run them. Sure the backlight can stay the same and the power of that stays the same but there will be more power needed for more pixels that are run. This has been tested, this has been proved and this is literally the same laptop that got battery tested that is having hours of less battery life with a 4k panel at the same brightness as a 1080p one.

i still can't see a source.

 

[Imglidinhere]

16 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

 

i didn't fully read OP, but this is only true if it can achieve higher nits (AKA HDR Support)

 

As for Original poster, there isn't much battery life difference, it would really go down to what applications you use.

If you are gaming, its much more demanding (with equal hardware of course) to do 4k then 1090p.

But video playback (mostly) doesn't matter

Yes it does. It's a little over double the power consumption simply due to quadrupling the number of LEDs necessary to illuminate that many pixels. Remember, 4K is equal to four 1080p displays.

 

Go for a 1080p panel if your concern is about battery life. It's not a small change either. It's as much as halving your battery time, especially on models like the XPS.

 

[lakimens]

3 hours ago, Imglidinhere said:

Go for a 1080p panel if your concern is about battery life. It's not a small change either. It's as much as halving your battery time, especially on models like the XPS.

Thank you. I've written to the company to see if they can order a 32GB RAM model with FHD+ Touch, I'll see what they reply.

[Lord Vile]

20 hours ago, Lord Szechenyi said:

 

i didn't fully read OP, but this is only true if it can achieve higher nits (AKA HDR Support)

 

As for Original poster, there isn't much battery life difference, it would really go down to what applications you use.

If you are gaming, its much more demanding (with equal hardware of course) to do 4k then 1090p.

But video playback (mostly) doesn't matter

A 4K display needs more power to be as bright as you’re pushing the light through more pixels