Tom's Hardware: Solid-State Drives Reduce, Not Increase, Battery Life

For a long time now it looked like solid-state hard drives (SSDs) were the future of laptop storage media.  There's no question that they outperform disk-based hard drives in access and response time, but Tom's Hardware is challenging the wide assumption that they also save power--and they're bringing data:

We still believe that flash-based drives will be the future for the performance segment, but they must not become a key component for energy-efficient notebooks and ultra-portables — where performance is secondary — as long as their average power consumption is higher than that of conventional 2.5” notebook hard drives. In fact, even a high-performance 7,200 RPM 2.5” drive provided better overall battery runtime than most of the flash SSDs we put through the Mobilemark test.

What does that mean for you?  Not too much for the casual laptop user, but if you're a business road-warrior who lives out of your laptop, the impact on battery life--as much as a one-hour reduction in one test--could prove significant.  Tom's Hardware doesn't mince words:

The results of our testing are a shock for anyone who cares about battery runtime, as our results prove unmistakably that battery runtimes do not increase when using flash based SSDs. As a matter of fact, most flash SSD products actually contribute to emptying your battery even faster! Mainstream flash SSDs — if they can even be called “mainstream” at prices of $500 and up — do not even provide convincing performance while they help to suck your battery empty quicker than before.

Read the full breakdown of the test results here.

--Aric A.