What sort of battery life do you all get with the framework 13?
it seems like I get 5.5-6 hours of battery life using the Intel 12th gen 1280p mainboard. Is that normal? I’d like to know what other get (especially if you mostly use a browser and stick to lighter tasks)
I keep the screen pretty bright and this laptop has the 2880x1920 screen plus the 55Wh battery. So far I’ve been doing pretty light tasks: VS Code, Obsidian, Web Browser (accessing text-based web pages), terminal, other light tasks. I stick with “power saver” mode and “balanced” mode.
By the way, this is the best Linux experience I’ve had! (though I’m still adjusting and adapting).
Looks like that might make a pretty big difference…
(Note: previously, when I mentioned 5.5-6h of battery life, I measured that value by using the computer. but it looks like fastfetch gives a pretty similar value)
In my case I keep the automatic bright on. It is not very smooth and sometimes a bit annoying. More or less, like 8 hours. My laptop usage is very similar to you (Code, browser, terminal, text editors…). I do not manually set any energy profile.
Those 8 hours work for me. I plug it in now and then. To me, it is more annoying that sometimes it does not sleep when the lid is down and the laptop runs out of battery.
Thanks, that’s super helpful—really appreciate you sharing your experience! It sounds like your Framework is getting noticeably better battery life than mine.
On my 1280P mainboard, I can maybe get close to 8 hours, but only if the system is barely doing anything and running in battery saver mode.
I ordered an AMD mainboard (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370) and your post gives me some cautious optimism about battery life improving. I’m also hoping for other quality-of-life improvements.
Can’t wait to swap out this Intel 1280P! The fan noise on the 1280P drives me nuts (though I’ll admit I’m pretty sensitive to that kind of thing). With the 1280P I am constantly switching to “Power Saver” mode (when the fans get annoying) and to “Balanced” mode (when the slow performance gets annoying)… I need the computer to stay silent during basic workloads like watching a video. This mainboard usually can’t do that.
I’m on Bazzite with an AMD 7640. I get >4 hours with just a browser, no idea why. I’m tempted to try rebasing to Bluefin just to try and have your battery life.
With the AMD mainboard, I’m not getting good battery life. It’s about 3-4 h range. (I tend to have many applications open, for what it’s worth; mostly: 100ish browser tabs + terminal + obsidian + Speech Note + VS Code + pika backup + deja dup)
Interesting counterpoints. We need to figure out a way to automate gathering power information easily and submitting it somewhere for analysis because it’s so variable.
For what it’s worth this was what the KDE monitor showed as my power consumption for the last week. This is just with video playback, remember. I have no idea what’s causing those weird spikes.
Please note: My recent battery life observations might not be a good indicator of what others should expect. I ran Framework’s intelligent diagnostic script (aka “combined.sh”) and it says I need to replace my battery. It’s also the case that my battery life has been getting worse. Yesterday it died after ~1 hour.
Unfortunately, Framework batteries are out of stock… it seems like they’ve been out of stock on batteries for a while now (you can add the 61 Wh battery to your bag; but the cart shows “out of stock”)
Today I got a replacement battery from framework. But before I install it, I want to do a before and after test. Here’s my plan:
I created a python script to log the battery percentage once per min in a CSV file. I also created a systemd service unit that starts my script on boot.
Basically, I’m gonna boot the computer on battery and wait for it to shutdown from low battery while logging the battery % every minute.
Here’s the test procedure in more detail:
Install the script + service unit
Charge the computer to 100%
Shutdown the computer
Unplug the computer
Power on the computer
Login plus turn on caffeine (but otherwise leave it idle)
Wait for the computer to shutdown from low battery
Beyond that, I decided on these settings:
Screen brightness: ~50%
Keyboard back-light: Off
Power profile: Balanced
Wi-Fi: connected (using Wi-Fi 6E)
The computer is mostly idle, except, my computer runs Deja Dup (daily) and Pika Backup (hourly). Both programs save the backups over the network. (Deja Dup to “the cloud” and Pika to the NAS)
I started the test a few minutes ago, and I plan to leave it overnight.
I’m just having some fun, but if anyone has feedback, I’d like to know.
Edit: Pika didn’t run during my battery run-down test. I got a notification saying it’s going to skip backups because the computer isn’t plugged in
(you can add the 61 Wh battery to your bag; but the cart shows “out of stock”)
