Samsung NC10 9-Cell Battery Boosts Runtime By 50%: 12+ Hours

The Samsung NC10 netbook has become somewhat infamous for its incredible battery life, with some reviewers reporting in excess of 7hrs runtime from the standard 6-cell pack.  So it seems almost greedy to ask for a larger, third-party battery, but as we've seen for the MSI Wind, retailers will always offer that temptation.  UMPC Fever have been running benchmarks on the first 9-cell Samsung NC10 battery pack, and from the figures they're getting you're looking at around a 50-percent increase over Samsung's standard battery.

Full benchmark breakdown after the cut

The third-party battery they're using is from Batterysquare, and has 7800 mAH capacity; that's compared to Samsung's standard 5400 mAH pack.  The NC10 was set up with BIOS power saving on, screen brightness at 37.5-percent, WiFi on (and WiFi power-saving off), with the CPU in maximum power mode and both auto-dim and auto-hibernate turned off.

Sitting idle, the standard 6-cell battery managed 8:01, which the 9-cell promptly crushed with 12:10.  A web-surfing emulator – which flicks between three pages, one running a flash movie, another a 3D flash animation, and the third a text-based page – showed the 6-cell lasting 6:12 while the 9-cell reached 9:34.  Finally, a high-workload test – using the classic mode of Battery Eater Pro 05 v2.7 – saw the 6-cell holding out for 4:46, while the 9-cell lasted 7:16.

Those are incredible figures, from a battery that retails around $99.99.  Of course, what it doesn't test is battery durability and safety, and as always you can be taking a risk with third-party power packs.  Still, if huge runtime is your ultimate goal, that might be a risk you're willing to take.