When buying a tablet, consider intended use, price, display size, operating system, and battery life. Battery life strongly influences user experience and varies with settings like screen brightness, audio volume, networking, and airplane mode. Nine tablets underwent laboratory testing that measured battery drain under maximum and minimum brightness/audio, with networking/Bluetooth on and off, and with Airplane Mode engaged. Testing used a dedicated PC, NI USB-6001 DAQ, eight auxiliary inputs, adapters, and LabVIEW software to analyze audio outputs as voltage signals. Screen brightness during video playback was chosen as the primary parameter because it has a large impact on battery consumption.
When looking to buy a tablet, there are a few factors to keep in mind, such as what you'll be using the tablet for (entertainment, drawing, work, etc.), your price point, display size, operating system, and more. At ZDNET, we considered all of these factors when choosing the best tablets you can buy, but we were able to test one important factor that can truly make or break your tablet experience: battery life.
In our Louisville-based lab, we tested each tablet using a dedicated PC with an NI USB-6001 DAQ, eight auxiliary inputs with adapters, and LabVIEW software coded in-house to analyze audio outputs as voltage signals. We tested each tablet's battery life a total of 12 times: three times with maximum brightness/audio, three times with minimum brightness/audio, three times with maximum brightness/audio on Airplane Mode, and three times on minimum brightness/audio on Airplane Mode.
We chose to measure screen brightness during video playback as the main parameter to test since it is one of the most impactful settings on a device when it comes to how battery life is affected. We also tested with Networking/Bluetooth on/off to measure the additional drain on battery life that regular communication via these connections can have. However, since the video used in testing was downloaded to the devices under test, this had only a small impact on results.
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