X201 Tablet Battery

[kirayamato26]

Hello everyone,

I acquired the ThinkPad X201 Tablet in my signature 2 weeks ago for what I believe to be a fairly good price ($340 CAD and it came with a docking station). I wanted something smaller than my W520 as a portable machine, but also more powerful and useful than the Nexus 7 that I've been using, and I really wanted to play around with a tablet PC. The X201 Tablet is indeed much more portable than the W520 and much more versatile than the Nexus 7, but the problem is its battery life - both its runtime on a charge and the lifespan of the battery that came with the machine.

The battery is an 8 cell Sanyo battery, currently at a full charge capacity of about 54 Wh out of the design capacity of 66 Wh and is currently at 139 cycles and was manufactured in the middle of 2010. I run Windows 8.1 with all the latest updates and whatnot installed, as well as Lenovo Power Manager. I can get at most 5:45 ~ 6:15 out of my X201 Tablet from using it to read PDF notes on 9/15 brightness. The longest that it ran for was 8:02 in Windows (screen off, everything max power savings, radios off) + ~20 mins sitting in BIOS before it shut off from the calibration charge. I can't seem to get my Power Manager idle power consumption to be lower than around 6.6 W with minimum brightness despite having set performance to low, enabling SATA ALPM, setting every power option I can find to max power savings, and disabling unused services and background tasks. Does anyone have any tips for shaving a bit more power usage off of it? I've seen users reporting somewhere around 5.4 W idle.

As for the actual battery lifespan, I'm guessing that it'll die by the 300 cycle mark, which will likely be reached within a year since I'm going to be using about 3 cycles a week on the battery for school. So what is the best route of action when it dies? I see new genuine batteries for ~$75 on eBay, but I'm not sure how trustworthy those sellers are and how old those batteries are. I see that there is a marketplace on this site so I'm sort of curious on how much a (lightly) used X201 Tablet battery would cost me. Also, has anyone ever successfully recelled a X201 Tablet battery or something similar? I'm thinking that it may be a fun project, but the cost associated isn't exactly low and I'd like to know my success rate before attempting it.

Thanks in advance.

[piledriver]

Carry a spare, the tablets dock can charge a spare battery (but you cannot use it for power, plugged in there)

6-ish hours is about right when the machine/battery was new.
There is/was a plate battery (mounts like the dock) that would allow running all day, but it was pricey beyond belief.

The ideal solution is of course "find an outlet".

[Cigarguy]

Yep your battery life seems about right and is pretty darn good for a full fledged laptop. My x201 gets as good and most times better battery life than my Surface Pro but not as good as my ARM based tablets.

Having a spare was the solution for me.