Lenovo Tab S8 / S850 Battery Life Review S8-50 Tablet vs. Nexus 7

The Lenovo Tab S8-50 8″ screen Android Tablet has recently become available. It competes closely with the 2nd Gen Nexus 7 in both price and features. There are some pros and cons to both tablets, but for the most part the Lenovo Tab S8-50 seems to edge out on top. I have been using my Tab S8 for a few weeks now and have had a chance to get used to it. This article will be a review of the battery life as I have experienced it so far. A more comprehensive full product review will be coming soon, but my initial thoughts are that it is it a better value than the 2nd Gen Asus Nexus 7 because it has better speakers and a slightly bigger screen.

Heavy usage

Under heavy usage I have been getting about 2 hours of battery life. Heavy usage is the screen on and device fully active 100% of the time, running intensive video or game apps. I do not count web browsing as a heavy usage. My settings are the screen brightness turned down to about 2 out of a possible 10 (roughly). I do not know if a live wallpaper will drain battery when you aren’t on the home screen, but I do have a simple live wallpaper and a basic weather and twitter widget on the home screen. “Heavy usage” apps I tested include games like Blizzard’s Hearthstone, Clash of Clans, and video apps like HD video in Netflix and HD Flash videos like Youtube.

Result: 1.75 to 2.5 hours battery life (very heavy usage, 100% of the time)

Light / Moderate Usage

I have not yet fully tested this by keeping good records of the apps used and recording the time. I will be sure to update in the near future as I spend some more time with the Lenovo S850 Tablet. For now, I certainly do need to recharge the tablet once a day when only using it for light to moderate tasks with moderate frequency. (Things like checking email and web browsing fall into this category). The battery does last a full day, but when using for email / web browsing, I do not use the tablet for long periods of time. Again, I will be testing this further.

Result: Battery lasts 1 day (light / moderate usage). Rough estimate of around 4-5 hours or so of screen-on, actual usage like web browsing. Further testing is required for a definitive result.

Screen

Further testing will be required, but so far according the the Android battery usage screen under settings, the Screen is 75% of the battery drain, even when the brightness is turned down to 20% of max.