Apple iPad and Apple iPad mini win battery life test versus other tablets

U.K. consumer watchdog website Which? decided to test the leading tablets in the market to see which ones had better battery life. To make sure that all of the tablets were playing on a level field, the brightness was set to 200 nits on all of them, using a light meter. Two categories were set up with one containing tablets measuring 9.4 inches and larger while the other category consisted of tablets with a 7.9 inch screen or smaller.

The ASUS EEE Pad Transformer Prime had the shortest battery life amongst larger sized tablets

In the large screen category, the winner was the Apple iPad with Retina display which means it was either the third or fourth generation of the Apple iPad. The tablet lasted for 811 minutes while browsing the internet. That works out to 13.5 hours. Far behind was the Apple iPad 2 which lasted for 591 minutes (a bit less than10 hours). The battle for third was tight with the Sony Xperia Tablet S, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 and the Microsoft Surface RT lasting for 534 minutes, 532 minutes and 502 minutes respectively. The average score of 16 large screen tablets tested was 451 minutes and all of the previously mentioned tablets plus the Google Nexus 10 (488 minutes) were above average. The lowest score belonged to the ASUS EEE Pad Transformer Prime without a QWERTY keyboard which lasted all of 335 minutes.

For those tablets with a 7.95 inch screen or smaller, the Apple iPad mini took the top spot with 783 minutes of battery life. That is slightly over 13 hours and handily beat out the Amazon Kindle Fire HD's 591 minutes and the 550 minutes of longevity for the Google Nexus 7. The average of ten 7 inch slates worked out to 478 minutes. Scoring lower than average battery life was the non-HD Amazon Kindle Fire (437 minutes) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (425 minutes).

The Apple iPhone with Retina display and the Apple iPad mini won in their respective categories