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Tag Archives: battery life

The versatility of XPRT benchmarks

We’ve designed each of the XPRT benchmarks to assess the performance of specific types of devices in scenarios that mirror the ways consumers typically use those devices. While most XPRT benchmark users are interested in producing official overall scores, some members of the tech press have been using the XPRTs in unconventional, creative ways.

One example is the use of WebXPRT by Tweakers, a popular tech review site based in The Netherlands. (The site is in Dutch, so the Google Translate extension in Chrome was helpful for me.) As Tweakers uses WebXPRT to evaluate all kinds of consumer hardware, they also measure the sound output of each device. Tweakers then publishes the LAeq metric for each device, giving readers a sense of how loud a system may be, on average, while it performs common browser tasks.

If you’re interested in seeing Tweakers’ use of WebXPRT for sound output testing firsthand, check out their Apple MacBook Pro M2, HP Envy 34 All-in-One, and Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro reviews.

Other labs and tech publications have also used the XPRTs in unusual ways such as automating the benchmarks to run during screen burn-in tests or custom battery-life rundowns. If you’ve used any of the XPRT benchmarks in creative ways, please let us know! We are interested in learning more about your tests, and your experiences may provide helpful information that we can share with other XPRT users.

Justin

An update on Chrome OS support for CrXPRT

In March, we discussed the Chrome OS team’s plan to end support for Chrome apps in June and instead focus their efforts on Chrome extensions and Progressive Web Apps. After receiving feedback on their published timeline, the Chrome OS team decided to extend Chrome app support for Enterprise and Education account customers through January 2025. Because we publish our Chrome app (CrXPRT) through a private BenchmarkXPRT developer account, and because we have not seen any further updates to the support timeline, we don’t assume that the support extension will apply to CrXPRT.

Since June has come and gone, and the support extension probably does not apply to our account, we do not expect to be able to publish any future fixes or updates for CrXPRT. As of now, and up through Chrome 105, the CrXPRT 2 performance and battery life tests are still working without a hitch. We will continue to run the benchmark on a regular basis to monitor functionality, and we will disclose any future issues here in the blog and on CrXPRT.com. We hope the app will continue to run both performance and battery life tests well into the future. However, given the frequency of Chrome updates, it’s difficult for us to predict how long the benchmark will remain viable.

As we mentioned back in March, we hope to begin development of an all-new Chrome OS XPRT benchmark by the end of this year. We’ll discuss that prospect in more detail in future blog posts, but if you have ideas about the types of features or workloads you’d like to see in a new Chrome OS benchmark, please let us know!

Justin

Chrome OS support for CrXPRT apps ends in June 2022

Last March, we discussed the Chrome OS team’s original announcement that they would be phasing out support for Chrome Apps altogether in June 2021, and would shift their focus to Chrome extensions and Progressive Web Apps. The Chrome OS team eventually extended support for existing Chrome Apps through June 2022, but as of this week, we see no indication that they will further extend support for Chrome Apps published with general developer accounts. If the end-of-life schedule for Chrome Apps does not change in the next few months, both CrXPRT 2 and CrXPRT 2015 will stop working on new versions of Chrome OS at some point in June.

To maintain CrXPRT functionality past June, we would need to rebuild the app completely—either as a Progressive Web App or in some other form. For this reason, we want to reassess our approach to Chrome OS testing, and investigate which features and technologies to include in a new Chrome OS benchmark. Our current goal is to gather feedback and conduct exploratory research over the next few months, and begin developing an all-new Chrome OS benchmark for publication by the end of the year.

While we will discuss ideas for this new Chrome OS benchmark in future blog posts, we welcome ideas from CrXPRT users now. What features or workloads would you like the new benchmark to retain? Would you like us to remove any components from the existing benchmark? Does the battery life test in its current form suit your needs? If you have any thoughts about these questions or any other aspects of Chrome OS benchmarking, please let us know!

Justin

Updated system configuration recommendations for CrXPRT 2 battery life tests

Recently, we heard from a BenchmarkXPRT Development Community member who was testing Chromebooks in their lab. On a few of the Chromebooks, they saw sporadic CrXPRT 2 battery life test failures where CrXPRT 2 would successfully complete a battery life test and produce a result for the initial run, but then fail at the end of later runs.

After a considerable amount of troubleshooting, they determined that the issue seemed to be related to the way some systems automatically shut down before the battery is completely exhausted, and the way some systems will automatically boot up once the tester plugs in the power adapter for charging. This member found that when they added a few system configuration steps before battery life tests and made slight changes to their post-test routine, the systems that had previously experienced consistent failures would successfully complete battery life tests and produce results.

The added steps are quick and straightforward, and we decided to add them to the Configuring the test device and Running the tests sections of the CrXPRT 2 user manual. We hope this updated guidance will help to prevent future frustration for CrXPRT 2 testers.

If you have any questions or comments about the CrXPRT 2 battery life test, please feel free to contact us!

Justin

Why we don’t control screen brightness during CrXPRT 2 battery life tests

Recently, we had a discussion with a community member about why we no longer recommend specific screen brightness settings during CrXPRT 2 battery life tests. In the CrXPRT 2015 user manual, we recommended setting the test system’s screen brightness to 200 nits. Because the amount of power that a system directs to screen brightness can have a significant impact on battery life, we believed that pegging screen brightness to a common standard for all test systems would yield apple-to-apples comparisons.

After extensive experience with CrXPRT 2015 testing, we decided to not recommend a standard screen brightness with CrXPRT 2, for the following reasons:

  • A significant number of Chromebooks cannot produce a screen brightness of 200 nits. A few higher-end models can do so, but they are not representative of most Chromebooks. Some Chromebooks, especially those that many school districts and corporations purchase in bulk, cannot produce a brightness of even 100 nits.
  • Because of the point above, adjusting screen brightness would not represent real-life conditions for most Chromebooks, and the battery life results could mislead consumers who want to know the battery life they can expect with default out-of-box settings.
  • Most testers, and even some labs, do not have light meters, and the simple brightness percentages that the operating system reports produce different degrees of brightness on different systems. For testers without light meters, a standardized screen brightness recommendation could discourage them from running the test.
  • The brightness controls for some low-end Chromebooks lack the fine-tuning capability that is necessary to standardize brightness between systems. In those cases, an increase or decrease of one notch can swing brightness by 20 to 30 nits in either direction. This could also discourage testing by leading people to believe that they lack the capability to correctly run the test.

In situations where testers want to compare battery life using standardized screen brightness, we recommend using light meters to set the brightness levels as closely as possible. If the brightness levels between systems vary by more than few nits, and if the levels vary significantly from out-of-box settings, the publication of any resulting battery life results should include a full disclosure and explanation of test conditions.

For the majority of testers without light meters, running the CrXPRT 2 battery life test with default screen brightness settings on each system provides a reliable and accurate estimate of the type of real-world, out-of-box battery life consumers can expect.

If you have any questions or comments about the CrXPRT 2 battery life test, please feel free to contact us!

Justin

The CrXPRT 2 battery life test is back!

Last month, we discussed a potential fix for the error that was preventing CrXPRT 2 testers from successfully completing battery life tests on systems running Chrome v89.x and later. Since then, we’ve been testing an updated, unpublished version of the app package across several Chromebook models to ensure that the new build is stable and produces consistent results. We’re happy to report that our testing was successful, and we’ve published the new CrXPRT build (v1.2.0.0) in the Chrome Web Store and it is live as of 12:45 PM EDT today.

Note that it might take some time for the update to appear on your Chromebook and, once it does, you might have to manually approve the update notice.

Neither the tests nor the method of calculating the overall score and battery-life score in this new build have changed, so results are comparable with previous CrXPRT 2 results.

We appreciate everyone’s patience while we found a solution to the error. If you have any questions or comments about the CrXPRT 2 battery life test, please feel free to contact us!

Justin

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