Battery Life + Recharging Performance
Contents
Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE : Battery Life Comparison!
This Fan Edition tablet comes with a large 8,000 mAh battery. To test its battery life, we turned off Automatic Brightness, and set its display brightness to 50%.
Why 50%? That is actually slightly higher than the average indoor brightness level of 40% during the day, and is what we usually use in all our mobile battery life tests.
It is important to fix the brightness level, to make sure the screen brightness does not change as the ambient brightness changes.
We then ran the PCMark Work 3.0 battery life test until its battery capacity dropped to 20% several times, and this was the best result we obtained with the standard, and the adaptive refresh rates :
Not bad! The Galaxy Tab S9 FE lasted almost 10 hours on the Standard refresh rate, and just over 9 hours on the Adaptive refresh rate.
With such results, it makes sense to just leave the Tab S9 FE on its default setting of Adaptive refresh. After all, it only saps its battery life by 8% (46 minutes).
Let’s compare its battery life against the Galaxy Tab S7 Plus and Galaxy S8 Ultra tablets.
Standard Refresh Rate (60 Hz)
This Fan Edition tablet delivered the best battery life with the Standard refresh rate of 60 Hz.
Thanks to its power-efficient Exynos 1380 processor and smaller display, it sips power compared to the other two larger and more powerful tablets.
| Work 3.0 | Tab S9 FE (60 Hz) |
Tab S7 Plus (60 Hz) |
Tab S8 Ultra (60 Hz) |
| Display Size | 10.9-inch | 12.4-inch | 14.6-inch |
| Battery Capacity | 8,000 mAh | 10,090 mAh | 11,200 mAh |
| Battery Life | 9 hrs 49 mins |
7 hrs 55 mins | 8 hrs 3 mins |
| Utilisation per min. |
10.87 mAh | 16.99 mAh | 18.55 mAh |
Adaptive Refresh Rate (90 Hz / 120 Hz)
Switching on the Adaptive refresh rate allowed the display to switch between 30 Hz, 60 Hz and 90 Hz, and only cut down its battery life by 46 minutes (8%).
But as my evaluation shows – the Galaxy Tab S9 FE uses considerably less power than the two larger and more powerful tablets. In fact, it uses just over half as much as the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra!
| Work 3.0 | Tab S9 FE (90 Hz) |
Tab S7 Plus (120 Hz) |
Tab S8 Ultra (120 Hz) |
| Display Size | 10.9-inch | 12.4-inch | 14.6-inch |
| Battery Capacity | 8,000 mAh | 10,090 mAh | 11,200 mAh |
| Battery Life | 9 hrs 3 mins |
6 hrs 11 mins |
6 hrs 38 mins |
| Utilisation per min. |
11.79 mAh | 21.76 mAh | 22.51 mAh |
Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE : Battery Recharging Speed!
This tablet surprisingly supports up to 45 watts of wired fast charging, but unfortunately, does not come with the charger in-the-box. On top of that, its bundled cable only supports 25 watt fast charging.
So we tested it on the standard 15 watt Samsung fast charger, and the optional 25 watt Samsung super fast charger.
| Recharging Speed | Tab S8 Ultra | Tab S7 Plus | Tab S9 FE (25W) |
Tab S9 FE (15W) |
| Display Size | 14.6-inch | 12.4-inch | 10.9-inch | 10.9-inch |
| Battery Capacity | 11,200 mAh | 10,090 mAh | 8,000 mAh | 8,000 mAh |
| Charger Output | 15 watts | 15 watts | 25 watts | 15 watts |
| Battery Life | 86.5 mins | 86 mins | 90.5 mins | 145.5 mins |
| Recharging Speed (per minute) |
103.6 mAh | 93.9 mAh | 70.7 mAh | 44.0 mAh |
Well, isn’t that interesting? Even with a more powerful 25W super fast charger, the Galaxy Tab S9 FE recharges slower than the Tab S7 Plus or the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra using the standard 15W charger!!
The 15W charger took almost 2.5 hours to fully recharge its 8,000 mAh battery from 20% to 100%. Upgrading to the 25W charger cut that down to just 1.5 hours, shaving off almost a full hour.
The good news is that the Galaxy Tab S9 FE sips power, so you won’t need to recharge it quite so often.
Next Page > Work + Gaming Performance
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