The divide between the Surface RT and Surface with Windows 8 Pro got a little bit bigger this afternoon as Microsoft revealed via tweet that the latter has about half the battery life of the RT variant.
Answering a prompt for comments on the tab (due in January) battery longevity, the @Surface twitter account offered this response:
"@shahroom Hey Shahroom, #Surface pro will have approximately half the batter [sic] life of Surface RT."
This could come as troubling news to those expecting the battery life of the Surface RT, which TechRadar found exceeded expectations, putting it among "some of the longest-lasting tablets money can buy."
Uh-oh
Our test found the Surface RT lasted 7.5 hours when a 1080p WMV video was hooked into the built-in app that ships with the slate, giving it two hours more run time than the iPad 3.
That puts the Windows 8 Pro version at around 3.75 hours...perhaps a day's worth of minimal use.
According to the Surface spec sheet, the Windows RT version has a 31.5 W-h battery while the Windows 8 Pro variant comes with a 42 W-h power source.
Though the Pro version has a more amped-up battery, its more powerful processor, full Windows 8 suite and gloat-worthy display need battery life to keep its laptop-like capacities running.
Perhaps the Softies are planning an update, or are finding a way to finagle better battery life out of the Windows 8 Pro Surface, but at least they can say there are devices with worse batteries out there.
