Battery, Noise, and Heat
Once again, as with our review of the NBLB2, it's worth noting that the notebooks advertised on CyberpowerPC's site offer a 48Wh battery while our review unit sports a 58Wh battery. This seems to be fairly common, but given the relative size of the battery in the unit I have to wonder if it's just an error on the site.
Either way, the PBL21 gets to take advantage of NVIDIA's Optimus technology, while hybrid graphics solutions from AMD still seem to be somewhat rarefied. The Alienware M17x R3 we reviewed recently had switchable graphics off of its Radeon HD 6970M, but it was nowhere near as seamless as Optimus has been. Ironically the best place to find good battery life with solid AMD graphics right now may very well be Llano!
The Dell XPS 15 doesn't just sport a bigger battery than the Compal PBL21, it uses it better too. Battery life for the PBL21 is actually quite poor, which is disheartening given the advantages it leverages. We're really past the era where three hours of useful battery life is an acceptable minimum; Sandy Bridge offers better efficiency overall and we should be using notebooks that take advantage of that. The Dell XPS 15 runs roughshod over Compal's offering; its battery may be less a little than twice as large, but it's pulling more than twice the running time of the PBL21. If you prefer a comparison with similar size batteries, here's how the PBL21 stacks up to the XPS 15 with a 56Wh battery.
Thankfully, it may be a testament to the PBL21 that I didn't notice it much during testing (apart from its bright, brilliant screen). Noise levels are comfortably low even under extreme load, and subjectively it didn't run particularly hot.
These temperatures remain reasonable for a mobile quad-core and decently-powered GPU. Given the PBL21's relatively quiet profile, Compal seems to have struck a good balance between thermal performance and acoustics.
Apart from a mild hotspot in the corner, the surface temperatures of the Compal PBL21 remain entirely reasonable and even a bit cool. Whether rendering out video or enjoying a gaming session, the PBL21 isn't likely to intrude too much.
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