To test the battery today we put the machine through three sets of real world situations. One as a media movie lover on the move, a person wanting to watch HD media on a train journey or bus with two thirds screen brightness (any less and quality suffers). Secondly as a business man, using the machine for productivity with wireless enabled and balanced power settings with a mid way (around half) brightness setting. Thirdly as a gamer on the move, with the nVidia solution fully active and screen brightness up high.
For such a powerful machine, the battery life is pretty impressive, until you want to game. We averaged around 1 hour and 15 minutes under intensive gaming which isn't going to last even part of a morning. Watching high definition movies was better, around 2 hours before the battery forced a shutdown. Under lighter conditions, we averaged over 3 hours before we would have to recharge the machine.