El iPad mini 4, Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 and ZenPad S 8.0 They are, without a doubt, the three highest level tablets with 8 inches or less that have seen the light in this 2015, three true gems that all those of you who are considering getting a new compact tablet they can't be overlooked (especially if we don't have a budget limit). By now, in fact, you probably already have a favorite. There is a fundamental question, however, that may make you change your mind and that is the autonomy. From which of these three tablets can we expect better performance in terms of battery? We show you the results of an exhaustive test so that you can check it yourself.
The autonomy of the best compact tablets of 2015, tested
The three tablets that we are going to talk about are already old acquaintances of ours and we had little left to know about them. All of them, in fact, have already faced each other in comparative of technical specifications that you can take a look at if you have doubts in any way. In these confrontations, however, we could only measure the capacity of the battery of each of them and, as we always remember, this is quite different from the autonomy, which is also influenced by the best before date what the device does. That is why, despite the fact that the iPad mini 4 has an advantage in that section (5124 mAh against 4000 mAh so much for the Galaxy Tab S2 as for the ZenPad S), we cannot safely conclude that it will be in an actual use test as well.
However, thanks to the exhaustive analysis of the autonomy of the iPad mini 4 what have they done in Anandtech and that also leaves us comparisons of their results with the tablets of Samsung and Asus (In addition to other larger tablets, such as the Surface 3, and other phablets, such as the Galaxy Note 5, since the 7-8-inch tablets straddle between those two categories). As we are going to see, we have as much data from real tests, with tests for navigation and for video playback, as well as the results of some of the most popular battery benchmarks.
We start by taking a look at the first ones, which give us the opportunity to check how each device behaves depending on the type of activity and, therefore, it can give us an idea of what its strengths and weaknesses are and which one is best suited. to our habits. As you can see, for surfing the Internet, is the iPad mini 4 the one that will offer us a better performance, with more than 10 hours autonomy, while ZenPad S barely exceeds 7 hours and Galaxy Tab S2 it doesn't even come to that. The picture changes quite a bit when it comes to video playback, since here the low consumption of the AMOLED screen (less weighed down by the abundance of whites) is where it really shines, with an autonomy of almost 13 hours for the tablet of Samsung, almost 4 hours older than that of the Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),, and 5 hours older than that of the Asus.
To complete this comparison, we also have, as we anticipated, the results of a couple of benchmarks battery, and it does not hurt that there are two because rarely this type of test will leave us the same conclusion, simply because the simulations do not coincide 100% in their parameters. In fact, between that of BaseMark and of GFXBench (focused specifically on performance in games) changes the ranking quite a bit (in the first one, the iPad mini 4 and in the second the Galaxy Tab S2), although the distance that separates them, in any case, is not too pronounced, standing at around an hour. It must be borne in mind, however, that these tests simulate a very intense use of the device (that is why the times we are talking about do not exceed 5 hours in any case).
We end with a ranking that shows us the load times of each of these tablets, something that can sometimes be as important as the autonomy of the device itself, since sometimes we have the opportunity to connect it to the network for a while to give it a few more hours of life, but we cannot always wait until the battery is full. As you can see, here is the iPad mini 4 the one that comes out better off, with little more than 3 hours, something interesting if we think that its battery is the largest. It is followed by ZenPad S, with around 3 hours and a halfWhile Galaxy Tab S2 stays a long way off, with a few 4 hours and a half.
We remind you if you want to know more about any of these tablets, that we already have at your disposal our in-depth analysis both for the Galaxy Tab S2 as for the ZenPad S. And if you are looking for information about any other tablet, we also have a ranking with previous models.