[comex]

Anandtech's review[1] measures 7.5 hours on their lightest test with the higher-resolution model. That's certainly not bad, and in fact is over my stated 7 hour cutoff - I think the number I found yesterday was a bit lower. And of course I get considerably more pixels in exchange. But when Apple advertises 10 hours, and reviews in the past have typically found their advertised battery figures pretty much on the mark (sometimes even an underestimate), that's still a significant difference.

Maybe I shouldn't worry about this too much, because as a developer I tend to feed a lot of battery to the CPU anyway, draining it much faster: the increased battery drain from a higher resolution screen stays constant, so it becomes less significant as a fraction of a larger overall drain. On the other hand, for the same reason, I'd like all the battery life I can get.

And yes, I'm aware of how the Mac resolution scaling works.

[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/10116/the-dell-xps-15-9550-rev...

[ant6n]

On my three-year-old macbook the battery is dead, it lasts maybe half an hour. Replacement costs 350$ or so, ouch. Maybe the bigger question is whether the better can be replacement relatively cheaply, not whether it lasts 10 or 7 hours.