[jbeard4]

Agree, battery life is atrocious. I get typically get 1.5-2 hours on a charge, after 2.5 years of ownership. I always have anxiety about plugging it in. It's the biggest problem with this machine.

Other than that, I have been very happy with it. Keyboard, trackpad, screen - all adequate for me. In every way other than the battery, it pretty much gets out of the way and gets the job done.

[ekimekim]

I've had the complete opposite experience (I replaced their Pop OS with Arch Linux). With light usage I get about 10 hours, if I'm playing games or something then yeah it drops a bit but not that much. It easily lasts the duration of an intercontinental plane flight which is my primary use-case.

Maybe it's because I don't actually use it all that much, so my battery hasn't had many cycles put on it. I only use my laptop for travel, normally I have a desktop. That's why I went for a small, highly portable model.

[conor-]

My experience is the same. I replaced Pop with Arch running a pretty low-resource desktop setup (i3 and generally lightweight programs) and I can get roughly 10 hours with very heavy usage: Firefox with a handful of windows/dozens and dozens of tabs open, Docker, Spotify, etc.

Not terribly impressive compared to something like the newer Apple silicon MacBooks but also not terribly offensive considering I don't often work far from an available power source for super long stretches.

[warner25]

Wow, I'm surprised to hear this about the battery from you guys, as that appears to be one of their top selling points: "Most battery life!"

I see that the article describes it as repairable, but is it really easy to get and put in a new battery? I don't see them for sale on system76.com/components

I almost bought one of these in late 2021 when I was in the market for a new Linux machine. They were one of the few manufacturers that actually had stuff ready to ship. But I wasn't interested in PopOS and Framework seemed to be offering a slightly better deal, so I ended up waiting a month for a Framework DIY edition. I've been happy with it despite Framework not being truly Linux-first.

[belthesar]

As far as I'm aware, every System76 laptop is a rebadged OEM laptop with an opinionated set of expansion components that they've effectively certified as functional in Pop!_OS by ensuring good driver and DWM compatibility. I think the OEM is Sager, but I'm not confident on that, or if that's uniform. Anywho, because of this, it should be reasonably possible to source replacement components upstream.

[starkparker]

Yep, Sager/Clevo. Clevo L141AU has the same specs (2.5 lbs, 14 hours claimed battery life, 65W barrel charger, same keyboard layout, i7-1355U option). The case looks close, maybe identical, to the photos in the article. https://laptopwithlinux.com/product/clevo-l141au/

EDIT: Customized the Laptop with Linux Clevo to the same exact specs as the review unit and got a total price of $1,507, so about the same, give or take $30.

[SoftTalker]

I wonder why. I'm running Ubuntu 22.04 on a Dell Latitude and battery life hasn't been an issue for me. I probably don't really do power-hungry stuff but just browsing, editing code, ssh, email, etc. it's been fine.

[all2]

I think this might have to do with aggressive CPU throttling and backlight brightness. I've noticed both of those play a pretty big role in the discharge duration of my Dell Latitude.

[tech_ken]

After about 2 years my battery also lost a lot of it's charge-retention, but I replaced it and got back up to the >11 hours I was seeing before

[jbeard4]

I'm planning to send it in to them this week for some repairs (USB-C port stopped working, replace the rubber feet, and replace the battery). I have to pay for the battery replacement (~$100 I think). Hopefully it improves the battery life. IIRC, I was getting 4-5 hours when I first got the machine. Never got anywhere close to 11. Maybe it's how I'm using it.