which intel skylake cpu will give me longest battery life ? m3, m5 or m7?

Question

I was hoping someone would be able to recommend which Intel skylake CPU will give me longest battery life? m3, m5 or m7?

I am a uni student, thinking about buying a Surface Pro 4 (or clone from Lenovo Miix 700, Dell XPS 12, HP Spectre x2, etc) and main tasks will be word processing, web surfing and email, downloading and watching lectures, youtube. I am planning on making the purchase in december.

I am planning on optimising Windows 10 to give me longest battery life... and need help with selection of CPU when making Surface Pro 4 (or clone) purchase. I am planning on 8gb RAM and 256gb ssd

Can I please get some opinions? Which m3/m5/m7 Intel Skylake CPU is best optimised for battery life, when win 10 is optimised for battery life.

Also, any recommendations on how to optimise MS win 10 for battery life will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Honestly it won't make much of a difference.

While they are clocked differently, all of the core M chips (and indeed, all modern CPUs) are designed to throttle down when not in use.

The exact voltage and frequency depends on binning, so the higher tier chips could have a slight advantage, but it's negligible compared to usage by screen.

If you really wanted to optimise for battery life, you can always try lowering the voltage. The stock settings are usually too high. Note that this may void your warranty though, so be sure to ask the OEM.