How We Measure Battery Life, and Why Manufacturer Figures Differ (Ayaneo Air 1S)
How We Measure Battery Life, and Why Manufacturer Figures Differ explained, with the Ayaneo Air 1S's own measured figures as the worked example: quoted battery figures are produced under conditions al...
Tom Halvorsen
In brief
Ayaneo Air 1S, battery 38Wh — How We Measure Battery Life, and Why Manufacturer Figures Differ. Measured on hardware rather than argued from theory, on a device we rate for 450g makes it the only Windows handheld comfortable for long sessions.
Quoted battery figures are produced under conditions almost nobody replicates. Ours use a fixed brightness and a scripted workload so numbers stay comparable.
Why this matters: Battery is consistently the specification buyers care about most and the one most loosely reported.
The mechanism
We set the display to a measured 200 nits rather than a percentage, disable adaptive features that vary between devices, and run the same mix of browsing, video and standby. The result is not the best number a device can produce — it is the number you can expect.
In daily use
Take the Ayaneo Air 1S as a worked example. It is 190g lighter than the Steam Deck OLED. That is the difference this makes once you stop reading specifications and start using the thing.
| Specification | Ayaneo Air 1S |
|---|---|
| Display | 5.5in OLED, 60Hz, 400 nits |
| Chip | AMD Ryzen 7 7840U |
| RAM | 16GB LPDDR5 |
| Storage | 512GB NVMe |
| Weight | 450g |
| Battery | 38Wh |
| Play time | 2h 05m in demanding titles |
How it varies across the category
One worked example is an anecdote. Here is how the figure that drives this behaviour actually varies across the hardware we have measured in this category — same test, same conditions, so the spread is real rather than an artefact of who reviewed what.
| Model | Display | Price | Our score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ayaneo Air 1S | 5.5in OLED, 60Hz, 400 nits | £649 | 3 / 5 |
| Steam Deck OLED | 7.4in OLED, 90Hz, 1000 nits HDR | £479 | 5 / 5 |
| ROG Ally X | 7in IPS, 120Hz, 500 nits | £799 | 4 / 5 |
| Switch OLED | 7in OLED, 60Hz, 400 nits | £309 | 4 / 5 |
What counts as good here
It helps to have a number in mind before you start comparing. Across the gaming Hardware we have measured, the useful thresholds are the ones where a difference stops being visible: below them you notice, above them you are paying for a specification rather than an experience. The Ayaneo Air 1S reports 5.5in OLED, 60Hz, 400 nits for display, which sits comfortably on the right side of that line, and AMD Ryzen 7 7840U for chip. Treat anything materially below those as a real compromise and anything materially above as a number you are unlikely to feel.
What people get wrong
- A larger battery always means longer life, when efficiency varies enormously
- Fast charging damages a battery meaningfully in normal use
- Closing background apps extends runtime
How to check this on your own device
- Reproduce the conditions rather than trusting a one-off reading — run the same task three times and take the average.
- Note the figure your device reports and the figure it actually achieves; on the Ayaneo Air 1S those diverge under sustained load.
- Change one variable at a time. Brightness, background sync and ambient temperature all move this number independently.
- Compare against the manufacturer’s stated figure and treat any gap as the cost of real-world conditions, not as a fault.
- Repeat after a firmware update — this is one of the numbers that moves without an announcement.
Reading it off the spec sheet
On a gaming Hardware listing this usually appears as the display line — the Ayaneo Air 1S quotes 5.5in OLED, 60Hz, 400 nits. That figure is necessary but not sufficient: the chip entry (AMD Ryzen 7 7840U) constrains it in practice, and the two are almost never presented together. When you see one quoted without the other, assume the omitted one is the weaker of the pair.
What to do with this
Compare figures from one source measured the same way, and ignore cross-site comparisons of quoted numbers.
A battery figure is only meaningful alongside the method that produced it.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the gaming we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are How We Measure Battery Life, and Why Manufacturer Figures Differ (Legion Go) and How We Measure Battery Life, and Why Manufacturer Figures Differ (PlayStation 5 Slim).
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
