Battery Life, Audio and Video Encoding Performance

Below you get a look at the main screen CPU-Z screenshot to give you a look at the actual specifications of the unit that we will be testing further on below.

We will be using our iTunes encoding and Battery Eater Pro tests for the Toshiba Satellite L555D-S7930 review today. Our media encoding test has been changed up with a new application that offers better compatibility across the range of machines I am testing. I will be using MediaCoder 0.7.3.4616.

All systems are tested "as is", which means operating systems and drivers can and do vary and some come pre-installed with applications that may or may not affect performance. Any anti-virus or security applications are disabled and uninstalled before any testing is started as they can affect test numbers.

The first test up is my iTunes encoding test.

For the iTunes encoding test I take the Stone Temple Pilots Core CD in MP3 format and encode it to AAC format using iTunes and time the results with a stopwatch.

All tests are performed with the system in High Performance mode with minimum CPU set to 100%.

The Toshiba Satellite L555D-S7930 cracked the top five in this benchmark.

For the movie encoding test I take the Microsoft Magic of Flight VC-1 WMV video with six channel audio (1080p HD) and transcode it to XviD (1080p HD) with LAME MP3 two channel audio and a MP4 container using MediaCoder 0.7.3.4616 32-bit edition. Note when comparing times, this is the first benchmark I have done with the new software I will be using going forward.

All tests are performed with the system in High Performance mode with minimum CPU set to 100%.

The Toshiba Satellite L555D-S7930 was in the bottom five in this test, which is to be expected considering the price point it sells at.

Battery Eater Pro is very hard on batteries so you are likely to get more run time in the real world, depending on how you use the machine. Since we compare all laptops and netbooks the exact same way, though, it creates a fair and balanced playing field for our comparisons.

For the power saving mode test I run the machine in 'Power Saver' mode with turn off display disabled and brightness set to 50%, sleep mode disabled, HDD turn off disabled and minimum CPU set to 5%.

For the performance mode test I run the machine in 'High Performance' mode with turn off display disabled and brightness set to 100%, sleep mode disabled, HDD turn off disabled and minimum CPU set to 100%. Do note that some systems even when set to 100% CPU may force drop down the clock speed when AC power is lost.

Wireless is kept enabled during all tests and nothing else unusual is disabled. Time is rounded up to the nearest minute.

Cheap machines tend to come with small batteries that have low capacity and that shows in the High Performance test with the Toshiba Satellite L555D-S7930 taking dead last in the benchmark. However, Toshiba's Eco mode did help the machine score a mid-pack finish on our power saving mode test.

I am not running 3DMark Vantage on this notebook since it is not a gaming rig.