Kobo: Sleep vs Power Off

[Danger]

I've just finished the power off trial so I'm posting my initial results.

Purpose: Does the battery last longer putting the Kobo to sleep or is it better to power it off.

Sleep Cover option:

Fully charged on Feb. 4th, needed to be charged by Feb. 16th. however I have a total reading time of 33.7 hrs listed in my reading stats. One caveat on this though is that I did do a firmware upgrade during this time which most likely wore the battery down more that it would have under normal use.

Next test was to turn off using the Sleep Cover and instead use the switch to put the Kobo in sleep mode:

Fully charged on Feb. 16th and needed to be charge again March 5th. So just over 2 weeks. Reading time was now only 24.4 hrs. Leading me to wonder just how accurate the reading stats are.

3rd test sleep after 15mins, power off after 30mins:

Charged up March 5th, needed to be charged again March 26th. Reading time: 38.3 hrs.

I will be running these tests a second time.

Other factors in this test, books were on an SD card and testing was done on the Kobo Glo with the light on at least half the time. All books read were epubs with 1 exception that was a PDF.

I plan on doing the test a 3rd time with the books directly on the Kobo without an SD card plugged in.

[Danger]

Reserved

[Danger]

Reserved for 3rd test

[kobokobe]

Interesting results, but these numbers would mean a whole lot more if you post your reading habits. Most notably how often you read it, because the main argument against turning the device off (as far as the battery life is concerned) is the power consumption when powering it on.

[samhy]

I agree with kobokobe.
On your third test, how often did you wake up the ereader? Once a day? Twice a day? Once every other day?

Anyway, that's a very interesting experiment. Thank you for doing it

[murg]

Good to see the scientific method in action.

[murg]

Reserved for comment on second test.

[murg]

Reserved for comment on third test.

[Danger]

Originally Posted by kobokobe

Interesting results, but these numbers would mean a whole lot more if you post your reading habits. Most notably how often you read it, because the main argument against turning the device off (as far as the battery life is concerned) is the power consumption when powering it on.

Sorry, I actually meant to put that in as well.

Average day reading Monday - Friday: half hour in the morning (6am-6:30am), half hour mid morning (10am-10:30), half hour at noon (12-12:30), about 10mins during my walk home from work if it's not raining.

Evenings very depending on what is happening in the home and how into a book I am, can very from not reading at all to an hour or more.

Weekends like my evenings also very but usually I read about a half hour to an hour Saturday & Sunday.

So average Monday - Friday is about 2 - 2.5 hrs of reading per day. 14 -15 hrs per week total.

[anyone]

Is there any news on how to prolong the sleep time of the Kobo readers? Its so annoying to boot them every day, I'm used to standby times of 12-24 hours so its still working the next day.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by anyone

Is there any news on how to prolong the sleep time of the Kobo readers? Its so annoying to boot them every day, I'm used to standby times of 12-24 hours so its still working the next day.

Turn off the auto-power off option. That will mean it won't power off after sleeping for a while.

[Dryhte]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Turn off the auto-power off option. That will mean it won't power off after sleeping for a while.

That's what I did. In fact I simply have to remember to charge about once a month. (however, I read with the backlight always on 1 - good enough for all my reading )

[anyone]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Turn off the auto-power off option. That will mean it won't power off after sleeping for a while.

Then I have to power it off if I'm done reading for a while, something I wont remember doing..

[shalym]

Originally Posted by anyone

Then I have to power it off if I'm done reading for a while, something I wont remember doing..

When you say "done reading for a while" are you talking about more than a week? If not, I would just let it sleep. In my experience, Kobos use very little power when left alone and sleeping.

Shari

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by anyone

Then I have to power it off if I'm done reading for a while, something I wont remember doing..

I'll admit that that is an problem I don't understand. If I go more than 24 hours without reading, it means I am very sick. And odds are I tried, but the device kept going to sleep before I finished a page.

As shalym, the power drain in sleep mode is very low. I have had one of my devices in sleep for over two weeks between uses. And it would have lasted a lot longer but, I wanted to do something with it. But, to get the maximum sleep time, turn of the automatic daily sync. This will wake the device, sync to the Kobo server and then go back to sleep. Turning this off will probably double the time the device can sleep.