PSP: Out Tomorrow (in Japan). But does anyone care?

[A Black Falcon]

Yes, 90 minuites may not be the average, but three hours sure is right on target.

And I said in my last post '2-4 hours, being nice'... as in I was taking that as the average battery life, not 1.5-3 hours.

But there are very mixed reports... some saying two and a half, or three, or four, or four and a half, or five, or six...

http://spong.com/detail/news.asp?prid=8100

All units have been using Namco’s delicious Ridge Racers with speaker sound, and gamers have reported an average of 2 hours and 40 minutes game time. Using headphones, the duration crept up to a shade over three hours and ten minutes.

http://forums.insertcredit.com/viewtopic...ght=#72495

Yeah, Ridge Racers lasted us just under three hours.

Then we charged the battery to full. It was totally NOT full out of the box. Then we played a combination of Minna no Golf (about four hours) and Ridge Racers (two hours) for the combined total of six hours and three minutes.

Also -- the charger cord is pretty long. The headphone jack is nice. You can use a remote and Pro Eggos on the short cord. Then . . . well. You really won't mind playing it at home, Aderack. I mean, granted some excellent games come out for it. The screen is just so high resolution and pretty. Everything moves well. When you're lying in bed and playing Armored Core with headphones on late at night -- well. It's a nice experience. A nicer experience than I've ever had with a portable system.

I mean, I couldn't have the same experience with any of the Gameboys, being that I tend to like to lie in bed in complete darkness.

http://forum.gamesradar.com/viewtopic.ph...&start=195


(from IGN)

So we've at last played our way through a full battery charge cycle. In case you don't feel like counting, the battery died after about four hours and fourty-five minutes of five different games and one hour of MP3 play. We didn't use the WiFi features of the system at all during this time.

Keep in mind that we avoided charging the system a number of times that we could've easily plugged it in (in particular, as we slept). Unless we plan on playing games for more than five hours in a row, the battery seems like it'll be okay to us. Of course, for long trips, we may find ourselves picking up a spare just in case (they're about $40 at retail).

One thing that seems clear is that factors like sound and brightness (and wi-fi) greatly affect battery life. Turn the brightness way down and turn off the sound (or for slightly less impact use headphones) and you probably will be getting 4-6 hours with Ridge Racers. But full brightness and the speakers?