Battery tests and a battery of tests.

So, we're about done with testing all of our three candidate devices (see previous post), and it's been an interesting time to say the least.

Our testing consists of several parts.  There are several layers of technical evaluation these machines go through such as hardware performance, battery life and suitability for our imaging systems (Symantec Ghost currently, but increasingly this will be Microsoft SCCM).  Then there are the more subjective tests such as staff reaction and feedback and our own take on durability and functionality (such as connectivity options and other hardware features).  I can honestly say that I don't know of a school who puts their candidate machines through such a series of tests.  I also don't know how those schools manage to make informed decisions without it.

So, the results of our tests are below but before we move on to them, a quick word about the problems we've encountered with these devices so far.  Particularly the HP.
None of the three devices is without fault.  The biggest problems with the Samsung are the poor design of the mechanism that holds the tablet into the keyboard and it's video drivers.  Sometimes the Tablet comes loose from the keyboard when it's being transported and the video drivers seem to have real trouble playing back video with effects and transitions in Movie Maker.  The Acer had issues connecting to our wireless network and staying connected, and it's tablet flaps about in the keyboard dock like the sail of a Tall Ship.  The HP doesn't have any noticeable design or software faults (except for maybe being too top-heavy, but they all suffer from that), it's problems come from HP being HP.  After a lot of painful to and fro with our reseller HP have finally confirmed that they will be able to repair the device for the 3 years we'll be using it.  We asked all resellers to provide pricing on parts for out-of-warranty repairs, and only HP failed to do this.  They've now come through with this information but it was incredibly difficult to get a response out of them.  At one point the reseller was preparing to withdraw their quote because even they'd lost faith in HP.  The reason for this is probably because HP no longer have a representative in our state, instead they've split the role between three states.

Finally, I also should note that all three machines are very difficult from an SOE (image) deployment and maintenance standpoint.  They all use a 32-bit pure UEFI BIOS, which is inherently difficult to work with to boot off the network or manage the HDD partitions, but it's also quite new, meaning there's not a lot of good information out there on dealing with it.

Anyway, enough with the waffle.  Our test results for the three machines are below:

[caption id="attachment_297" align="aligncenter" width="604"] Not a lot of difference here, HP using slightly faster chips for their eMMC (not to be confused with a genuine SSD) drive. Nowhere near as fast as a 'proper' solid-state drive.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_295" align="aligncenter" width="604"] The light weight of the Acer seems to come at a cost of build-quality, and the surprise here is the Samsung, being the most 'plastic' of the lot but still the heaviest. The HP falls in the middle despite being the most solidly built.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_296" align="aligncenter" width="604"] This is definitely the strength of the Acer, it's near 20 hour battery is the best we've ever seen. It carries the problem of taking an eternity to fully charge though. We tend to find the 'real-world' battery life falls between the times in the two tests we've run here. The Samsung is the only one with a single battery, which let it down a little.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_294" align="aligncenter" width="604"] This test is quite subjective. The scores represent an interpretation of our reactions and those of other staff, and show the Acer's main failing being it's general appearance of cheapness vs the HP's more pleasing aesthetic. In my opinion, the only thing keeping the Samsung from falling further down the list was brand-recognition.[/caption]

The tests probably show the HP as the leader overall, not failing any test and excelling in the user-reaction portion of the tests.  I should point out that more tests were done on video-encoding speed, CPU benchmarking, software-imaging compatibility and wifi reception.  These results were either uninteresting or in the case of CPU and video-encoding, almost identical results.  We've not shown them here to keep the length of the article short(er).