Futuremark Releases ‘Powermark’ Mobile Battery-Life Benchmark

Futuremark this week added a brand-new benchmark to its collection, called Powermark. Unlike PCMark and 3DMark, Powermark is designed with the professional and enterprise customer in mind, and as such, there is no free or “advanced” edition available. The goal of the tool is to simulate realistic workloads on mobile devices to test their battery-life capabilities – negating the need for hands-on testing or the writing of your own macros.

There are three suites that can be run with Powermark, each simulating a particular workload. “Balanced” uses a blend of Web browsing, word processing, video watching and gaming, while “Productivity” and “Entertainment” focus on one primary area. It goes without saying that any notebook would last much longer under the productivity workloads than the entertainment ones.

Similar solutions like Powermark have existed for a while, but what makes this program special is that it’s an all-in-one solution; you just install and run it. One tool like this we used in the past was BAPCo’s Mobile Mark, and while it got the job done, it required the installation of numerous third-party applications, and that on occasion led to roadblocks being created that would require us to only use a fresh install of Windows. Whereas with Powermark, no such thing will occur.

There are some caveats here to mention as well, however. While most mobile warriors are going to be using a wireless Internet connection, Powermark does not test using one. The reason for this is that it was far too difficult to achieve accurate results in Futuremark’s own testing, as there are many outside factors that the benchmark has no control over. As such, this is a decision I can’t fault Futuremark for, even if it is a bit unfortunate.

That all said, testing with this tool has proven a simple affair for us so far. We ran one test on the just-reviewed ASUS G53SX, and given what we’ve seen, I’d expect to use this in our future mobile reviews as well. While it’s not ideal with the lack of wireless involvement, it looks to be the best possible option for acquiring repeatable results, and that’s important.

Licensing Powermark is different than any other Futuremark product. The “Professional” edition costs $200 and includes 10 activations (essentially, it can run on 10 different mobile devices before another 10 activations need to be purchased), though enterprise customers can opt for an unlimited version for price unknown (Futuremark needs to be contacted directly).