Battery Life on a 60GB 5th Gen Ipod!!

Question

Does anyone know what the battery life is supposed to be (what does Apple claim) on the 5th Gen 60 GB Ipod?? My video's are only playing for approx 2 hours, is that right?? Apple claims up to 20 hours for music and I am getting 6. I have followed ALL the battery life saving tips they give. What's the deal.

Answer 1

Yes I played JUST music. Do you know what Apple Claims the battery life should be for both music and then for video's? My 60GB photo lasted closer to 10 hours playing music....bummer.
It is frustrating to read all the poor batt performance claims, so I would like to make sure that everyone understands... Apple does their tests under ideal conditions, as any person would expect. But there is no benefit to them in overstating the results since this would certainly raise the ire or their users.
Ideal conditions in general are:
Batt tests are done with 128 kbps AAC music only, file size of 4 MB per song, backlight off, Repeat-Off, EQ-Off, Soundcheck-Off, continuous (one long playlist) on a conditioned battery (several normal batt recharge cycles completed), nominal temperature.
Now, I have a 5g-60 and have been seeing roughly what I expected, between 16-17+ hours depending upon settings and how much fiddling I do with the controls during play.
Here is an excerpt from iLounge.com's report:
Apple claims that the new 30GB iPod will play music for 14 hours, photo and music slideshows for 3 hours, and iPod on-screen video for 2 hours. In our tests, it outperformed Apple's claims in two out of three categories, but missed one as well. It played music for 15 hours and 30 minutes, photo slideshows for 2 hours and 32 minutes, on-iPod video for 2 hours and 10 minutes, and iPod-to-TV video for 3 hours and 10 minutes. Apple similarly claims that the new 60GB iPod will play music for 20 hours, photo and music slideshows for 4 hours, and video for 3 hours. In our tests, it missed the music claim by 10 minutes, playing for 19 hours, 50 minutes, but exceeded Apple's photo and video claims, playing a music photo slideshow for 4 hours, 47 minutes, iPod-screen video for 3 hours, 23 minutes, and on-TV video for a hefty 5 hours and 24 minutes.
To provide a frame of reference, color 4G iPods were able to achieve music playback times of around 17 hours a piece, beating Apple's estimates by 2 hours. By comparison, the black-and-white 4G iPod that was introduced last July ran for 12-14 hours, and 3G iPods ran for much less. Therefore, regardless of whether they meet or miss Apple's estimates, the new iPods are at least acceptable overall. The 30GB 5G iPod is a bit under the color 4G in battery performance, while the 60GB 5G iPod is superior. The only iPod that's ever done better than the 60GB 5G was the second-generation iPod mini, which actually ran for over 26 hours in our testing.
The two biggest contributors to sapping the battery's energy are use of the backlight and hard drive. Whenever you use the volume control, menu system or select your favorite song as the next one, you are draining the battery at an exponential rate.