REVIEW: The HLI-RX34XL Battery

LionBattery.com was very kind to send us over their MugenPower-branded HLI-RX34XL battery that fits the HP IPAQ RX3100 & RX3400 Pocket PCs. We tested the battery with our rx-3115 PDA.

Installation of the battery is very easy, as the rx-3115 features a latch for easy opening of the battery compartment. One thing that will positively surprise some people is the fact that the 3200mAh Mugen Power battery is not much bigger than the default 920 mAh HP battery. Given the fact that it packs more than three times the battery power found on the default battery, one would expect that it would be 3x the size. And yet, it's only double the size, creating only a small bump on the back of the PDA. The Mugen Power battery comes with its own battery door.

Charging the battery for the first time takes about 5 hours. Soon after we ran long tests and here are our results:

LCD OFF, mp3 ON streaming via WiFi: 10 hours

LCD OFF, mp3 ON reading from SD: 29 hours

LCD ON but with backlight OFF, Skype ON with WiFi ON: 40 hours

LCD at 50% brightness, Wireless OFF, QVGA DivX playback: 12 hours

LCD at 10% brightness, WiFi ON, browsing: 11 hours

Normal PDA usage with LCD at 10% brightness, wireless OFF: 43 hours

Normal PDA usage with LCD at 10% brightness, BT ON, WiFi/IrDA OFF: 38 hours

With the small exception of mp3 streaming via WiFi, the rest of the results are very positive. This battery breaths a new life to your PDA! It is our estimation that if you use your PDA only for normal PDA activities, just about an hour a day, you won't need to re-charge it more than once a week. This is a huge time saver for business users, while it's almost as good for multimedia users too. Notice how QVGA DivX playback lasted almost 12 hours, when the best dedicated video-PMP today (e.g. the Archos devices), barely yields more than 6 hours of battery life. And this fact alone makes this battery worth its $87 it cost.