Well you don't say it draws 2 kWh at idle. You say it draws 2 kW at idle. While that is incredibly inefficient, it means that for every hour the device is idle, it draws 2 kWh of energy.

Oh yeah battery size isn't sufficient to fully gauge battery life. You need to know power draw to calculate that. And it's good to get battery life ratings from reviews. Great. It helps a lot.

But it doesn't mean we shouldn't get good, comparable physical specs.

Kinda like processors. Gigahertz and core counts are far from telling you everything, but it doesn't mean it should be abstracted into some weird unit.

[–] untorquer@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

Per the kW vs kWh, see top level reply.

Yeah a metric would be nice but it would need a standard test. That's why idle time and video playback time makes a good amount of sense. But it's not entirely clear how that would translate into usage for example in back country (where cell network drains power harder) or travel. So it's not perfect. But it is probably the best measure guven hardware and usage vatiation. In any case it's subject to marketing dudging the numbers in various ways.