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

are you watching movies on your ipod if so all i know is that on the 30gb ipod if you r watching movies it only last 2 1/2 hours and it is sapose to last 20 hours for music. if you want to watch movies for longer i would suggest buying a back up battery pack.

So you're saying that you played PURELY music and nothing else whatsoever when you tested the battery life and received only 6 hours out of it at 100% charge? And the video takes a lot more juice out of the battery because it has to constantly keep the LCD screen lit, let alone playing a video.

and if you are not playing video then take the ipod back and ask for a replacement and if they will not to that replace the battery by sending it in i think that coast $50 it says whare you buy it online

You've said that twice, Eric. Anyhow, I'd definitely see customer support from the site or from wherever you purchased your iPod. It shouldn't cost you anything since Apple offers an automatic 1 year warranty on 60 gb 5 gen iPods.

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.

I'd say that it's the same battery-calibrating method that you have to use on new ipods...i also have a nano and it achieves 15+ hours of continuing playing time THREE weeks after i bought it! so i am doing the same thing with my new 60gb 5g ipod, i am draining battery and recharging it - after couple of such "cycles", you should be able to achieve 20+ hours (well, i surely hope so 🙂 )

It says up to 20 hours for just music and i think i read somewhare that it was 2 1/2 hours for just video

If your music is encoded at more than 128 kb/s then you won't get 20 hours.

Jason:
I've had my 5 gen about a week and a half and I am getting about 15 hours of music playback