Some tests have been conducted to find out actually how much DRM sucks—battery life, that is. The general results is a loss up to 25 percent of battery life when playing back songs laced with WMA 10 DRM.
The Creative Zen Vision went from a 16-hour playback time down to 12-hours when playing only WMA 10 DRM songs. Other mp3 players showed similar results. Before the fanboys switch over to attack mode, this isn t just limited to the WMA DRM, Apple’s FairPlay DRM also had some battery loss effects, 8 percent to be exact.
In the long run, the plague known as DRM will kill your digital audio players. Shorter battery time means more charges, and less life of a player.
Tests find DRM shortens player battery life by up to ~25% [cdfreaks]
