For months my test notes had a gap I could not see: I always measured the device at the moment it looked most interesting. Right after a heavy scene, right after a long export, right after the thing that made me want to write something down.
That instinct is exactly backwards. A reading taken at the peak tells you what the cooling system does under a spike. A reading taken ten minutes after the peak tells you what the device is actually like to hold.
I switched to a fixed mark — twelve minutes after each scene ends, no exceptions — and the notes stopped being dramatic. They also stopped contradicting each other. Two sessions that used to read as "hot" and "fine" now read as 41 and 38, which is a difference I can explain rather than a mood I have to describe.
The same move fixed battery notes. Instead of "drains fast", I write the percentage at the same two marks every session. One percent every eight minutes is ordinary. One percent every four minutes in the second half is a pattern, and in my case it was never the chip: it was the screen staying at full brightness on a page that never idled.
None of this is clever. It is the least clever thing in my notebook. But it is the only part that survived contact with a second week of testing.
If you are starting a log like this, pick the fixed mark before you start. Any mark will do. The discipline of the mark is the whole instrument.
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