I'm interested in seeing how they compare on battery life.
In my experience, which consists of mostly time spent turned off on display with brief periods of activation, they're not that dissimilar. Both will go flat in around three weeks if left turned off on display so I charge them every two weeks. According to the deluxe charger's display, the batteries are usually in the low 40% charge range at that point for my Emeralds and my Diamonds. Since the LEDs are the main power draw when activated in both configurations (and the control circuitry is probably broadly similar) I would guess that the battery life would be similar for given colors, but I haven't run that experiment to date. I'd be interested in others' battery life data.