20% per hour battery drain with light useage. Normal?

[J_Deacon]

Howdy all.

I am hoping that a few of you can shed a light on my SP4 I7 issue?

I am suffering from what seems to be a common battery issue, I get about 5hr hours usage absolute max. I would define that 5 hours usage as extremely light.

That five hours is spent using Edge for about 2hrs , with just 5 or 6 tabs open, not watching any video (battery drains over 20% an hour with just light internet browsing use). The remaining 3 hours are spent with the surface being idle, but having the display left on. I have done all the usual stuff, disabled Cortana, disabled windows hello, using an adblocker, updated drivers etc

CPU usage seems relatively normal, staying at 2% to 5% idle

Is this normal battery performance? Is it dead on arrival? Do I need to return it?

 

[leeshor]

I don't think your Surface has a problem. Using Edge and having the screen not blank when idle is probably a good indicator of why you can't get more battery life. Other things that could be hurting, syncing with OneDrive, Syncing IMAP mail screen brightness, (turn off autobright), WiFi signal strength, live tiles and more.

 

[Mike007]

Seems about what I get on my i7 but I haven't mine that long yet.
Install batterybar:

Osiris Development - Home of BatteryBar, the most accurate battery meter for Windows

to find out what your discharge rate is under various scenarios

 

[Zkyevolved]

I got 5.5 hours with VERY minimal usage (mostly idle screen) while working (keeping a document up) and some very light browsing and some light hdmi connection to show some stuff (maybe a total of an hour of the total time). I think MS has a lot to optimize because 20% an hour in my case, too, with minimal usage is VERY HIGH.

 

[J_Deacon]

Interesting stuff, I guess 20% an hour looks like standard battery behaviour then - at least I don't have to return it. I am not quite sure how MS can quote 9hr battery usage. It wont even last that in standby.

 

[mva5580]

The whole battery life/drain situation continues to be the reason why I just can't make a Surface Pro my main mobile device.

I get it; it's an i5/i7 full PC running full Windows and therefore it's obviously not going to get the battery life of an iPad. I understand.

But I still just can't help but feel that battery life/power management is a very neglected function.

 

[leeshor]

I have only gone down as low as 6 hours once or twice. It's a matter of choices as well as adjustments some people may not be willing to make.

You shouldn't bother asking me how I do it because you probably wouldn't want to. I have made my suggestions for extending the battery life dozens of time on thew forum so I know.

 

[J_Deacon]

Hi Leeshor, can you summarise your battery tips, or do you have a link? I would be interested to see If I have tried them all. The only way thing that I have not tried to reduce battery life is reducing screen brightness, it is currently at 50%

 

[leeshor]

I guess at some point we'll need a master FAQ on battery saving.

I have autobright turned off

I have WiFi on during sleep off

I only have 1 live tile

I don't have Chrome installed, (and until they make some dramatic changes I won't)

I don't use Edge, same as above. I use Firefox with AdblockPlus, which I think is key to smooth crash free operation

I made a ton of privacy adjustments like only sending basics to Microsoft, turned off a bunch of notifications that were of no use to me, (unless I wanted to get bugged to death)

I have a minimal amount of data syncing to OneDrive

My Mail is POP, leaving mail on the server for 5 days and sending myself a BCC on everything. IMAP can be a killer.

As I said, many people are unwilling to do much of what I have done. It's very much the same way I have done it on my phones and Android tablets but it suits me just fine. I get extreme battery life from my phone too.

One more thing. Most of the time I'm good with 25% bright though at one time I had it set to 30%. Every now and then I bump it up to 50% which works OK if I'm not outside.

 

[smar]

I also found out (since my SP3 days) that running background apps like Viber causes significant battery drain (battery bar is a useful tool for quickly seeing the effects of closing various apps).

When I need battery life, I now close a number of background apps including Viber, dropbox, onedrive, rainmeter etc. My idle cpu is down to about 1%.

 

[hughlle]

Mine is hit and miss. My sp4 was supposedly sleeping, fully charged, power went out so read my book for 45 minutes more, grabbed the surface, 80% battery.

 

[Cerif27]

I'm a little shocked I'm getting pretty good usage out of it. It lasts a day, some times a day and a half of off and on usage. I did most of those suggestions and I turned off cortana