sillyrabbitt123
New Member
i mean it to be that symbol i was kidding all is well.... the battery life tweaks are good thanksAny way to get better battery life?
- Thread starter macmee
- Start date
i mean it to be that symbol i was kidding all is well.... the battery life tweaks are good thanks
EMINENT
Active Member
I'm surprised how many people don't know about the power options.
You guys need to go and create your own power profiles. Especially for those times you're just browsing.
Start with the Power Saver setting. Turn all your settings as low as possible for you to browse. Don't set the max power higher than 50% or you could even go lower. Mine was fine at 30%. My house is mostly dark so I can browse at the lowest setting. Set everything as low as tolerable for what you generally do when you are just browsing. I regularly got readings and use of 6+ hours on my Surface Pro 1.
You guys need to go and create your own power profiles. Especially for those times you're just browsing.
Start with the Power Saver setting. Turn all your settings as low as possible for you to browse. Don't set the max power higher than 50% or you could even go lower. Mine was fine at 30%. My house is mostly dark so I can browse at the lowest setting. Set everything as low as tolerable for what you generally do when you are just browsing. I regularly got readings and use of 6+ hours on my Surface Pro 1.
CrippsCorner
Well-Known Member
This sounds like the typical progress bar that jumps to 99% then sits there forever! Very annoying...
Ruffles
Active Member
I couldn't understand how some people got 5 hours on the original SP. I could only get around 3.5 on mine. I figured it had to do with the software installed so I wiped it and did some tests. Sure enough, the programs I like to use install all kinds of background processes that suck up battery. Get rid of all the programs that just sit there and check for updates etc. I got rid of things like the VMWare tray process, Nikon Message Center, Adobe Service Manager, WinZip Executable, Send to One Note, etc. Even getting rid of DropBox (I switched to Skydrive) helped.
I have Battery Bar Pro installed and it gives you a read out of your current draw. It very interesting how much it changes during various tasks. For example, it's much more costly to watch videos in the desktop browser than the Metro browser. With the SP2, I'm getting 6 hours pretty easy now and if I really try, I can get more.
I have Battery Bar Pro installed and it gives you a read out of your current draw. It very interesting how much it changes during various tasks. For example, it's much more costly to watch videos in the desktop browser than the Metro browser. With the SP2, I'm getting 6 hours pretty easy now and if I really try, I can get more.
Telstar1948
Active Member
It's always hard to know what to trash and what's needed for program to do its job. So many of those things that run in the background are cryptic as far as having any remote idea of whether they're needed or not.
mrasmussen
New Member
I travel every week for work so I get to test battery life a lot. I made my first plane trip this week. I loaded up heros of might and magic 5. I am using an external mouse which has a dongle that consumes the single USB slot on the SP2. I have the 256gb 8gb ram version.
I left Rochester NY and landed in Atlanta ~ 2hrs later, battery just about dead.
I'm going to adjust some of the settings I've read about and see if that changes things. I really hope I can get more that ~ 2hrs as I can get that with any laptop. My Lenovo w530 can play heros of might and magic for 2hrs on a single charge.
I left Rochester NY and landed in Atlanta ~ 2hrs later, battery just about dead.
I'm going to adjust some of the settings I've read about and see if that changes things. I really hope I can get more that ~ 2hrs as I can get that with any laptop. My Lenovo w530 can play heros of might and magic for 2hrs on a single charge.
Brightness, wifi off, game quality settings? Playing non-store-app games does seem to eat batteries quickest on the Pros.
mrasmussen
New Member
I did have wifi on, I'll kill that next trip, which is this sunday.
I just adjusted my power plan, so we'll see if that helps.
I have the res on the game up pretty high, but other than that, the game is default. I'll post what happens this week.
I just adjusted my power plan, so we'll see if that helps.
I have the res on the game up pretty high, but other than that, the game is default. I'll post what happens this week.
demandarin
Active Member
have you all seen these latest article. Anandtech got some new firmware update for his pro2 and it significantly improved battery life. he re-ran his tests and got over 8.5hrs. battery life on web browsing test. some new marvell driver that allows even lower power states. might be good idea to only use drivers included in MS own updates. aside from pen.
AnandTech | Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Firmware Update Improves Battery Life
AnandTech | Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Firmware Update Improves Battery Life
eltos_lightfoot
Active Member
Is there a way to deal with the letterboxing effect when lowering resolutions to 720p for games with the default video driver? Otherwise, I think the power hit may be worth it to use the video driver from intel.
demandarin
Active Member
Exactly. I did the same thing. I created a Battery Max Profile based off of this link. I highly recommend people read this article I'm about to link. Then create their own new profile with what it suggests. It works as I've seen great increase in battery life with it. Then combine this with turning off unnecessary live tiles and apps running in background and you can get extra long battery life. Of course no matter the profile, gaming will severely drain battery life.
How To: Optimize Microsoft Surface Pro Battery Life
Works for Pro 1 or Pro 2. I can only imagine the gains the pro 2 owners will see with this profile. I bet if I had a pro 2, I could pull at least 10hrs. With this battery max profile.
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Haskell saves power when it's idle, if you let it run on max power like games, it's same as last gen CPU
