Anyone out there with a SP4 Core M model to share battery life experiences?

[Emka Zwo]

In this video is shown that such settings like screen brightness are not so effective on battery life as you might think:

So far, I think changing my preorder (in Europe SP4 is released on November 12th) from m3 to i5. Should not make a big difference. What do you think?

 

[Emka Zwo]

On the other side I think, maybe no panic too quickly. These are all new devices and God knows what Windows 10 is doing in the background after fresh start up...? There might be a little tiny baby piece of hope left, that the battery life will improve after Windows 10 has settled down. In addition to that there might be firmware updates in the future which rescue the battery from it's weakness.

But on reddit there are SP4 Core m users that report up to 12h of battery life. That is weird.

Any m3 owners? • /r/Surface

I am still torn between m3 and i5 (which would offer me also a 256 GB option, which would be nice).

I just read that Winbeta is working on a detailed SP4 Core m battery test, which should be online early next week. Maybe that will be a good strike and lead me to my final decision. Life's so nasty and complicated... You can check it out later here:

Surface Pro 4 news

 

[GreyFox7]

On the other side I think, maybe no panic too quickly. These are all new devices and God knows what Windows 10 is doing in the background after fresh start up...? There might be a little tiny baby piece of hope left, that the battery life will improve after Windows 10 has settled down. In addition to that there might be firmware updates in the future which rescue the battery from it's weakness.

But on reddit there are SP4 Core m users that report up to 12h of battery life. That is weird.

Any m3 owners? • /r/Surface

I am still torn between m3 and i5 (which would offer me also a 256 GB option, which would be nice).

I just read that Winbeta is working on a detailed SP4 Core m battery test, which should be online early next week. Maybe that will be a good strike and lead me to my final decision. Life's so nasty and complicated... You can check it out later here:

Surface Pro 4 news

It seems like that 12h was speculation...

I ran yesterday with battery saver on from 100% and it didn't make any difference and oddly the display dimmed further at 20% (the default setting for battery saver) as if Battery Saver was just kicking in. This wouldn't be the first time settings didn't really do anything though.

 

[hughlle]

It seems like that 12h was speculation...

I ran yesterday with battery saver on from 100% and it didn't make any difference and oddly the display dimmed further at 20% (the default setting for battery saver) as if Battery Saver was just kicking in. This wouldn't be the first time settings didn't really do anything though.

My experience is that battery saver doesn't really do anything beyond stopping things like Windows update from running. Doesn't actually drop your power usage down, just stop other things from starting up.

 

[Sven]

Windows 10 seemed to single handedly ruin my SP3 battery life experience. From a comfortable 8-9 hours down to 6ish.

Seems like Windows 10 is also the SP4's single biggest weakness for battery life, and in my forum posts you will see I trace the issue to mainly Edge (man it is one resource hog). Even with a custom hosts file to disable ads there was not much difference.

Let's face it - Windows 10 still needs a lot of work to get the most out of mobile devices like the Surface line.

So disappointing to see. SP4 is stellar otherwise.

 

[DocACE911]

I saw something on optimizing the Surface somewhere the other day. It suggested being selective about what syncs to OneDrive (or) turn syncing on during off hours.

Again makes complete sense. But you (and I mean you personally) know what a service is vs exe, what affinity vs priority of a thread means.

My wife, smart oncologist, just knows "onedrive is the cloud and my crap is there and pretty secure but not hipa compliant"

I am sure she is already of 50% with that knowledge

Microsoft needs to tweak windows out of box for hardware

 

[DocACE911]

Windows 10 seemed to single handedly ruin my SP3 battery life experience. From a comfortable 8-9 hours down

Let's face it - Windows 10 still needs a lot of work to get the most out of mobile

So disappointing to see. SP4 is stellar otherwise.

So say we all. Sad really

 

[Emka Zwo]

Here is a special article about the SP4 m3 battery life:

http:// www. winbeta.org/news/battery-life-experiences-surface-pro-4-core-m3-base-model

 

[GreyFox7]

Battery Report SP4 core m3 #2

I have a lot of stuff turned off, but I'm ready for Microsoft to tweak the Firmware and Tune the OS.
The other one I have is recovering from some early poor battery runs but its getting better.

Battery Report SP4 Core m3 #1

 

[GreyFox7]

Battery Report for Nov 4th SP4 core m3 #2

May actually hit 11 hours yet.

 

[leeshor]

Now your getting into my area of battery life.

Glad to see it.

Quick note that app updates sometimes turn some features back on that had been turned off.

 

[GreyFox7]

Now your getting into my area of battery life.

Glad to see it.

Quick note that app updates sometimes turn some features back on that had been turned off.

I would like to see MS make a LowPower Profile i.e. battery saver on steroids that put's it into to 3W SDP mode. There's plenty of horsepower in this unit I think they could easily push this over the 12 hour mark if they tried.

Speaking of App updates, we need some control over the Store App. This thing is outrageous.

It seems some functions use Cortana and or Edge behind the scenes because I have them locked down as much as possible but they accumulate Top usage anyway.