Battery Performance

[FresnonserF]

Microsoft and all of the reviews I've read are raving about this device's battery performance, but my experience has been far below expectations.

Yesterday I clocked 7.5 hours from 100% charge to depleted. This included about 2 hours of YouTube streaming, 2 hours of web browsing with Edge, and the rest of the time just sitting idle on the desktop.

Some folks have suggested that the device takes some time to index its storage, which might affect battery. The device had spent about 6 hours idling prior to the test.

I have the 256 GB / i7 / 8 GB model. I am not subscribed to insider updates, but it is otherwise up-to-date. What are your experiences with the Surface Book's battery life? Any suggestions for troubleshooting?

 

[leeshor]

Welcome to the forum

I'm thinking that's not bad at all for a real life use. Depending on your configuration you may get more or less. We have a battery thread that may help with some hints here Guide: All About Battery Life | Microsoft Surface Forums

 

[minhestrone]

7.5 hours is not bad in general, but with regard to a claim of ~12 hours of battery life, IT'S BAD.

We've been sold on excellent battery life, not "not bad" battery life. That's not what I bought into.

My 3 year old Ivy Bridge Samsung Series 9 ultrabook promised 7 hrs and I still get 5 hrs out of it. Three generations of Intel Core processors later, 7.5 hrs is just an incremental upgrade for me--which is sad.

 

[nathanandsusan]

One thing the above thread does not mention is disabling the adaptive brightness. This seems to be a problem with some devices more than others. I disabled it and it seems like my battery life has doubled. I won't know for sure until a week of real use and so far it's looking promising.

 

[No_ax_to_grind]

One thing the above thread does not mention is disabling the adaptive brightness. This seems to be a problem with some devices more than others. I disabled it and it seems like my battery life has doubled. I won't know for sure until a week of real use and so far it's looking promising.

Interesting, what's your machine config and what kind of numbers were you getting before and now after?

I'm going to give it a shot and will report back as well.

Further update, now getting minimal 7.5 hrs with the above changes.

 

[mcsenerd]

I keep hearing all about these 12 hour battery life claims... but man, don't people read the fine print (only video playback and on an i5 with no adaptive brightness)?

 

[cmatvchuk]

Surface Book I7/16/512. I get to the office just before 8:30 and use it hard all day. Visual Studio, SQL Server, at 5:00 p.m. I had 4% left today. Yesterday I had 6%. So about 8.5 hours give or take using it heavy.

 

[mkenny28]

Turning of adaptive brightness ( I dim and turn up the display as needed via Fn + Del, Fn+Backspace) and using hibernate instead of sleep did wonders for my battery life.

 

[ElCamino78s]

Just picked up the SB i7 256GB 8GB this past weekend and enjoying it for work and personal use. With the clipboard I am getting between 3.5 hours for web browser and Office 2016. In clipboard I might catch a few videos about 3 minutes each.

 

[tatornator12]

Wow, if I was surfing the web on Edge or Firefox in Clipboard mode, my battery would say I have 2 hours max and that's with adaptive brightness turned off as well as brightness set to 20%.

 

[BearFlag]

How come adaptive brightness drains the battery more? In general my screen is darker with adaptive brightness so I would assume that it should save me battery life not drain it more.

 

[mkenny28]

How come adaptive brightness drains the battery more? In general my screen is darker with adaptive brightness so I would assume that it should save me battery life not drain it more.

It drains the battery because of the sensor. It is constantly looking for light changes and adjusting the screen accordingly. In certain lighting conditions the adaptations are happening continuously as the lighting in the room fluctuates. A lot of Android phones have the same problem with Auto-Brightness and often turning it off provides a nice boost to battery life.