Battery Performance

[Niterider4]

I have learned to turn off auto-brightness on all my devices to save battery life. I have also learned that I can easily get by with 10% or 20% brightness in many circumstances, which has an incredible effect on battery life compared to the default 50%. Setting the backlight timeout to a very short duration also helps.

 

[SeanP]

Turned on with 95% battery at 8:15am. Worked on PPT and Word Docs until 12:35pm. Brightness at 75%. Drained down to 22%. So that's 73% drain in 4:15 min doing basic office stuff, connected to WiFi, and checking emails every so often via Chrome. NO WAY I get even close to 12 hours. I'm thinking I would have gotten another 1.5 hours maybe before it shut off on me for a total of 5:45min and I am not even pushing it at all.

 

[jnjroach]

Turned on with 95% battery at 8:15am. Worked on PPT and Word Docs until 12:35pm. Brightness at 75%. Drained down to 22%. So that's 73% drain in 4:15 min doing basic office stuff, connected to WiFi, and checking emails every so often via Chrome. NO WAY I get even close to 12 hours. I'm thinking I would have gotten another 1.5 hours maybe before it shut off on me for a total of 5:45min and I am not even pushing it at all.

You're paying the Chrome Tax....

 

[No_ax_to_grind]

You're paying the Chrome Tax....

Canary's much better, especially with AdBlock turned on and Flash turned off.

 

[tatornator12]

I am still having battery issues even after the Fall Update. I charged my battery to 100% last night and turned it completely off. I just turned it on and I am at 96%. How the heck do I lose 4% battery life when the computer is completely off?!

 

[leeshor]

That may be a little much but the battery will degrade even when the Surface is off. All my laptops have always done that.

 

[ElCamino78s]

With the dock, I will get between 9 hours and 10.5 hours. Was hoping to get at least the 12 hours, but then again I do have the i7 256GB 8GB Surface Book, so can't complain.

 

[BearFlag]

Not sure if this question belongs in this thread but how do I adjust the battery settings such that it uses max dGPU? I only see a "balance" power plan which does not let me select the graphics performance in the advanced setting. I basically want to play games using the battery and not have it impact my performance.

 

[mkenny28]

I am still having battery issues even after the Fall Update. I charged my battery to 100% last night and turned it completely off. I just turned it on and I am at 96%. How the heck do I lose 4% battery life when the computer is completely off?!

Was this the fall update they were talking about? I thought this was just a Windows Update (which all Windows 10 machines got) whereas I figured the fall update would be Surface specific firmware. Anyway, so you completely shut off the SB? hmm could really be anything that took that 4% at boot or shut down or both. Also I wonder if having fast boot enabled adds to battery drain since it is essentially saving current state?

 

[tatornator12]

The Fall Update is the Windows Update, not the Surface specific update from 11/2. At least I thought I completely shut it off. How do I check if fast boot is enabled? I never enabled it before unless it is automatic. I also disabled some of the startup apps today and will see if that helps. I reinstalled the battery drivers yesterday, so I'm hoping it helps in some way.

 

[tatornator12]

So even after applying the Fall Update, I'm still having battery issues. Only getting a max of 5 hours of usage just surfacing the web on Firefox, using OneNote, and checking email with Outlook. I've reinstalled the battery drivers, turned off adaptive brightness, and disabled startup applications or applications running in the background. I also run in battery saver with 50% brightness. When I shut the computer down 24+ hours ago, I was at 40%. I turned it on today and was at 33% battery life and it immediately fell to 28% in 30 minutes of surfing the web. Very disappointed that my 2011 MacBook Pro still runs better than this expensive machine. Also had my second display driver error since the update.

Should I wait for firmware updates? Will updates even fix these issues? Or should I just return the machine for a refund and wait till Surface Book 2. I'm already on my first replacement.

 

[leeshor]

Updates seem to be solving many problems people have had. Being off 24hrs means it needed some housework including a defender update.