Can we talk about battery life? Microsoft says "up to 9 hours"

[macmee]

Microsoft's website says "up to 9 hours of battery life" the best I ever got was 7:30 hours on windows 8, and never more than 5 hours on windows 10. Has anyone actually gotten 9 hours or does that sound as impossible to you as it does to me?

Also you might say: "but they say up to" and that's true they do say up to, but from an honesty standpoint I would hope that they'd at least try and pick a number reflective of reality. Also there's other tablets (HP Spectre, and dare I say the iPad Pro) which do get more or less the battery life HP and Apple market the devices as.

The other frustrating thing here for me is, My Sp4 probably is even *worse* on battery than my SP3 and SP2 was. How is it that W10 is worse for battery than W8.1? Shouldn't each iteration have slightly better battery life if for no other reason than more efficient CPU and GPU chips? The 2016 Macbook gets about 1 extra hour of battery life over the 2015 Macbook as an example. And it's not even as if we have 4 physical cores in these devices, and we have integrated graphics cards, so what gives?

 

[GreyFox7]

Everything that runs uses some power... all those things in W10 add up plus they cut the size of the battery down in the SP4 to lose a couple grams of weight. Don't even bother comparing a MacBook... Different size & weight class, not even an ultrabook, it's a full big assed laptop.

Can you get nine hours? Yes, but you have to tune to conserver power and turn off all the bells and whistles. The local video benchmark they use for the nine hour number is what it is, I'm sure it's locked away in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar somewhere in case they need it for something, otherwise you'll never see it.

Yes, "up to" should be one of those trigger phrases to your subconscious that whatever follows is Marketing bull kaka. It's a very common practice, apparently they teach this in college. That anyone still falls for it is beyond the pale.

Bottom line if you want battery life stop running all the junk and disable the candy. You have the luxury of owning a computer that you can control to a very large extent unlike some other products which don't allow it.

 

[jnjroach]

Microsoft's website says "up to 9 hours of battery life" the best I ever got was 7:30 hours on windows 8, and never more than 5 hours on windows 10. Has anyone actually gotten 9 hours or does that sound as impossible to you as it does to me?

Also you might say: "but they say up to" and that's true they do say up to, but from an honesty standpoint I would hope that they'd at least try and pick a number reflective of reality. Also there's other tablets (HP Spectre, and dare I say the iPad Pro) which do get more or less the battery life HP and Apple market the devices as.

The other frustrating thing here for me is, My Sp4 probably is even *worse* on battery than my SP3 and SP2 was. How is it that W10 is worse for battery than W8.1? Shouldn't each iteration have slightly better battery life if for no other reason than more efficient CPU and GPU chips? The 2016 Macbook gets about 1 extra hour of battery life over the 2015 Macbook as an example. And it's not even as if we have 4 physical cores in these devices, and we have integrated graphics cards, so what gives?

This is how 9 hours is defined:

"Up to 9 hours of video playback. Testing conducted by Microsoft in September 2015 using preproduction Intel® CoreTM i5, 256GB, 8GB RAM device. Testing consisted of full battery discharge during video playback. All settings were default except: Wi-Fi was associated with a network. Battery life varies significantly with settings, usage and other factors."

I have achieved 8+ hours (prior to installing Visual Studio, Camtasia and Reflector 2), since then the most I can get on continuous use is 7ish hours. I can get 10-12 hours allowing it to go into S0iX between meetings, etc.

 

[hughlle]

Yup, I can get around that. I have no use for wifi so just stick it on airplane mode with suggested brightness and it's great. I've also little to nothing installed/enabled on the thing that might run in the background like AV or cortana etc.

 

[macmee]

This is how 9 hours is defined:

"Up to 9 hours of video playback. Testing conducted by Microsoft in September 2015 using preproduction Intel® CoreTM i5, 256GB, 8GB RAM device. Testing consisted of full battery discharge during video playback. All settings were default except: Wi-Fi was associated with a network. Battery life varies significantly with settings, usage and other factors."

I have achieved 8+ hours (prior to installing Visual Studio, Camtasia and Reflector 2), since then the most I can get on continuous use is 7ish hours. I can get 10-12 hours allowing it to go into S0iX between meetings, etc.

Visual Studios is definitely a battery killer (as is xcode in osx) but just having them installed shouldn't murder the battery right? Maybe they run some daemon constantly but you can turn it off right?

Everything that runs uses some power... all those things in W10 add up plus they cut the size of the battery down in the SP4 to lose a couple grams of weight. Don't even bother comparing a MacBook... Different size & weight class, not even an ultrabook, it's a full big assed laptop.

Can you get nine hours? Yes, but you have to tune to conserver power and turn off all the bells and whistles. The local video benchmark they use for the nine hour number is what it is, I'm sure it's locked away in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar somewhere in case they need it for something, otherwise you'll never see it.

Yes, "up to" should be one of those trigger phrases to your subconscious that whatever follows is Marketing bull kaka. It's a very common practice, apparently they teach this in college. That anyone still falls for it is beyond the pale.

Bottom line if you want battery life stop running all the junk and disable the candy. You have the luxury of owning a computer that you can control to a very large extent unlike some other products which don't allow it.

It makes me want to scream how Apple and Microsoft both continue shrinking the batteries in their new devices to make their products slimmer as opposed to last longer.

 

[Philtastic]

I generally get 6-7.5 hours of light use. I can push it up to maybe 8-8.5 if I turn battery saver mode on. This is assuming that the device is working normally, such as now after the latest updates. If Microsoft breaks something in an update, such as CPU clockspeed, I've gone down as low as 4-5 hours of battery life... or zero if it automatically wakes up in my bag and stays on.

 

[jnjroach]

Visual Studios is definitely a battery killer (as is xcode in osx) but just having them installed shouldn't murder the battery right? Maybe they run some daemon constantly but you can turn it off right?

With VS 2015 SP2 fully Updated included Azure Development I have the following background processes:

Azure Service Fabric Cluster Manager
SQL Server VSS Writer

 

[Luinwethion]

Although I find that *in laptop world* Apple has the bests claims when it comes to real life, MS doesn't do bad either.

The point is when they say video playback or browsing, first they assume that you are using settings in default and the built in apps to browse and play videos, and boy can I tell you want of a difference it makes between using edge and chrome.

Second, they also assume that you don't have another 100 things and processes running in background, what should be the case for a normal user.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

[alamily89]

hi
i just want to know how long the battery will last if i was playing a game like mgsv (without connecting the charger)

 

[Philtastic]

hi
i just want to know how long the battery will last if i was playing a game like mgsv (without connecting the charger)

Probably about 1-1.5 hours. Playing any graphically intense video game will just rip through the battery as both your GPU and CPU will be running at full speed and constantly occupied. For less demanding games, like Diablo 3, Civilization V, and XCOM, I've gotten around 2-2.5 hours.

 

[jrioux]

Microsoft says "up to 9 hours"
Is that in Sleep?

 

[alamily89]

Probably about 1-1.5 hours. Playing any graphically intense video game will just rip through the battery as both your GPU and CPU will be running at full speed and constantly occupied. For less demanding games, like Diablo 3, Civilization V, and XCOM, I've gotten around 2-2.5 hours.

thanks