Does my SP2 have normal or sub par battery life?

[Dim-Ize]

I'm very novice at discerning expected battery yield as 1) I'm not up to par on the expected results and 2) I normally use my SP2 plugged in to AC.

Yesterday I tried using it as a tablet only and had 2.5-3.0 hours of use, but I was running allot of stuff.

So, searching these forums, I performed a battery-report. Not sure if mine is on par or not. Can one of you pro's take a look and give me some feedback? I'm running standard updates from MS - no additional drivers.

 

[Philtastic]

Battery capacity looks fine. My guess is that you just had some things that kept the processor at an elevated speed and/or you were using the GPU which would result in the battery dying after 1-3 hours. For example, playing a 3D video game can kill a 100% battery in 0.5-2 hours. Watching videos on the desktop might run for 4 hours. Videos in an app-based video player would go for maybe 5-6 hours. Browsing the web on video-light sites, reading an e-book, or typing something in Word would net you the maximally rated 8-9 hours.

What kind of stuff were you running?

 

[Dim-Ize]

Battery capacity looks fine. My guess is that you just had some things that kept the processor at an elevated speed and/or you were using the GPU which would result in the battery dying after 1-3 hours. For example, playing a 3D video game can kill a 100% battery in 0.5-2 hours. Watching videos on the desktop might run for 4 hours. Videos in an app-based video player would go for maybe 5-6 hours. Browsing the web on video-light sites, reading an e-book, or typing something in Word would net you the maximally rated 8-9 hours.

What kind of stuff were you running?

Thanks for the reassurance. I was running Miracast display for a PowerPoint presentation, streaming HD video, toggling browser, and Bluetooth was enabled along with a USB receiver cor a wireless remote. I probably also hurt myself running at max brightness and max performance on battery settings. I just thought i would get 4-5 hours instead of 2.5.

 

[GoodBytes]

Your battery life is all good. You were pushing the system quite a lot.
Power Point uses the GPU for the rendering (well the entire Office suit does), and I believe miracast uses the CPU a lot, plus wireless.

When the GPU is pushed, it eats a lot of power.
As for the CPU, because it is an low voltage one (U series), it consumes little power, but only at idle, when you push it, it delivers some serious power, but bye bye battery.

 

[jrapdx]

I'm very novice at discerning expected battery yield as 1) I'm not up to par on the expected results and 2) I normally use my SP2 plugged in to AC.

Yesterday I tried using it as a tablet only and had 2.5-3.0 hours of use, but I was running allot of stuff.

So, searching these forums, I performed a battery-report. Not sure if mine is on par or not. Can one of you pro's take a look and give me some feedback? I'm running standard updates from MS - no additional drivers.

According to /batteryreport my SP2 (in use since mid-January) has capacity of 40626 mWh. Interestingly, in the same report, capacity has varied in the last 7 days from low: 40,133 to high: 41,057 mWh. I guess that means we should take the capacity reported to be an estimate, not a precise figure.

Overall battery life has been approximately 8 hrs give or take 8 minutes based on current vs. original battery capacity. I think that's not at all a shabby performance.

Hard to know how fast battery life will degrade, though inevitably it will. If MS can get the remaining SP2 quirks fixed, at least the more annoying ones, we'll be golden.

 

[Dim-Ize]

Your battery life is all good. You were pushing the system quite a lot.
Power Point uses the GPU for the rendering (well the entire Office suit does), and I believe miracast uses the CPU a lot, plus wireless.

When the GPU is pushed, it eats a lot of power.
As for the CPU, because it is an low voltage one (U series), it consumes little power, but only at idle, when you push it, it delivers some serious power, but bye bye battery.

Great reply. Thank. I didn't know this info.

 

[mohcho]

I ran my SP2 for 8 hours straight as my desktop powering 2 external monitors, SP2 screen off and it still had 32% left. Before I plugged it in. The other day, I was playing Tomb Raider for about an hour and a bit and it drained the battery from full charge down to 29%, so I can see how taxing the CPU/GPU can put a huge strain on the battery.

 

[javispedro]

Power Point uses the GPU for the rendering (well the entire Office suit does), and I believe miracast uses the CPU a lot, plus wireless.

I know that you love pointing how the Intel GPU is responsible for all battery problems that plague the world, but seriously, ever since Vista the GPU is used for _everything_ on Windows. Disabling desktop composition as well as turning off the "graphics acceleration" slider a few notches (it's still visible even on 8, I think) are virtually the only ways to disable always using the GPU. If you do so, you'll note that you'll probably get more battery in idle situations, but e.g. playing a video will kill the battery fast.

The combined CPU+GPU power usage is so high it can empty the battery in less than an hour.