Idea on battery life I should get?

[gman713]

Could someone post their normal battery life for their SP4 Core i7 model? I'm trying to determine if my battery life is normal or not.

 

[hughlle]

There is really no such thing as "normal" battery life. You need to specify what you do (including how often and how long), what applications, screen brightness etc.

 

[jnjroach]

Depending on what you have installed and how you use it, battery life can range from 4.5 hours to 9 hours

 

[gman713]

Using OneNote, taking notes. Brightness on at about 20-30%, power on balanced mode, some regular web browsing gets me about 4.5 hours before dying. It was purchased brand new back in January. I haven't received the latest up date to Windows so maybe it gets better?

 

[hughlle]

Using OneNote, taking notes. Brightness on at about 20-30%, power on balanced mode, some regular web browsing gets me about 4.5 hours before dying. It was purchased brand new back in January. I haven't received the latest up date to Windows so maybe it gets better?

I can't comment t on the i7 model, but for such light usage I doubt that there is much difference, but in pretty much the same!e scenario I get close to 10 hours on my i5. I've never timed it for ten hours, but a 1 hour lecture with onenote open and googling here and there results in 10% drain (when the mew windows insider builds aren't having some fun with me)

 

[gman713]

The only thing I can think that I did differently is that I followed instructions somewhere on this forum to get the high power mode unlocked, however I always keep it on balanced. Maybe by changing the power options caused more battery to be used up? Is there a way to reset the power options back to where high power mode is not visible?

 

[jnjroach]

What are you using as a browser? Chrome can cut your battery life by 25-50% and overly aggressive antivirus can have an impact add well....

 

[Philtastic]

I can't comment t on the i7 model, but for such light usage I doubt that there is much difference, but in pretty much the same!e scenario I get close to 10 hours on my i5. I've never timed it for ten hours, but a 1 hour lecture with onenote open and googling here and there results in 10% drain (when the mew windows insider builds aren't having some fun with me)

With that 10% drop from 100% in 1 hour, you will probably get closer to 7-8 hours which is what I generally get when I use it so much as to drain the entire battery. The first 10% is relatively slow while the final ~25% drains significantly faster than the rest.

 

[gman713]

I'm using Edge right now and that is all that I have open... I went from 100% to 92% in 30 minutes and showing 1 hour and 46 minutes remaining. Brightness is at 15%

 

[Philtastic]

Probably some background process doing its thing. Take a look at Task Manager if you're really concerned.

 

[gman713]

I booted back up at home and down to 85% after over an hour. The time left seems to fluctuate. I saw it go up as high as 12 hours and now it shows 4 hours and 52 minutes. Maybe its not as bad as I originally thought.

On a side note, I was trying to use DirectTv Now on Edge and got a message it requires Chrome or Safari. That kind of sucks when trying to save on battery.

 

[Philtastic]

The time left estimate is basically completely useless. It takes whatever the most recently polled battery usage is (maybe once every 5-10'ish minutes) and assumes that this short sample is the usage for the entire time, thus will only be accurate if you maintain that amount of system usage.