Low battery life

[GreyFox7]

The Screen is the biggest drain on the battery and brightness is proportional to the battery drain. I run my Surface 3 at 26% brightness, I fear Id go blind at 100% but everyone has their preferences I arrived at 26% by adjusting the brightness lower and then gradually bumping up over a couple days until I arrived at my minimum comfort level brightness for this device. I run my SP3 at 32%.

 

[flolp]

This is because of the brightness you think?

 

[GreyFox7]

This is because of the brightness you think?

There could be other causes but give it a try at 50% or 40% and see how much difference it makes.

You would have to check with Task Manager or Resource Monitor to see if other processes are using resources and consuming battery life. In Task Manager sort the CPU column in descending order ... the top CPU users will use the most battery of the running tasks. Sometimes you find something you didn't expect. Likewise Resource Monitor can show you the top Disk users, Network users, etc. Memory usage isn't necessarily an indicator of battery usage.

 

[No_ax_to_grind]

There could be other causes but give it a try at 50% or 40% and see how much difference it makes.

You would have to check with Task Manager or Resource Monitor to see if other processes are using resources and consuming battery life. In Task Manager sort the CPU column in descending order ... the top CPU users will use the most battery of the running tasks. Sometimes you find something you didn't expect. Likewise Resource Monitor can show you the top Disk users, Network users, etc. Memory usage isn't necessarily an indicator of battery usage.

Post 11/18 firmware update I'm getting 7.5-10 hrs. I run 50% brightness, adaptive brightness off, bluetooth off, Canary for my browser. Mostly reading in a MUI app, writing in Word, browser open with most extensions disabled except for AdBlock and Flash turned off.

As soon as I'm back on power and at a desk I turn bluetooth back on for my Arc Surface Mouse and re-enable my browser extensions.

Anybody else run Battery Bar, pro or otherwise? On my SP3s it jived very closely to what Windows power tells me. On the SP4 it's not even close or accurate. Windows always tells me I have way more power, time than Battery Bar Pro does.

 

[RoboKopp]

Hello,

I bought my "Surface 3" one week ago.
I noticed that the battery life while watching a movie is 2 hours, 2 hours 30 minutes max.

Is this normal?

Be glad. My SP3 is one year old and only has 1 1/2 hours at full charge, while taking between 6-7 hours to recharge the battery. MS Store response is "bad luck". Very unsatisfied at MS attitude.

 

[GreyFox7]

Be glad. My SP3 is one year old and only has 1 1/2 hours at full charge, while taking between 6-7 hours to recharge the battery. MS Store response is "bad luck". Very unsatisfied at MS attitude.

I assume you don't have "Complete" and the one year warranty is expired so technically and like at a tire store or anywhere else if your out of coverage your out of luck. My impression is that MS is getting a little battle weary from the realities of the hardware business for which they are unprepared. The onslaught is just beginning and if early SP4 trends are any indication (not scientifically observed) the cold cruel hardware world will test their mettle.

 

[TallSurfaceUser]

You can edit the registry to get access to the power settings -- including CPU maximum frequency. I would bet that you could set up a power saver power profile that could run the video just fine.

When I run on my power saver profile the battery seems to last forever. I can web browse fine with the CPU at 50% and it sips power. Not sure why MSFT won't let us access a power saver profile by default.