Post Your SP3 Power/Battery/Charging Issues Here

[foghat]

I am seeing about 6-6.5 hours using for work. So constantly on, surfing web, outlook, word, excel. a few minutes of flash video. brightness at 30%

Yesterday I tried streaming google play music the entire time (in addition to above), I was at 15% after 5 hours - so maybe would have barely hit 6 hours in that case.

 

[ctitanic]

 

[mtalinm]

Started working at about 8:15 this morning with 84% battery left (did not drop at all overnight btw). Just got the low battery 10% warning at 12:39. Office work also pen, no media. Certainly not on track for 9 hours.

 

[duffyanneal]

I noticed last night that I no longer have a remaining time indication when I hover on the battery icon. It may have started after doing a power reset (volume up + power button). Anyone else seeing this?

 

[foghat]

I never had a remaining time indication. Only remaining percent.

 

[jnjroach]

I never had a remaining time indication. Only remaining percent.

That is the default behavior on a Connected Standby Machine....

 

[Rugbyguy541]

So I am only getting around 6 hours out of my SP3 . I wrote down alot of times, percentages, and what I was doing. Does this make sense to anyone, or am I having an actual issue?

9:45 100% screen 50%. I am running currently OneNote desktop, Chrome Canary, and that is it. Fresh bootup so no backup processes are running that are left over from any other previous apps.

10:35 87%

10:52 84%

11:30 76%

12:43 65.4%: Standby from 12:15-14:43. Mouse connected now and microsoft word running, spotify web player, facebook, gmail, pdf reader.

restart at 12:56 due to keyboard not working, but windows key was recognized. 61.3%

1:32 49.7%

2:41 Computer restart due to freezing. Running same apps as @ 12:43. 29.5%

3:08 18.3%

3:32 10.5%

3:41 7.4%

3:48 sleep due to low battery at 5.5%

 

[jtuck82]

I want to start by saying I've owned the SP1, SP2, and now have the SP3. On my SP3, when I'm fully charged is it ok to leave it plugged in or is it overcharging the battery, and I need to unplug? I ask this because I got really nice battery life on my SP2 in sleep and it would last for like a month at a time. There is no way my SP3 is getting this kind of battery life while in sleep mode. It's not horrible, but I guess its this connected standby stuff that I don't know if I like or not lol. Anyways... I really am enjoying my SP3 and was just curious about leaving it plugged in. Whats everyone else do, especially just sitting at home browsing and such?

 

[BillJ]

I usually just let my SP3 sleep overnight while charging. Some mornings the device is entirely cool, other mornings the upper right area is distinctly warm. Does this indeed suggest that the battery continues to get current even when fully charged, or are there CPU activities that are going on that cause the heat? Is this behavior to be expected?

 

[jnjroach]

So I am only getting around 6 hours out of my SP3 . I wrote down alot of times, percentages, and what I was doing. Does this make sense to anyone, or am I having an actual issue?

6 hours is actually pretty good based on your work flow and 2 reboots, OneNote Desktop and inking is a CPU intensive task, you can go in to the Advanced Properties and adjust OneNote performance while on battery. Google Chrome based browsers on notoriously bad on battery life, you're using a Browser Based Streaming Service, which I assume using a desktop version, so I would say 6 hours isn't bad with your work style.

 

[dman27]

Why would we use the Surface Pro 3 with a brightness setting at 50% or below?? Particularly during the day? This seems to defeat the purpose of actually USING your new shiny computer for actual work.

Seems to be VERY misleading of Microsoft or other vendors to quote battery life but have as use case of just reading some text with a screen brightness of 30%-40%. This is far to dim for the average user.

We should not be trying to tweak every power and brightness setting to make the Surface pro equal to the battery life quoted by Microsoft when in the end the $1000 to $2000 computer will rarely if ever perform to the 9 hours or real world use...web browsing, composing documents, discussing and showing OTHERS anything on your surface at 90%-100% brightness.

It is not the purpose of the consumer to work around these tweaks and does no one any good if we continue to try to work around these ridiculous user work and brightness levels.

At some point we should just report how we actually intend to use the computer and let the levels fall in line to other comparable computers.

 

[jnjroach]

I get 9 hours of battery under normal light duty, allowing Connected Standby to kick end when there is inactivity....but lets be clear,

MS said 9 hours of Web Browsing...its marketing. Here is what Microsoft Actually says:

Battery Life:
Up to 9 hours of web browsing4

4 Testing consisted of full battery discharge while Internet browsing over WiFi. Internet browsing was tested browsing 25 popular web pages. All settings were default except: Wi Fi was associated with a network, Auto-Brightness disabled, and Bluetooth Radio was turned off. Battery life varies with settings, usage, and other factors. Games, movies, and music sold separately.