Sp4 m3 about 4hrs on a charge .... Indexing?

[DocACE911]

Ok, I have an sp3 i7. I really do milk a good 6-7 hours out of it.

Have a new m3 for my wife. Installed literally nothing.

M3 got her 4.2 hours until dead just using edge browser and word. 50% screen brightness.

Should disable indexing service? Prefetch? Can't really find a cpu hog

Notice with cover closed all night lost about 30% of the charge - another connected standby mess?

Been so long since I solved all these same issues on my sp3 i7 that I have not upgraded to win10 on that (and I actually love onedrive on win8.1 with file holders in place)

Any ideas? This new screen can't suck battery that bad

 

[hughlle]

Nope. That new screen uses half the power as an iPad air 2 (sp4 uses roughly 4.5w for screen, something like 3.5 on sp3, and about 8.5 for air 2)

I believe I saw that greyfox got 5 hours on his first "test". This is normal for a new machine as it takes a few days to sort out all the stuff in the background

Hold on for a little bit before you panick and consider a return

 

[zhenya]

Nope. That new screen uses half the power as an iPad air 2 (sp4 uses roughly 4.5w for screen, something like 3.5 on sp3, and about 8.5 for air 2)

Come again?? If that were so, the iPad would get just 3 hours of battery life even if it had to only power the screen. Given that I have no trouble of getting 12 hours of screen on time from my Air 2, that means there is 2.25w available to run the screen, the processor, and everything else...

 

[hughlle]

I worded it wrong.. but

Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Display Technology Shoot-Out

Sp3 and 4 kick the pants off the air 2 for display efficiency, even despite the sp4 having a higher dpi..

Point is the same though. That battery life is little to do with the improved screen as it performs near the same as the sp3

 

[zhenya]

I worded it wrong.. but

Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Display Technology Shoot-Out

Sp3 and 4 kick the pants off the air 2 for display efficiency, even despite the sp4 having a higher dpi..

Point is the same though. That battery life is little to do with the improved screen as it performs near the same as the sp3

That looks to me like a statistic that has been made up to determine something that doesn't have much bearing in the real world. (The SP3 scores significantly better than the SP4 in that metric...)

In practice the Air 2 has so much less reflection of ambient light that you can read the screen at a much lower brightness level which is what really matters. Compare the Average Screen Reflectance and the Mirror Reflectance values. The SP4 is only very slightly improved in those categories over the SP3, and the SP3 is an absolute disaster outdoors. The Air 2 is among the best outdoor readable displays I've ever seen. Better than the iPhones, better than the (many) commercial 'outdoor readable' displays I've tested.

 

[MattL]

Ok, I have an sp3 i7. I really do milk a good 6-7 hours out of it.

Have a new m3 for my wife. Installed literally nothing.

M3 got her 4.2 hours until dead just using edge browser and word. 50% screen brightness.

Should disable indexing service? Prefetch? Can't really find a cpu hog

Notice with cover closed all night lost about 30% of the charge - another connected standby mess?

Been so long since I solved all these same issues on my sp3 i7 that I have not upgraded to win10 on that (and I actually love onedrive on win8.1 with file holders in place)

Any ideas? This new screen can't suck battery that bad

So some users on the Surface reddit are starting to share battery life of their SP4 m3. One user did a battery drain test streaming 1080p over youtube (on a many hour playlist so it would always have to stream a new video vs caching) and got almost 6 1/2 hours out, they ran it alongside their old Surface 3 (non pro) and the sp4 m3 did slightly better (on anandtech etc they have Surface 3 batter life metrics, which beats out the other Sp4 models by about 10-20%)...

I'd give it some time, a new machine will be downloading updates in the background, indexing, etc... It should settle in a couple days into a much better battery life.

 

[MattL]

That looks to me like a statistic that has been made up to determine something that doesn't have much bearing in the real world. (The SP3 scores significantly better than the SP4 in that metric...)

In practice the Air 2 has so much less reflection of ambient light that you can read the screen at a much lower brightness level which is what really matters. Compare the Average Screen Reflectance and the Mirror Reflectance values. The SP4 is only very slightly improved in those categories over the SP3, and the SP3 is an absolute disaster outdoors. The Air 2 is among the best outdoor readable displays I've ever seen. Better than the iPhones, better than the (many) commercial 'outdoor readable' displays I've tested.

I'm sorry but no... Displaymate does a *huge* variety of analysis on displays, they include practical results as well as technical evaluation so you can understand which technologies are performing more efficiently, progressing faster etc.

In Displaymate's reviews they specifically point out the iPad Airs advantage in that category:

For the Surface Pro 4 it is 78, which is Very Good and 24 percent higher than the Surface Pro 3, and better than most full size Tablets, but also much lower than the 166 for iPad Air 2 with its low Reflectance coating.

This is the *only* area the iPad Air does better as far as I can tell, in pretty much every other way the SP4 has a better screen, better contrast, viewing angles, resolution, color accuracy, etc.

Screen reflectance is certainly important but hardly the only factor.

 

[GreyFox7]

So far battery life is nothing to write home about. They better hope they can find another 30% in fine tuning the firmware and W10. Cortana isn't worth it, bye bye.

 

[DocACE911]

The m3 has a TPD 70% less than the i5 but still seems to have miserable battery life in additon to only 4GB ram.

Guess the screen is the driving force of battery life - not the Intel chip/RAM combo.