The power button just puts it to sleep so it's not really powered off. you could run powercfg /sleepstudy from an admin command prompt to see what was using power. I think. cd to temp folder first so the report is easy to find.
SP4 M3 vs. SP4 i5 - My Own Battery Life Face Off
- Thread starter DavidZ
- Start date
OK, I'll give that a try.
Based on a web search, I did sleep study. It said the "main offender" was "WU." Does that mean Windows Update was running while it was sleeping?
I think there are 2 separate issues here that many people mistakenly conflate.
Certainly, your battery life will vary tremendously depending upon your usage. That's a fact.
But subject to the EXACT SAME usage, a given device should perform to a certain standard and that benchmark can be reproduced by experiment. Otherwise, all the battery tests performed by the many magazines and online reviewers are meaningless.
So this question here is not whether you and I will get the same number of hours of battery life for a given device. The question I'm trying to answer here is...what is the relative battery life of the M3 vs. the i5? So, if my test shows that the M3 gets, say, 10% more battery life than the i5, I think it's reasonable to conclude that you or I will get approximately that same differential based on our particular usage patterns.
Obviously it's harder than you think.
Zkyevolved
Active Member
Yes, but the same exact usage is by definition of how to measure good battery life.
I didn't expect the M3 to get much better battery life, because it has a smaller battery and more efficient CPU vs a more powerful CPU and larger battery.
I didn't expect the M3 to get much better battery life, because it has a smaller battery and more efficient CPU vs a more powerful CPU and larger battery.
Correct and confirmed by the battery capacity figures of the powercfg batteryreport.
raqball
Active Member
To me they are meaningless because I will never use the machine as they do. I have never once in my entire life ran a video non stop unit the battery died and I've never done many of the other things they do to test the battery.. So in a way, to the normal user, their tests are pretty much meaningless..
I guess at this point we are going in circles.. If the reason for you testing them is to see which will last longer for YOU then you need to test them both as you would use them. With the exact same settings, apps, programs and background processes running. Then use them both as you normally would.. Then and only then will you be able to get a good battery life expectation between the 2 based on your daily and normal usage..
starstreak
Member
I would love to not carry my charger when I board a plane from HI to CA. But if I play around web browsing on my old SP2 for an hour before take off, I'll already be 70% or less. Then I watch a movie for two hours, I wouldn't have much battery if at all. I really wish manufactures in general would quote battery life better.
Example: Get an average person who knows a bit about PC computers. Hand him the computer and say browse the internet/watch a movie/play an app or something. Then see how long the battery lasts. Get three or four people. And get an average. Now we know. But that ain't going to happen. They will run the test in a lab and see what's the best time doing the least amount of stuff that still looks like we're using the notebook gets.
Example: Get an average person who knows a bit about PC computers. Hand him the computer and say browse the internet/watch a movie/play an app or something. Then see how long the battery lasts. Get three or four people. And get an average. Now we know. But that ain't going to happen. They will run the test in a lab and see what's the best time doing the least amount of stuff that still looks like we're using the notebook gets.
