Surface Pro 4 quickly discharging

[Name XXX]

My Surface Pro 4 very quickly discharges when I do some hard processes with it, like installation of hard application or unpacking of huge archive. It may discharge on few percent's during few minutes. Is this normal?
P.S. I've bought it few days ago and it have been charged fully only one time.

 

[EMINENT]

Yes, when you do cpu intensive tasks along with powering the display, it'll drop fast.

 

[Name XXX]

Yes, when you do cpu intensive tasks along with powering the display, it'll drop fast.

But why it is normal? If I want use it in some tools loke Wolfram mathematica as notebook, it will be bad, which contradicts Microsoft marketing campaign.

 

[leeshor]

That's normal on any portable device. The only thing that counts is the total battery time. Remaining time goes up and down in spurts depending on what you are doing at the moment.

 

[Name XXX]

That's normal on any portable device. The only thing that counts is the total battery time. Remaining time goes up and down in spurts depending on what you are doing at the moment.

So whats time of your working with it without recharge if you use powerful apps?

 

[leeshor]

There are a lot of variables there so it's hard to say. What matters is the total time you can get. I'll look at the battery icon and one minute it will say I have 3 hours remaining and ten minutes later it may say 4 hours and 15 minutes. Everything happening in the background, brightness, internet activity, all have an effect on the battery. No 2 people get the same battery use, most not even from charge to charge. Mine varies between a low of around 7 hours to a high of 11 hours, when it gets down to <20%

 

[hughlle]

So whats time of your working with it without recharge if you use powerful apps?

Completely user dependent. Even two people using the same app will get different results as they will do different things with it, or work slower or faster etc etc.

 

[Dan0]

Brand new Surface Pro 4. Finished multitude of updates. Double checked to make sure no other updates were required. Do not have an e-mail account or any other reason for the unit to remain active. Fully charged to 100%, and the unit remained plugged in till it shut off, or at least the screen was off. Unplugged and flipped the keyboard over the screen. About an hour later picked up and realized the position it was setting was quite warm, figured this was due to charging, but was surprised that the heat was as high as it was. Moved tabled to new, cool location and flipped over. Two hours later found it was quite hot again opened to see if screen was on, it was not. Found it at about 65% battery life, after a full charge, and sitting idle for over three hours! Is this defective? I've found a setting that is supposed to "save power" when Cortana knows I'm away. I've changed the default Hibernate from 120 minutes down to 60. I've kept the keyboard attached, and had reduced the screen brightness to about 60% before anything else was done. Please advise. Is there a graph that I can pull up that shows remaining battery power and time?

 

[leeshor]

It was likely trying to finish updates. I would change the 60 minutes to 30. It's a little soon to declare a problem.

 

[Dan0]

Thanks, I'll change hibernation to 30 minutes and let you know if it continues to be a problem. Seems like there should be more user options for power consumption adjustments, at least options that Joe blow average user could find.

 

[DavidZ]

I dropped my hibernation time (when on battery) to 5 minutes and am considering dropping it more. Why do you need to have your SP4 sleep for 60 minutes before it hibernates? You're just draining the battery for no apparent reason.

 

[leeshor]

Thanks, I'll change hibernation to 30 minutes and let you know if it continues to be a problem. Seems like there should be more user options for power consumption adjustments, at least options that Joe blow average user could find.

There would be, if you disabled connected standby. I have yet to actually do that though I did tell it not to use WiFi while sleeping which nearly has the same effect without the additional power options.