Surface Pro has VERY good battery life - around 6 hours for me.

[zhenya]

Sorry if my 'conclusion' doesn't jive with your own. If the purpose of this board is to be an echo-chamber of yes men, that should be made clear at point of registration.

Clearly the compromises that the SP has are a big deal to a large number of users, or else the same comments wouldn't be brought up over and over throughout the tech world.

It is my job to honestly assess technology and since it isn't my own money on the line nor do I have any advertisers to appease I am often more honest than people are used to. I'm here because it's part of making sure I learn everything there is to know about this device before making a final assessment. You'd be mistaken if you thought my mind was already made up though.

 

[Russ]

. . . I am often more honest than people are used to. . . .. You'd be mistaken if you thought my mind was already made up though.

Zhenya --

As to the former, I'm sure that is something you encounter often in life. It is a burden you must bear.

As to the latter, time will tell, won't it?

Regards,
Russ

 

[bosamar]

The point behind long battery life, IMO, is not that I am frequently away from a plug for more than 4 hours, but rather that having to travel with both the device and its power cord everywhere makes it considerably less portable. I can reliably leave the house with an ipad for a day or two without a plug. Not with the Surface Pro. I can't even go an afternoon.

Why are you comparing an iPad to the Surface Pro? You do understand the differences. Apples and oranges to everybody here.

 

[zhenya]

Why is it Apples and Oranges? The Surface is somewhere between an ultrabook and a tablet. Some will come to it wanting the ultrabook features, others wanting the tablet features. Comparing it to an ipad is no worse than comparing it to an ultrabook. From my perspective it's actually a better tablet than laptop so it's really just a matter of perspective.

 

[bosamar]

Why is it Apples and Oranges? The Surface is somewhere between an ultrabook and a tablet. Some will come to it wanting the ultrabook features, others wanting the tablet features. Comparing it to an ipad is no worse than comparing it to an ultrabook. From my perspective it's actually a better tablet than laptop so it's really just a matter of perspective.

I rest my case.

 

[zhenya]

Posting an update here that I also posted on another forum to verify that my position was not set in stone. In short, I have a couple of these units on my desk and I seem to be having a somewhat different experience on the second one than the first.

I would like to update my experience a bit. I have completed moving all of my settings to the second device I have, and while this one still has some issues - it is the one that also crashed on me while responding earlier, and blue screened once on resume - in general it is MUCH better than the first unit. It is faster, more responsive, and generally feels more like I am using a real computer where the other unit felt very limited. Touch accuracy is much better even with factory calibration - to the point that using the Desktop is not entirely painful. It also appears that battery life may be better on this unit, and where on the other, 4 hours was a stretch, this one might see an honest 5 or more. If true that will go a long ways towards making this a workable device for me.

I have a hard time attributing the other units issues to hardware, as after 20+ years of doing this, it doesn't feel at all like hardware issues. However if there is this big of a difference between two devices that pass QC, that's a head scratcher and could certainly account for the wide variety of responses we are seeing to this device.

 

[J515OP]

Very interesting. Thanks for the update. It is good to see how somebody with more than one unit can compare differences that are present between each device. Curios discrepancy. Maybe try a reset on device 1 and see if its performance improves?

 

[Ashles]

After several days of heavy use (I got my Surface Pro last Thursday, started a business trip on Saturday and have been using the Pro constantly) I can confirm that I am consistently getting ~6 hours battery life (the battery estimate has suggested up to 8hrs and, on one memorable occasion, 10.5 hrs but I accept this is an estimate from a still new and not fully calibrated unit).

As of yet I haven't run the battery down completely (I'd like to do a full test but have needed the machine to make notes).

In usual business use this has required I actively ignored available sockets in order even to test it to this degree. I am very impressed.

And the speed of standard packages has impressed even my Design team.

 

[J515OP]

Interesting reports about the variance in battery life. If you take the 4s and the 6s it is looking like the average is about 5 hours. Off the cuff it seems like the reports are trending to about 30% reporting each of those times (4,5 and 6 hours use).

 

[jakebake]

SO what are people changing in settings exactly that resulted in the best battery life? Also is it recommended to run the battery to 0 ever or always? And should you charge to 100% always or never?

 

[J515OP]

SO what are people changing in settings exactly that resulted in the best battery life? Also is it recommended to run the battery to 0 ever or always? And should you charge to 100% always or never?

You should run the battery down to the auto shut off only occasionally (once a month). Do not run the battery entirely empty by doing things such as setting the auto off very low and then storing the battery empty for an extended period. Topping off to 100% is fine and you are best served by charging on a regular basis rather than deep cycling the battery (running all the way down before recharging). Try a forum search there are a couple of detailed threads on this subject already.

JP

 

[jakebake]

You should run the battery down to the auto shut off only occasionally (once a month). Do not run the battery entirely empty by doing things such as setting the auto off very low and then storing the battery empty for an extended period. Topping off to 100% is fine and you are best served by charging on a regular basis rather than deep cycling the battery (running all the way down before recharging). Try a forum search there are a couple of detailed threads on this subject already.

JP

THanks! I'll definitely do a forum search. Are you saying to set the auto off low or don't do that? Also does the pro stop charging once it gets to 100% so we can say leave it on the charger all night