Three to Four Hour Battery Life

[Enrico D.]

never happy people, this is a tablet with WINDOWS in it, it's windows, not android or IOS, this is a pc to work...... you can't have the wife drunk and the bottle of wine full as we say in Europe. If we want the device with longest battery chose an useless ipad or galaxy tab, Sp3 is like it is, takes or leave, we use, or I use, to work, and it's a miracle what I have today. I don't take care of battery, can last 1, 2, 3 hours or 10. I had a lot of laptop in my life and when they were good for job and performing, battery usually was lasting few, perhaps I used them as main desktop I rarely used just with battery, but even that time I was not goind to look for the laptop with battery lasting more, what is important is the product, productivity, I need windows to work and make $$$$, I don't care of battery, I can spend sometime more to recharge it or use a wall cable and go on.......... I love Surface Pro 3, this is the future!!!!!! Be happy to have a device that work perfectly, I think a lot of people just like to test products because knows that can return it to the shop! We bought here in Europe importing from America, no warranty, no returns, takes or leave and I'm happy!

 

[Enrico D.]

I was using firefox too, I was lazy to change it, was taking 15/20% cpu resource in windows 7!!! when watching a video. Then I did test of all the browsers in Sp3 and I discovered that IE desktop was taking just 2% cpu watching a video! that was crazy for me, I can have my pc at 2% cpu load...... and remain cool, and 0 decibel fan rumor! I couldn't imagine that. I love IE now, I don't ask so much from a browser anymore, now with this device I'm just focusing 100% of my time to keep it running spending less CPU resources, that's all.

 

[hadrian]

I started using Chrome, as it's my usual desktop browser, but was unimpressed with 5-6hr battery life. Since I uninstalled Chrome and made an effort/intention to use the metro IE app, and metro apps in general, battery life has improved by about an hour, so getting there. Battery life really does depend on what I am doing though. Am still gonna have a read through Roozbeh's thread for power saving tips though.

This I find shocking. I would be happy with 5-6 hour battery life. Thank you for posting.

<Removed personal attack>

 

[OPTiK]

If you want to use Chrome use the latest Canary beta (v40 I believe). It has the latest fixes to keep CPU usage down. I've been getting 7 hours of battery with it.

 

[hadrian]

Thank you Optik!

 

[hadrian]

that's the thread : http://www.surfaceforums.net/threads/some-notes-on-power-savings.11957

it indeed helped me a lot but I am trying to figure out despite huge short term gains how much is in long term. Maybe you can try them out and report your results. I did get 6hrs of video play tested with normal brightness. I had in mind doing some web browsing and streaming tests too.

Are you using IE exclusively? I installed the intel drivers and had made those settings a long time ago.

Other than fiddling with the CPU parking what else is crucial?

I don't see red flag when I go through the reviews that would explain my three hour battery life. I have quit using chrome, I started up the canary and saw my discharge rate increase substantially.

Generally speaking what should the discharge rate range be?

 

[gdir]

As far as I know the main issue for Chrome's energy consumption, the clock tick bug, was initially solved with the developer version of Chrome 39. This bug fix has been applied afterwards to Chrome 38 as well. So using the stable Chrome 38 should be sufficient.

Chrome 40 (Canary or Developer) has some additional minor power improvements. On the other hand some touch control problems have been introduced in the last two weeks in the developer version. I would recommend to stay on the stable version at the moment.

 

[wookiee2cu]

I wish Microsoft would just release a power cover for the SP3, this would help a lot of people with their usage needs. On a side note, if you are not aware, the power cover for the SP2 does work on the SP3 but it obviously does not cover the entire screen due to the size increase. This might be an option to get longer battery life.

 

[jnjroach]

Are you using IE exclusively? I installed the intel drivers and had made those settings a long time ago.

Other than fiddling with the CPU parking what else is crucial?

I don't see red flag when I go through the reviews that would explain my three hour battery life. I have quit using chrome, I started up the canary and saw my discharge rate increase substantially.

Generally speaking what should the discharge rate range be?

The Intel drivers are not optimized for the Surface Pro 3 and will impact battery life, but you get the Control Panel and many are willing to make the trade off.

 

[hadrian]

I don't know about battery life yet...it looks like I don't have a huge boost, altho I see an improvement...but I have never seen CPU temperatures so low with chrome. If IE had the ability for features like adblock and speed dial then it would be a great browser

Oh just installed adblock!

 

[Neko]

At my beginning (i7 256) I also only reached ~3,5 but less than 4 hours. After reading all battery threads and getting more used to Windows (formal Mac user) I started to only use MUI-IE as I felt a lower CPU usage. Now i usualy reach 5-6 hours although I also do video editing some times.

 

[Liam2349]

Are you using IE exclusively? I installed the intel drivers and had made those settings a long time ago.

Other than fiddling with the CPU parking what else is crucial?

I don't see red flag when I go through the reviews that would explain my three hour battery life. I have quit using chrome, I started up the canary and saw my discharge rate increase substantially.

Generally speaking what should the discharge rate range be?

All I did is turn brightness down to 40%. You should also disable disk optimization, as SSDs shouldn't be defragged - apparently it doesn't defrag them, but Windows claims that it does. Also add tracking protection lists in IE metro.

I get 8-9hours of what I would call moderate usage. Lots of OneNote and syncing, web browsing, lots of PDFs and other light software.