Well, it has been more than 48 hours since I have had the Surface 2. I bought the device on Saturday evening and today (Monday) was the first chance I got to test the device under my normal work conditions. This is my report on that experience. And, since this is only the first experience, please treat this as provisional.
I took the Surface off the charger at exactly 11:00AM. By 11:30AM, I was at my workplace and had started using the device. At the time I put the charger back on to the Surface it was 11:14PM and the battery icon read 9%. This means the device has been off the charger for 12 hrs 14 minutes.
So, what did I do all day?
Between 11:30AM and 1:30PM, I was working on the device continuously. During that time: the Wifi was on (BT was off since I broke my Wedge mouse the previous night!); Screen brightness was around 40%; I had IE open with 4 tabs running continuously; Mail App was open and was constantly polling 3 email accounts; two Word documents were open and I was working on both simultaneously. During this period of time, I was receiving mails, but not responding to them.
Exactly at 1:30PM, I went for lunch, which lasted for 45 minutes. During this time, I had shut the cover of the device and I had closed the Mail App and IE. Wifi remained on and BT was off.
I returned to my desk at 2:15PM. I spent 15 minutes randomly surfing the Net (again Wifi was on, BT off). At 2:30 PM I was back working with IE (with 4 tabs) open; 2 Word documents open; Mail App open and polling the 3 mail accounts; SkyDrive open and actively being used. Between 2:30 and 4:00PM, I worked on my documents, used the 4 open tabs on IE consistently, SkyDrive was open and I used it consistently; received more mails and replied to about 4-5 of them. During all this time, screen brightness was at the same level as before. I also took two short breaks (5-7 minutes each) during this phase. During the breaks, I left the Surface open with all the apps running, and left the room.
At 4:00PM, I closed all apps, Wifi remained on, and left my workplace. It took me about 20 minutes to reach a café that I normally haunt. By 4:30 (after having ordered my coffee and having brought it to my table), I opened the device, connected to the free public wifi system that the café offers and resumed exactly what I was doing till 4:00PM at my workplace. I continued doing this till about 6:30 after which I shut the device by simply closing the open apps and closing the cover. Wifi remained on.
I walked around a little; met a person I was supposed to meet; went to the store and bought some stuff and was back home by 7:15PM.
On returning home, I opened the device, which had automatically connected to my home wifi network. I opened the Mail app, which continued polling the 3 mail accounts. I had a Word document open to which I was referring to while working on my desktop machine. But I did not actively use the Surface. This continued till 11:14PM at which time I checked the battery icon which, as I mentioned above, read 9% and I put the charger on.
So, the Surface 2 lasted me for 12 hours. Of these 12 hours, 5 hours 30 mins (+/- 15 mins) hours were spent actively working on the device along the lines mentioned above. The rest of the time, the device was on "connected standby" (I think I can call it that).
I think it was quite good, actually! Even if I had worked for another hour on the device - either at my workplace or at the café - I would have had about 7 hours good working time with the device lasting for about 11 hours in total before being put back on the charger. And, remember that this is the first time that I have actually drained the device down to what the battery icon reported (whether accurately or not) to 9%.
I will have another opportunity to test this under even more stringent conditions over the coming weekend when I will be on a 8+hour flight. At that time, I will post again. And, of course, a personal review is still pending - perhaps sometime next week!
Thanks for reading!
