What is your average battery life on your SP3?

[Jordi32]

I have had my i7 Surface Pro for about a month. The battery report says my estimate battery life since OS install is 4 hours 37 minutes. The estimate was 6 hours and 5 minutes a month ago and this estimate has been decreasing to 2 hours and 52 minutes as of yesterday. Tonight my battery life was 3 hours and 52 minutes just by browsing this forum and other websites. No videos or flash content. Also, it says that my battery design capacity is 42,157 mWh but my current full charge capacity is 41,238 mWh. Battery bar gives me the same capacities, and it says there is a battery wear of 2.2%. Is this a normal wear for just a month of use? The battery cycle count is 17. Why am I getting less and less battery life every day?

My brightness percentage is 36 %.

Any help will be appreciated.

Best regards,

Jordi

 

[Maximus3D]

I ran a test this weekend with screen at 100 percent brightness and then performing heavy RAW photo editing and some videoediting blended with a bit of Battlefield 4 gaming and i got 7 hours out of my i7 256gb. Numbers that please me.

/ Magnus

 

[Sassi]

Wow you guys are getting great battery life. Mine lasts 5 hours on a good day, just web browsing and similar. I wonder why it varies so much.

 

[Jordi32]

Thank you for your message, Maximus3D. Your 7 hours were of continuous use or letting the computer go to sleep?

Sassi, I only get about four hours with web browsing at 36 % brightness. Your battery life is better... What is your brightness level?

 

[Maximus3D]

I always use 100 percent brightness, can't use less since i work with photos and video.

It was continous usage with occasional pauses for food, bathroom and such things. But it even surprised me so i had to constantly check how much batterypower i had left.

Maybe the thing is that i have no Surface keyboard or mouse yet, only the device itself.

/ Magnus

 

[Aurelio]

A great app for monitoring battery life is Battery Bar Pro (don't let that fool you, there's a perfectly functional free version). Get it at http://batterybarpro.com/. It does a great job of estimating remaining battery life once you've used it for awhile (it seems to take some time to adjust to your usage patterns), and also accurately reports battery wear (I'm happy to note that mine is still at 0% wear, compared to the Dell XPS 12 that I tried that had 5% wear straight from the factory).

I'm trying to install and keep asking for Net Frameworks 2 or higher. and I have the 4.5 already!!!!

Can't understand

 

[Sassi]

Jordi: About 30% I don't like it too bright.

 

[Mike OC]

Still in the first week of owning my SP3 (i3), getting about 6hrs at the moment with 29% brightness while on battery (is the lowest I feel I can go). My use is fairly moderate, use of OneNote, PowerPoint and OneDrive, some occasional browsing and email checking - seems to use about 17% of battery per hr. I am in school with 8 hrs of lectures a day, so I had hoped it would last for the full 8hrs but maybe I was being a bit optimistic... but also trying not to read too much into it at the moment as I want to enjoy the SP3 as well I have Battery Bar Pro installed, which is useful for seeing how much estimated time left there is.

 

[Jordi32]

Mike, I wish I got 6 hours like you do.

 

[Mike OC]

I had a quick browse of your previous posts Jordi, and saw you are (were?) having heat issues too - my unit, luckily, does not have the heat issue. I have installed all the latest updates too. I would be absolutely fuming if I only got 4hrs battery life, that would be completely unacceptable to me. Have you got any way to see what is using up the battery so much? I'm no expert so unlikely to be able to help, sorry.

 

[Liam2349]

I did a test yesterday. I recalibrated the battery and used it mostly just with IE metro at 50% brightness, new Intel driver and got a little over 7 hours.

I've since turned the brightness down to 40% and don't think I will bother testing again.

 

[Jordi32]

Dear Liam, I use the desktop IE. Is the metro version more battery efficient?

How did you calibrate the battery? Where did you get the new Intel driver from?