I think the times will vary depending on what people do. I check e mail, browse the web, do school work, photo editing, and lite gaming.
Which Surface Pro 4 issues remain?
- Thread starter jayquangame
- Start date
LuckyL
Member
I bought an 17 8/256 before Christmas and had quite a few issues out of the box:
- machine running hot and fans kicking in even without having any application opened/installed
- graphics driver crashing regularly
- sleep issues, particularly running hot while in sleep mode
- black screen on wakeup (reset required)
- WLAN issues ("unable to connect to this network", limited connectivity, connection dropping constantly).
- type cover not being recognised randomly
I installed all firmware/system updates via an Ethernet dongle but apart from the frequency with which the graphics driver crashes, I did not observe any improvements.
I am confident that this will be sorted at some point in the future, but I am not willing to put up with and wait after having parted with £1400 so I returned the device for a full refund.
I am back to my SP2 which works flawlessly. A pity really, because the SP4 hardware is really, really nice. But it will have to wait until the driver issues are ironed out and Windows 10 has matured generally - I personally find in tablet mode, Windows 8.1 is superior.
- machine running hot and fans kicking in even without having any application opened/installed
- graphics driver crashing regularly
- sleep issues, particularly running hot while in sleep mode
- black screen on wakeup (reset required)
- WLAN issues ("unable to connect to this network", limited connectivity, connection dropping constantly).
- type cover not being recognised randomly
I installed all firmware/system updates via an Ethernet dongle but apart from the frequency with which the graphics driver crashes, I did not observe any improvements.
I am confident that this will be sorted at some point in the future, but I am not willing to put up with and wait after having parted with £1400 so I returned the device for a full refund.
I am back to my SP2 which works flawlessly. A pity really, because the SP4 hardware is really, really nice. But it will have to wait until the driver issues are ironed out and Windows 10 has matured generally - I personally find in tablet mode, Windows 8.1 is superior.
I tend to agree with you but unfortunately I already bought MS Complete for my SP4 and I gave my SP2 to my son so there's no going back for me. I do think the SP2 is more solid with Windows 10 than the SP4 right now. A few examples that come to mind is that the battery seems to last longer, it plays Fallout 4 fine without crashing during the game, the Netflix app seems to work every time and I can shut the type cover and have it sleep without waking up.
Exactly. You hit the nail dead center. When you see various problems that people or having, it's ridiculous to assume that you will have them too. Everybody has different issues because they have different hardware & software configurations. The typical users that use the computer without downloading and installing a bunch of stuff, use their computer to run a few Office apps, IE Internet browsing, & email may not see any problems.
Here's my list since I unwrapped it on 12/31:
- Short battery life - for instance right now with just typing on this website, I'm at 100% and only 5 hours and 34 minutes remaining. I'm using MS Edge so maybe that's part of the problem?
- Intel Graphic Driver failures.
- Keyboard not responding after waking.
- Bluetooth audio not routing properly after pairing a BT speaker or headset.
- Watching Amazon Video - constantly get a message after watching 1 episode that the player cannot open the next video. I use Chrome and it works fine.
- Netflix app doesn't work.
- Noticed the power button doesn't always turn on the SP4 after coming from a hibernation.
OP
jayquangame
New Member
Seems like the battery life is quite bad compared to other windows machine from what I've been reading at this point. It's quite a hard choice as many users report different results.
wynand32
Well-Known Member
Okay, just got an SP4 to replace my SP3, and right off the bat I'm having the sleep issues. Basically, mine doesn't sleep when I close the Type Cover (e.g., if the fan is running, it stays running, so the SP4 clearly isn't sleeping), and worse the screen doesn't turn back on when I hit the power button. It's responding, because I can see the infrared camera working, but the screen won't turn back on most of the time. I'm stuck forcing it to shut down, then restart.
Is there a short-term solution to this, or do I just need to stop putting it to sleep (say, change to hibernate when Type Cover closes)? I knew about these issues going in (just love the new screen on the SP4, colors and white temp is just SO MUCH better, plus my SP3 had the ugly yellow stripe on the left side of the screen), and so I'm not complaining. I'm just looking for the best practices in the meantime until Microsoft fixes sleep.
Is there a short-term solution to this, or do I just need to stop putting it to sleep (say, change to hibernate when Type Cover closes)? I knew about these issues going in (just love the new screen on the SP4, colors and white temp is just SO MUCH better, plus my SP3 had the ugly yellow stripe on the left side of the screen), and so I'm not complaining. I'm just looking for the best practices in the meantime until Microsoft fixes sleep.
Here's are my power settings.
...........................................................On Battery.. Plugged In
Power & Sleep
...Screen.............................................5 minutes... 10 minutes
...Sleep.............,,,,,,,,,,,,,.................... 5 minutes... 10 minutes
Additional Power Settings
...When I press the power button...... Hibernate..... Sleep
...When I press the sleep button....... Hibernate..... Sleep
...When I press the close the lid........ Hibernate..... Sleep
Advanced Power Settings
...Sleep = > Hibernate after:............. 5 minutes..... Never
Also, I suggest you detach the keyboard (put it in tablet mode) before you hibernate.
How many still exist? Pretty much all of them. I have yet to hear of a definitive fix for all but a couple of problems that have existed at launch, and the real big ones are still out there.
Many of us have discovered workarounds for some of the issues, but Connected Sleep is nowhere close to working as advertised, the CPU driver does not throttle back quickly enough to conserve power, The GPU driver still crashes regularly (if somewhat infrequently in most cases), the typecover has 3-4 different issues (hanging start, causing phantom drain while the machine is off among them), the Dock will not sync two 4k montors at any refresh rate, and the pen makes jagged diagonal lines are a few examples.
3 months into what we might presume is a 12 month premiere lifecycle, I expect that means that very, very few actual bugs in the hardware - such as the typecover problems, the phantom power drains, the poor power management (and hence battery life), and the dock problems will never be fixed. In three months (if not by the end of this month) the team will be pulled to work entirely on the SP5 and anything which remains wrong with the SP4 will be a permanent condition. (Note, I hope MS proves me wrong, but I've settled in that what I have is all that will ever work, and that Panos is a liar)
Windows 10 also has a laundry list of bugs, but that will follow you no matter which W10 PC you get.
Many of us have discovered workarounds for some of the issues, but Connected Sleep is nowhere close to working as advertised, the CPU driver does not throttle back quickly enough to conserve power, The GPU driver still crashes regularly (if somewhat infrequently in most cases), the typecover has 3-4 different issues (hanging start, causing phantom drain while the machine is off among them), the Dock will not sync two 4k montors at any refresh rate, and the pen makes jagged diagonal lines are a few examples.
3 months into what we might presume is a 12 month premiere lifecycle, I expect that means that very, very few actual bugs in the hardware - such as the typecover problems, the phantom power drains, the poor power management (and hence battery life), and the dock problems will never be fixed. In three months (if not by the end of this month) the team will be pulled to work entirely on the SP5 and anything which remains wrong with the SP4 will be a permanent condition. (Note, I hope MS proves me wrong, but I've settled in that what I have is all that will ever work, and that Panos is a liar)
Windows 10 also has a laundry list of bugs, but that will follow you no matter which W10 PC you get.
wynand32
Well-Known Member
Okay, again, not complaining, but wow, that's some stuff to go through. Now I'm really hoping MSFT issues a fix very soon.
It's not that bad. Just make the following changes to the default settings:
- Switch from Sleep to Hibernate when on battery for the power button and closing the lid
- Hibernate after 5 minutes of Sleep when on battery (the default is 120 minutes).
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