Which Surface Pro 4 issues remain?

[jayquangame]

Hey guys, I'm planning to buy a Surface Pro 4 soon and was wondering what glitches remain. I've been seeing users report 5 hours of battery life, light bleeding and some other issues, but which ones remain? Thanks!

 

[leeshor]

Welcome to the forum

I personally know 5 people with SP4s that are having no problems, (including me), but YMNV based on how your use it. On my i5/4/128 I get 5 hours on the low end and have seen over 10 on the high end.

 

[jayquangame]

Welcome to the forum

I personally know 5 people with SP4s that are having no problems, (including me), but YMNV based on how your use it. On my i5/4/128 I get 5 hours on the low end and have seen over 10 on the high end.

Thanks for the reply! It seems great, but I just want to make sure before I make this purchase.

 

[jnjroach]

There is another round of updates coming in 2016 that should fix the driver issues, the new (late December) Beta Video driver has fixed the "Black Screen" from Connected Standby, we are now waiting for the updated Power Management Firmware.

 

[JobsiteFish]

As far as the OS, all the issues and glitches I experienced were corrected with the recent updates. My SP4 runs very smooth.
My only honest concern right now is battery life, I have a i5 256GB and battery charge drops faster than expected. I tend to stay around the 25%-30% brightness range. I have only had it for about 2 weeks so I am still in the learning stage.

 

[Nspyr]

I just bought the i5 256 model on the morning of New Years eve. The only problem it had out of the box was 2 display driver crashes. Soon as I installed the updates. I had NO issues. Since Dec 31, I've gotten 7-8 hrs battery life. I love this thing. Hope all is good with yours if you decide to purchase.

 

[DavidZ]

...we are now waiting for the updated Power Management Firmware.

Any idea what options that will give us?

 

[jnjroach]

Any idea what options that will give us?

It is supposed to fix the draining issue, currently Intel's reference drivers for S0iX enabled Skylake SoCs have been unable to put them into a deeper level of "On - low power" which leads to Wake Events that are not within the S0iX design (i.e. Scheduled Tasks, Win32 Code, etc.).

 

[Nspyr]

It is supposed to fix the draining issue, currently Intel's reference drivers for S0iX enabled Skylake SoCs have been unable to put them into a deeper level of "On - low power" which leads to Wake Events that are not within the S0iX design (i.e. Scheduled Tasks, Win32 Code, etc.).

Any idea when the updates are suppose to arrive?

 

[jnjroach]

Any idea when the updates are suppose to arrive?

Next Tuesday at the earliest....

 

[bradl79]

how do u all get that many hours, i shut of cortana and everything running in the background, i just use chrome and only get 3hrs 50min and on battery saver too. what am i doing wrong

 

[SteveBorough]

My issues:

• new beta graphics driver still crashes but less frequently.
• Edge is unusable without changing your Host file to block ads, sites like w***central cause edge to consume 30% CPU
• SP4-i7 fan kicks in watching youtube or Netflix, device gets hot
• Batterylife is abysmal on the i7 which is supposed to sip power until tasked, I get 4 hours of use (email and internet)
• i7 power throttling limit, intel ridiculously made it the same 15Watts as the i5, causing the i7 to throttle down significantly to sub i5 speeds under load.
• light bleed and creaky screen near bottom, After some use, the screen will likely start to pop out as the glue seems unable to hold it firmly.
• Charger cannot charge i7 under heavy load and device will draw from battery (not charging) while being tasked
• Charger has a USB charge port meant for phones and such, however the measly 36w cannot both charge my phone (Galaxy S6) and my Surface, both switch to "on battery"
• Device often does not resume from sleep when you attempt to wake it with keyboard pulled back, have to force a reset
• Wifi, my phone gets better wifi reception than my SP4, speedtest after speedtest and my phone always wins. Often my SP4 doesn't crest 1Mbps while my phone reports 25 - 30 Mbps on the same network

I run my SP4 fairly stock with windows hello and Cortana. Of the issues people complain about, I have almost every single one. Do I have a lemon? Is there a lot number associated with those whose devices exhibit none of the above (running stock) ?

For most of the above there are workarounds (not fixes) i.e. host file, hibernate, passive cooling profile, temp wifi reg hack, etc...but it boggles the mind that all of that is necessary on a flagship device meant to showcase Windows 10 at its finest.