Surface 2 Battery Life. Whats your experience?

[v0lum3]

So Guys.
I wanted to hear your experiences with battery life so far? I am consistently getting around 8 h and 30 min of mixed usage out of mine (checked with the powercfg -batteryreport in cmd). Mostly websurfing, music playing, the occasional 30 min video, and notetakeing. And this is with Bluetooth off, screen brightness on 30% and auto brightness on. Not sure if I'm suppose to be disappointed or if this is quite normal, but I kinda feel like this isn't that impressive. :-/

Let me hear you experiences? Worse or better?

 

[inteller]

I get just an hour less than that on my orginal Surface.

 

[HeyCori]

Haven't really stressed tested it out. Haven't had to. Though I'm not really a battery saver, with my screen at 100% brightness and bluetooth always on.

 

[Dos101]

I don't time it at all, yet, but so far I find that my Surface 2 needs to be recharged more often than my RT did. Granted, I'm certainly playing with it more right now, and considering I can properly load Yahoo's fantasy hockey website (whereas my RT couldn't) I think that's accounting for it. Odd thing I noticed this morning though. I had turned off my Surface 2 and left it to charge overnight. Turned it on this morning and the battery was at 79%. I had an issue on my RT where, if turned on, when it got fully charged it would stop charging it and would run the battery down until I interfered. I wonder if something similar is going on with my Surface 2.

 

[TheCodifier]

That's odd. The Surface 2 is supposed to last longer than the RT...

 

[g808]

My guess is most people are using their new Surface 2 more than usual since it's a shinny new toy. I know I am and I'm re-charging about once a day. Once usage gets closer to "normal" day-to-day usage we should get a clearer picture.

 

[Ushae]

I get a solid full day of usage out of it. Over 9 hours very easily.

 

[onysi]

10 hrs is not enough. I'm gonna buy the power cover

 

[Dewg]

Remember that you need to let the Surface run down and auto-power off once a month - according to MS: Microsoft Surface RT and Surface 2 battery and power | Recharge Surface

 

[Christian Kallevig]

I usually make it five to six hours on a charge, which is honestly less than I was hoping for.

For the record, this is using it mostly for web browsing and instant messaging via Skype. Also, I occasionally watch videos on Youtube or Netflix.

 

[onysi]

Remember that you need to let the Surface run down and auto-power off once a month - according to MS: Microsoft Surface RT and Surface 2 battery and power | Recharge Surface

I actually power down or put it to sleep if I leave it at home.

I keep forgetting that its also a PC.

 

[g808]

Took it off the charger at 8:30AM this morning and have 65% left at 9:00PM with moderate use (email, web browsing, some YouTube) through the day. This is closer to how I'd typically use it and am pretty happy with that battery life. We'll see how consistent this is over time.

 

[stephen_az]

So Guys.
I wanted to hear your experiences with battery life so far? I am consistently getting around 8 h and 30 min of mixed usage out of mine (checked with the powercfg -batteryreport in cmd). Mostly websurfing, music playing, the occasional 30 min video, and notetakeing. And this is with Bluetooth off, screen brightness on 30% and auto brightness on. Not sure if I'm suppose to be disappointed or if this is quite normal, but I kinda feel like this isn't that impressive. :-/

Let me hear you experiences? Worse or better?

No offense if you are basing battery life on any Windows 8 device using powercfg, you really do not know how long it will actually last yet. It is an approximation at best and until a battery has genuinely cycled a few times means nothing. It is at best a ballpark. Quite frankly, no one has had the device long enough to have a genuine idea of battery life. Unless battery life is really terrible to the point it suggests a defect, people should withhold judgment for a few weeks before deciding how long the battery really lasts. Even then, base it upon actual use, not the powercfg command line. About the only worse option, in my experience, would be to use the device for a few minutes and then base an assumption of battery life on the percentage drop in the tray.

 

[christenmartin]

My boy watched videos on it all day Sunday and I still had about 40% left on it when I plugged it in. I am real happy with battery life. Also, I have been using it as a remote desktop and I assumed that would really chew up battery (splashtop would smoke my playbook). Not so much. used it for about 20 plus minutes and used maybe 5%. I haven't charged it since two nights ago and have about 40% left. Pretty good with moderate usage. I do think the battery will improve with usage and I am going to let it power down as suggested above (shout out to Stephen az) but I plan on all day usage at my office so when it is not in my hands it will be in a charging dock. I expect my phone to last with heavy usage not an hd tablet.

 

[badMojo69]

Delete please.

 

[v0lum3]

No offense if you are basing battery life on any Windows 8 device using powercfg, you really do not know how long it will actually last yet. It is an approximation at best and until a battery has genuinely cycled a few times means nothing. It is at best a ballpark. Quite frankly, no one has had the device long enough to have a genuine idea of battery life. Unless battery life is really terrible to the point it suggests a defect, people should withhold judgment for a few weeks before deciding how long the battery really lasts. Even then, base it upon actual use, not the powercfg command line. About the only worse option, in my experience, would be to use the device for a few minutes and then base an assumption of battery life on the percentage drop in the tray.

I agree that this is preliminary and that batterylife is a questions of usability and personal usage patterns. I owned a Surface RT and an Acer W510, and it just seems to me that the Surface 2 isn't really a big improvement over the Surface RT when it comes to battery life, tho a lot better in many other aspects! And I think that my opinion is based on having used the W510 as my main travel computer, and with the keyboard dock the battery life was amazing, I could almost use it 2 full days without charging.

That being said, I love my Surface 2, and I just wanted to hear what other people experienced, and it seem kinda mixed. I'm not trying to pass judgment, it was my personal feeling after having had the device for 5 days, and I felt kinda disappointed. But then again its more than enough battery life to get me thru the day, so its not bad at all!

 

[v0lum3]

Delete please.

Huh? :O