Battery life of Surface Pro 2

[raxy21]

I need some information regarding SP2 battery life,
As i am planning to use my SP2 for note taking during my college time, it will be from 9am to 4 or 5pm will it last all day for note taking And for some windows store gaming?

How many hours will it last if i play Windows store games like Asphalt 8,Halo Spartan assault etc..if i started gaming with full charge? Please answer
Thank you

 

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The device battery life will vary between 4h to 12h depending on your usage and Windows power settings, and what is enabled or not, and screen brightness.
The reason why this big gap, is because of the low voltage CPU it has. It consumes little power idle... but if you push things, then it will go full speed, and will consume more power, which will eventually kick-in the dual cooling fans to remove the excess heat. Not to mention if you use Bluetooth or the wireless, and if you are in a weak or heavy traffic wireless area, it will have to consume additional power to be more aggressive to offer you a stable connection.

Also the type of porgram you use. For example, Chrome will eat your battery like if it was nothing, while IE or Firefox won't. Of course, the website you visit will also affect your battery life. If it Flash heavy or animated gifs or animated png's everywhere or HTML5 video's you are not going to have great battery compared to a blank page with black text. Same applies for add-ons in a rogram that supports add-ons. This might affects battery life based on what it does and how well it is optimized for being power efficient.

It must be noted that battery life also diminishes over time like all consumer available rechargeable batteries.

However, if you wonder how much battery I have in note taking... about 8h and half. at least so far. Your miles will vary if you sleep the device when not in use during the day, and as mention what else you do with the device also what you have enabled, brightness level (what depends on where you are and time of day) and if you decide to lock the CPU at minimum speed or not. Things like that.

I know the whole answer is vague, but this is the best answer you can have, as this is the reality of things. This is a powerful Windows machine you'll be getting with a serious Intel Core i5 processor.

 

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To add, Microsoft will, at some point in time, release a power cover keyboard.
A keyboard, like the TypeCover2 but has a battery inside to extend the device total battery life.
Power Cover - Microsoft Store Canada Online Store

They are currently no official information on it. We don't know the battery, we don't know how much time it will actually provide, or if it is even backlit or not.

 

[raxy21]

To add, Microsoft will, at some point in time, release a power cover keyboard.
A keyboard, like the TypeCover2 but has a battery inside to extend the device total battery life.
Power Cover - Microsoft Store Canada Online Store

They are currently no official information on it. We don't know the battery, we don't know how much time it will actually provide, or if it is even backlit or not.

I have heard about power cover but it will be little heavy and it is not back lit, and during college i will keeping my SP2 in air plane mode, and brightness may be 30% and here in India colleges don't provide WI-FI everywhere, will be using just the One note app for note taking and light windows store gaming in break?

 

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Tomorrow I have a longer school day, I'll tell how it goes with wireless On, Bluetooth Off, low brightness, recording class 1 class, note taking, and web surfing.
So whatever I have, you should have better, and gives you headroom in the case you do more than what you said with your SP2

 

[raxy21]

Tomorrow I have a longer school day, I'll tell how it goes with wireless On, Bluetooth Off, low brightness, recording class 1 class, note taking, and web surfing.
So whatever I have, you should have better, and gives you headroom in the case you do more than what you said with your SP2

Thank you, i will be waiting for your reply. Fingers crossed lets c how longer it will last for you��

 

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Ok, so I had class from 10am to 5pm. I did what I said. on occasion I used 30% brightness, but mostly at minimum. I didn't use my Surface Pro 2 for lunch (about 40min). And the end of the my last class, Windows reports ~4h of battery life. Program I used:
-> OneNote 2013
-> Word 2013 (read docx file)
-> Maple Student for about a full class
-> Firefox with AdBlock Plus addon
-> Outlook 2013
-> Trillian 5
-> Record a class (1h and half) as MP3
-> Using Power Saver Windows power plan, where I set the CPU performance is set to be 0 to 30% (basically forcing the CPU at 750MHz, which provides a plenty smooth experience for class note taking).

So that would be... about... 9h if I didn't make a mistake calculating. So make that 8-9h to consider, as obviously the battery will degrade over time. 7h maybe after a year or so?! maybe? (predicting, I have no info on that)

And of course, as mentioned, if you need more, then you always have the Power Cover that will come out sometime this year.

 

[raxy21]

Ok, so I had class from 10am to 5pm. I did what I said. on occasion I used 30% brightness, but mostly at minimum. I didn't use my Surface Pro 2 for lunch (about 40min). And the end of the my last class, Windows reports ~4h of battery life. Program I used:
-> OneNote 2013
-> Word 2013 (read docx file)
-> Maple Student for about a full class
-> Firefox with AdBlock Plus addon
-> Outlook 2013
-> Trillian 5
-> Record a class (1h and half) as MP3
-> Using Power Saver Windows power plan, where I set the CPU performance is set to be 0 to 30% (basically forcing the CPU at 750MHz, which provides a plenty smooth experience for class note taking).

So that would be... about... 9h if I didn't make a mistake calculating. So make that 8-9h to consider, as obviously the battery will degrade over time. 7h maybe after a year or so?! maybe? (predicting, I have no info on that)

And of course, as mentioned, if you need more, then you always have the Power Cover that will come out sometime this year.

So after your class it still was showing 4 hours of battery, OMG that's really cool for such a portable power house,and yes we have power cover we can get that when the battery life degrades,
so it will sure last me whole day with my usage scenario.
its sure a great device to beat, i can't wait to see what Surface Pro 3 brings to table.
Thank you and how do i set CPU performance down to 30%?

 

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Oh yea! Definitely. That is why I don't get review bashing the Pro 2 for it's battery life. I understand the first one, then again Microsoft did stuff that was a bit too ahead, especially no battery cover at the time (well even now as speak, it's not out.. just "coming soon"), but yea. Amazing device!

I expect the Pro 3 to feature further polish on how the device works. I mean Microsoft is new at it, and let's face it, the Surface Pro 2 has, for some people, some issues (although nothing that are show stoppers, at least I don't think), and Microsoft is actively trying to fix it, which is good, usually OEMs tries a big then stops, and basically you have to live with the issues. Or it's hardware or engineering issue, that can't be fixed. They are no perfect device, sadly.

Beside that, obviously it will have a new Intel CPU by then, which will consume even less power, and this is where Microsoft will choose to either:
-> make it thinner and lighter by allowing to use a smaller battery, and potentially fanless or 1 fan.
-> or, keep the same design and provide longer battery life.

I would love to see an Nvidia or AMD entry level GPU inside with some switchable graphic solution, like Nvidia Optimus technology for example. That would really make it a power house, and the simple fact of having a dedicated GPU, will officially means it beats all ultra books out there (assuming they don't put one). Sadly, I am not seeing any low voltage GPUs by either companies. All their mobile GPUs are focused on portable workstation or portable gaming machines, and the low end stuff, are renamed age old models which consumes too much power to be integrated in the Surface Pro line. In teh case of Nvidia (as AMD doesn't have anything), their ultra low power conusmer, yet powerful GPU, are in their Tegra processor (what the Surface non-Pro has). For example the new Tegra K1 chip recently announced by Nvidia, features a full Kepler (GeForce 600 series) inside, so that means unlike other mobile chips, despite consuming little power and creating little heat for a fanless low-heat design tablets, provides FULL DirectX and OpenGL support, and no special API and no complications or limitations. It's a standard desktop GPU in terms of abilities (not performance of course, but beats by a long shot Intel best offering). So if they could pull that GPU out, and make a small chip, and put it on the Surface Pro... ahhh... would be so awesome.. might not even need cooling, even!. One can only dream


To set the CPU performance in Windows 8, simply go to the Start Screen, and type: Power Options, then select it. On the panel that will show up, click on: change plan settings, and then click on Change advance power settings, now you'll another panel show up. The option is under Processor Power Management.

Please note, that the value is in percentage, and that there is no direct relation to the actual processor ability. Meaning that the processor that a few speeds that it can go, 750MHz, 1.9GHz, 2.6GHz, 2.8GHz and 2.9GHz, and perhaps a few in between. Setting it to 30% won't get you 30% performance. Same for 0%... your system won't go at 0MHz, and becomes unresponsive and crash. It rounds to the level that it can produce. My values (0 to 30) are not some magic numbers that has been found. This is just me putting a randomly low value, and noticed the performance was adequate for my needs, saw it was always at 750MHz on battery (and using Power Saver profile) based on the task manager, and I didn't touch the value. You could have put 0% for min and max and get the same results.

Also notes, that a value of 100% does not mean 2.9GHz either. The CPU max speed is officially 1.9GHz for the second revision of the Surface Pro 2, and that with Turbo Boost can go up to 2.9GHz. That means that the CPU will judge if it can jump to such speed if cooling allows. But it knows it can't stay. So, 2.9GHz will be rare. 2.7-2.8GHz would be what you most see under load, where it hits a few times. 2.6GHz is where it mostly staying under heavy load. 1.9GHz most of them (assuming not on battery, and Power plan set to High Performance). At idle, it will drop to 750MHz, especially under Balance and Power Saver.

 

[raxy21]

Ok, so I had class from 10am to 5pm. I did what I said. on occasion I used 30% brightness, but mostly at minimum. I didn't use my Surface Pro 2 for lunch (about 40min). And the end of the my last class, Windows reports ~4h of battery life. Program I used:
-> OneNote 2013
-> Word 2013 (read docx file)
-> Maple Student for about a full class
-> Firefox with AdBlock Plus addon
-> Outlook 2013
-> Trillian 5
-> Record a class (1h and half) as MP3
-> Using Power Saver Windows power plan, where I set the CPU performance is set to be 0 to 30% (basically forcing the CPU at 750MHz, which provides a plenty smooth experience for class note taking).

So that would be... about... 9h if I didn't make a mistake calculating. So make that 8-9h to consider, as obviously the battery will degrade over time. 7h maybe after a year or so?! maybe? (predicting, I have no info on that)

And of course, as mentioned, if you need more, then you always have the Power Cover that will come out sometime this year.

As you said you have recorded a class as a MP3, how is the quality of recording is it k or good quality? Do i need to sit in 1st row to record good quality audio ?
And which audio recording software you are using?

 

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quality is very good, for a mic in a device. Much better than the one of my 2000$ laptop that I had (dell Latitude E6400). I mean, you do will hear a bit the pen taping on the screen (much like a laptop keyboard being typed on) there is no fix for that as it resonates inside.
Now, I can't say if you need to sit in the front or not... because I always sit in the front. It also depends on your professors.. some don't talk loud, others do, very much so. So it's hard to say. But if you wonder you can increase the mic volume (default 50%, if I recall correctly), and Microphone boost is set at +24.0db by default, you can push it to +36db. If that is of any help.

 

[raxy21]

quality is very good, for a mic in a device. Much better than the one of my 2000$ laptop that I had (dell Latitude E6400). I mean, you do will hear a bit the pen taping on the screen (much like a laptop keyboard being typed on) there is no fix for that as it resonates inside.
Now, I can't say if you need to sit in the front or not... because I always sit in the front. It also depends on your professors.. some don't talk loud, others do, very much so. So it's hard to say. But if you wonder you can increase the mic volume (default 50%, if I recall correctly), and Microphone boost is set at +24.0db by default, you can push it to +36db. If that is of any help.

Thank you, and what is the exact price of SP2 128GB model with touch cover 2 in US, with taxes and all?
Is it 999 dollars for SP2 and 120dollars for Touch cover 2 or any additional taxes?

 

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I don't live in the U.S, and taxes varies base on state you are in. You are better off calling Microsoft Store and ask.

 

[raxy21]

I don't live in the U.S, and taxes varies base on state you are in. You are better off calling Microsoft Store and ask.

Thank you and you were so helpfull to me,and my cousine already got SP2 for me in US but he is not telling exact price, He will be coming to India this week, im excited to see my SP2. Do i need to know anything importnt about setup of SP2 and early charging cycles?

 

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you're welcome!
Make sure that the device works fine. 'cause if it's faulty before having it shipped to you... if it's faulty, it might complicate things.
Things to test:
-> Make sure that the wireless works fine, if you have Bluetooth device that could be tested as well.
-> Make sure that the pen works fine, and that it doesn't randomly click without touching the device anywhere, including corners.
-> that the device goes well in sleep, wakeups, hibernate fine.
-> That the keyboard works, and sleeps the device when closed (takes a few second to engage the sleep when the cover is closed, that is normal and expected)
-> make sure that the stand is fairly flat, and no obvious bulge.

and yea... that it generally works fine. I am sure your cousin can spend a moment with it to check it out, and compare with his or hers device.

GET A SCREEN PROTECTOR.
Especially that you'll use the pen. Screen protector can and will to some extend affect the tracking of the pen a bit, and well add a resistance, (won't slide as well), but it's a worthy thing