4 hour battery life! need advice

[Seb_Rattansen]

Hi guys

I just bought a Surface Pro 3 and so far I'm enjoying it - apart from some rather crappy battery life. At the moment I'm getting around 4 hours. This is with:
- 50% brightness
- "Hey Cortana" off

I don't really want to disable Cortana completely because part of the reason I got the SP3 was because of this feature! I've attached a screenshot of my CPU usage, which indicates Cortana is eating a lot of CPU. I've also attached a screenshot of my battery which indicates Chrome is responsible. If I can't use Cortana or Chrome if I want 8-9 hours battery life, that is pretty sad.

 

[Because Racecar]

How many tabs do you leave open on chrome in the background? I find this to be a major issue on my Yoga laptop as well. Sometimes they'll have rolling ads, or something that is trying/succeeding in a refresh. Try closing out chrome when you put it down, see if that helps? Or is this 4 hours of straight chrome watching netflix? Not really enough information to help much, unfortunately.

 

[Seb_Rattansen]

THanks for your reply. I'm using only about 3-4 tabs. No video running in them. Sometimes I will have soundcloud running in one of the tabs, but I have 4 hour battery even if I don't have soundcloud running.

I'm going to try out Edge and Firefox for a while and see what difference this makes.

Any tips on optimising Chrome and Cortana would be welcome

 

[eusty]

I'm going to try out Edge and Firefox for a while and see what difference this makes.

I used to use Chrome until I got my SP3, it was just too heavy on the battery so I switched to Firefox......give it a go :smile:

 

[wookiee2cu]

Chrome is known for killing battery life, I use FireFox with out any issues. I've read that as time goes on Cortana usage will drop, right now it's in the learning phase as others have put it. I'd also check the start up tab (ctr-alt-del > task manager > Start) to make sure you don't have a ton of programs launching on start up.

 

[billyboyblue]

I find chrome / Firefox are both going to use horrid amounts of RAM, and edge is going to use much less ram ( much, much less ), but it's going to consume high levels of CPU, and background processing. I've yet to find a browser that does everything , just short of closing all tabs on standby. However, firefox out of the three does seem to be the best option thus for ( for me ) . As for disabling cortana and chrome, you still won't get 8 -9 hours of battery life. I'd suggest running a battery report in CMD line and see what your trend is, see if it's a steady drain, or specific time of day it drops faster.

 

[Seb_Rattansen]

Thanks for the replies -- all useful.

I've been using Firefox for the last two weeks. Battery life appears to be better. I've attached an image which shows Firefox's battery use. Compared to
Chrome battery use in my first post, it's much lower.

 

[billyboyblue]

what screen is showing you the battery usage like this?

 

[rdubmu]

what screen is showing you the battery usage like this?

Its in settings

 

[billyboyblue]

I just created a thread showing exactly what I did in spreadsheet format for an entire day, and wasn't even able to break 4 hours. I think the people who get more than that are using like brightness on zero, and no wifi lol

 

[Seb_Rattansen]

I'm almost always on 50% brightness and always using wifi...

I rarely runbattery down but frequently check time remaining. Battery life is still not great to be honest, even on Firefox. For example at the moment I have 64% battery left and it says 3h 45m. Oh well, will always have to keep charger handy I suppose.

 

[billyboyblue]

do you have wifi enabled when the device is asleep ?

 

[Seb_Rattansen]

Nope