Battery on Surface Pro 3 went from normal life to fast drain in 30 days +/-, what could the problem be?

[Windows Central Question]

Battery on Surface Pro 3 went from normal life to fast drain in 30 days +/-

My Surface Pro 3 (purchased in Nov. of 2014) has gone from a "normal" battery life to literally draining from 100% to shutdown in under 5 minutes! I have a dock and the unit stays plugged in the majority of the time. I understand that can be not so good for a battery. However, I am suspicious that it may be more than that since the battery performance went from what seemed normal to abnormal almost overnight.

After chatting with Microsoft tech and trying to update the battery driver, the tech suggesting returning the unit using the "swap-out" program where I pay $449.99 and get a refurbished unit.

Any ideas?

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Re: Battery on Surface Pro 3 went from normal life to fast drain in 30 days +/-

My Surface Pro 3 (purchased in Nov. of 2014) has gone from a "normal" battery life to literally draining from 100% to shutdown in under 5 minutes! I have a dock and the unit stays plugged in the majority of the time. I understand that can be not so good for a battery. However, I am suspicious that it may be more than that since the battery performance went from what seemed normal to abnormal almost overnight.

After chatting with Microsoft tech and trying to update the battery driver, the tech suggesting returning the unit using the "swap-out" program where I pay $449.99 and get a refurbished unit.

Any ideas?

You could take it to a service centre for further testing and a second opinion as it does look like a hardware issue

 

[anon(7901790)]

Re: Battery on Surface Pro 3 went from normal life to fast drain in 30 days +/-

Batteries do degrade over time, but not THAT fast. Even leaving it plugged in most of the time doesn't really accelerate battery degradation. At least not with modern Lithium Ion and Lithium Polymer batteries.

Have you installed any new software recently? Updating the battery driver is all well and good, but that won't stop a poorly written piece of software from eating up battery life.

Oh, I almost forgot to ask. Are you part of the Windows Insider program? If so, did you upgrade to a newer "fast ring" version of Windows? Sometimes the process of getting the latest and greatest out to users unintentionally breaks something. Finally, are you experiencing any over heating issues?

Scan your system for malware. Believe it or not, a piece of malware could cause this to happen,

As a last resort before replacing it. Back up all of your data and restore your system back to factory (Which is what you should do anyway prior to sending it in for replacement) and see if that clears it up.

 

[keniimal]

I have the same problem, purchased around the same time and only happy since around 3 weeks ago.. it is completely unusable.. upgraded to all the latest firmware (2016 April)

Did a full reset, latest windows patches, using local account (not live IDs), not software installed and with wifi disabled.. 100% battery drain within 15 mins...