Battery life

[justinm001]

Can anyone post their battery life averages? Anyone able to watch 2 full movies on 1 charge.

seems I get 2-3 hours when gaming and about 5-6 hours when surfing or doing basic office tasks.
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[Honestabebread]

Mine lasts about 7AM to midnight with about 50 texts a day, maybe 30 minutes on the phone, push email, checking news and weather and about an hour of local music. I watched Godzilla on Crackle the other day and it used about 30%. So I could definitely watch 2 on a charge

 

[Mercule]

I spent the evening coding, last night -- about 3 hours. I've done some of the battery tweaks recommended on these forums, but I was also VPNed into the office that whole time, too, so wifi was continuously active. I checked the battery before closing up shop and it was at 62% with 3:19 hours left. The math comes to around 6 hours, if you just add, but I don't think Windows does a good estimation if you don't use standard power settings. Considering I hadn't had it plugged in all day at work (minimal use, but not none), my guess is that I'd have gotten 7+ hours of continual use. I'm pretty happy with that, for a device that can do pretty much everything I want it to -- and do it well.

After a couple days of experimenting, I stopped bothering to take my power cord to the office with me. The odds of me actually running out of juice are absurdly low. The Android phone I used to have had worse battery life than the Surface Pro.

 

[polbit]

I have been getting over 5 hours with OneNote 2013 and light surfing. When using Visual Studio, I haven't been able to get past 4, but I tend to do quick fixes with a lot of rebuilding rather than long static coding sessions on it. When playing Civ 5, it doesn't last much past 2 hours. Overall I'm happy, but could definitely use some more juice. I think if the current Pro ran 10-15F cooler at load, and battery lasted 2 hours, this would be my best device I've ever owned. And that's saying a lot coming from an MBP (please, no Apple hate )

 

[justinm001]

I think I'm going to fully charge and run prime95 to time until it dies. I'm betting 1:30 hrs.
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[rimlover]

Mine lasts about 7AM to midnight with about 50 texts a day, maybe 30 minutes on the phone, push email, checking news and weather and about an hour of local music. I watched Godzilla on Crackle the other day and it used about 30%. So I could definitely watch 2 on a charge

huh? how did you make a phone call on a surface pro?

 

[rdubmu]

I spent the evening coding, last night -- about 3 hours. I've done some of the battery tweaks recommended on these forums, but I was also VPNed into the office that whole time, too, so wifi was continuously active. I checked the battery before closing up shop and it was at 62% with 3:19 hours left. The math comes to around 6 hours, if you just add, but I don't think Windows does a good estimation if you don't use standard power settings. Considering I hadn't had it plugged in all day at work (minimal use, but not none), my guess is that I'd have gotten 7+ hours of continual use. I'm pretty happy with that, for a device that can do pretty much everything I want it to -- and do it well.

After a couple days of experimenting, I stopped bothering to take my power cord to the office with me. The odds of me actually running out of juice are absurdly low. The Android phone I used to have had worse battery life than the Surface Pro.

What kind of power settings are you using. I am using the standard and getting between 3-4 hours out of it.

 

[gootdude]

Yeah, really intrigued to know what settings allow you to get 7+ hours on a surface PRO and the screen on...

 

[Honestabebread]

huh? how did you make a phone call on a surface pro?

via not checking what forum I was posting in

 

[rimlover]

via not checking what forum I was posting in

hahahaha. ok makes more sense. i was going to ask, do you have some special add-on that no one knows about?

 

[Mercule]

What kind of power settings are you using. I am using the standard and getting between 3-4 hours out of it.

Maybe it's the specific tasks I do -- my battery life tanks when I load up Civ V, just like everyone else.

I started with the "power saver" plan and did a few tweaks.

• Maximum processor state is 99% on battery
• Display brightness is 15% on battery
• Adaptive brightness is off on battery

I think that's it. I thought I'd done more, but I just compared to vanilla "power saver" and those were the only differences I saw. I guess I do have the screen to go dark after 2 min, but I'm not sure whether that adds as much savings as annoyance. My understanding is that the first one keeps the Intel boost from kicking in. The second one, of course, keeps one of the biggest drains on the battery under control. The third may or may not be significant, but I assume anything that most state changes carry a power cost.

FWIW, while I was creating a custom power plan, I went ahead and boosted the "plugged in" side to be a bit higher, too. I did keep the brightness down some (50%), though, so there wouldn't be a huge difference in the base experience.