[zokstar]

Found the below link from another forum. I don't have a SP yet to try, but hopefully you guys can and see if it helps with battery

How To: Optimize Microsoft Surface Pro Battery Life

[BIGPADDY]

Very good tips for maximum power saving and like it says Microsoft will also be updating with tweaks to make it more battery efficient.

[vertigoOne]

Very good tips for maximum power saving and like it says Microsoft will also be updating with tweaks to make it more battery efficient.

The only setting that I found worthwhile for reading all of that was the Maximum Processor setting set down to 75%. Everything else was basically the same as the built-in Power Saving plan.

I also prefer to disable hibernation completely to gain space on my SSD, so I weighted a little more heavily towards sleep than shut down since hibernation is not even available as an option in there once it is disabled.

[Microsoftjunkie]

You can also uncheck the options under "Performance & Appearance".

[jasongw]

I've updated the article. Over the past few months of using the Surface Pro, I've managed to get more aggressive with the settings and eek out a consistent 6-7 hours of battery life, with an ultimate record of just over 8 hours. Settings should work just as well on Pro 2 to get even better battery life.

I lean toward Hibernation optimization rather than sleep, however. IMHO, the 4-5 seconds of resume time is more than worth the savings you get in battery life. Sleep is faster to wake up, obviously, but it's just not battery friendly.

[StuBeck]

Might want to change your link.

[Moiz Mian]

Anyone else not seeing the processer power management CPU max and min settings?

[chezm]

Might want to change your link.

this...link in initial post bad

[zokstar]

Sorry guys forgot about this, have fixed link.

Ever since upgrading to 8.1 I've noticed the WiFi will go all funny after about 40min of use, and I have to reboot to fix it. Anyone else?

Could be these battery settings, might switch to power saving profile and see what happens.

[garak0410]

My Wi-Fi has been acting odd since 8.1 and my Surface Pro, even with these settings, seems to not want to sleep and something runs (and the unit gets hot when not in use) to run the battery down... :(

[Moiz Mian]

My Wi-Fi has been acting odd since 8.1 and my Surface Pro, even with these settings, seems to not want to sleep and something runs (and the unit gets hot when not in use) to run the battery down... :(

I've noticed this too. Sleep drains the battery very fast. So I just use hibernate instead. Works much better.

[zokstar]

My Wi-Fi has been acting odd since 8.1 and my Surface Pro, even with these settings, seems to not want to sleep and something runs (and the unit gets hot when not in use) to run the battery down... :(

Give this ago, fixed it for me - New Wi-Fi Drivers for Surface Pro on Windows 8.1 ~ Purity Consulting

[Chinmay Trivedi]

Hi.. I got my surface pro two days back, and I was wondering, if the new Wi-Fi drivers you suggested, do indeed work properly and well help in extending the battery life - I can't find much info on what these drivers do better than the older ones, and so I am skeptical on should I install them or not. Once again thanks for this post, to help get more juice out of the surface pro!

[Moiz Mian]

Hi.. I got my surface pro two days back, and I was wondering, if the new Wi-Fi drivers you suggested, do indeed work properly and well help in extending the battery life - I can't find much info on what these drivers do better than the older ones, and so I am skeptical on should I install them or not. Once again thanks for this post, to help get more juice out of the surface pro!

Well, the new WiFi drivers fixed Miracast performance for me, but I didn't notice any improvement in battery life. I dunno, maybe there was, but they are surface pro specific and were released in November to first gen Surface Pros. There's no reason not to download them

[theefman]

Wondering how you guys are faring with your battery life after using these tweaks for a while. The $599 Surface Pro is a good deal but battery life is a concern on the older chip. I'll be doing mostly consuming media with some desktop work thrown in but not much gaming, maybe a store app here or there while my 8" tablet is charging. Thanks.

[Derausgewanderte]

thanks for the battery tips. That definitely helped battery life for the Pro substantially. As the original article states. 6-7 hours is a reasonable time I am getting out of it for a few days now. The downside of the rather aggressive power settings is that it may be annoying sometimes when it goes to sleep too early or needs to wake up. My RT was always there.
But you get a full OS with the Pro. I could not resist the 599 deal and will sell my RT on ebay next....

[soulenigma]

Thanks for the tip. Just created my power savings profile.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Laurence Lau]

Is everyone else getting around 6+ hours following this config?
My estimation is between 4-5 hours with this config and an even lower display brightness of 20% and dims to 15%. The processor speed is set to a max of 50%. This estimation is just doing normal work of pdf editing and web browsing (no streaming or gaming).

[zokstar]

I am getting roughly 5-5.5 hours. I don't do much though, just browse with IE11 metro.

Is everyone else getting around 6+ hours following this config?
My estimation is between 4-5 hours with this config and an even lower display brightness of 20% and dims to 15%. The processor speed is set to a max of 50%. This estimation is just doing normal work of pdf editing and web browsing (no streaming or gaming).

[jasongw]

I'm on a Pro 2 now, but I was consistently getting 6+ hours. Now, it DOES depend on what you're doing. You can't, for example, edit video or watch movies or play high end games and expect to get 6+ hours of battery. But for writing in Word, checking email, light web browsing, writing notes in OneNote, that sort of thing--easy 6 hours, and sometimes more.

On Pro 2, using these settings has so far gotten me around 9 hours of actual usage. Again, doing heavier work changes that, so you do need to take that into account. Demanding tasks are called such for a reason, after all :).

[soulenigma]

I've been getting around 5.5 to 6 depending on what I'm doing.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[jojoe42]

I'm on a Pro 2 now, but I was consistently getting 6+ hours. Now, it DOES depend on what you're doing. You can't, for example, edit video or watch movies or play high end games and expect to get 6+ hours of battery. But for writing in Word, checking email, light web browsing, writing notes in OneNote, that sort of thing--easy 6 hours, and sometimes more.

On Pro 2, using these settings has so far gotten me around 9 hours of actual usage. Again, doing heavier work changes that, so you do need to take that into account. Demanding tasks are called such for a reason, after all :).

Wow that's crazy....at school I usually just use my Pro 2 for OneNote, Word and general internet browsing and according to the battery report I'm averaging 4:30-5 hours of usage

[zocster]

I've updated the article. Over the past few months of using the Surface Pro, I've managed to get more aggressive with the settings and eek out a consistent 6-7 hours of battery life, with an ultimate record of just over 8 hours. Settings should work just as well on Pro 2 to get even better battery life.

I lean toward Hibernation optimization rather than sleep, however. IMHO, the 4-5 seconds of resume time is more than worth the savings you get in battery life. Sleep is faster to wake up, obviously, but it's just not battery friendly.

Nice tips! Thanks OP for sharing

Sent from pin:2AD743B7 via Tapatalk Pro

[onlysublime]

another thing you can do is turn off Bluetooth. I tuirn off Bluetooth on all my devices until I absolutely need them. also, if you have an older Bluetooth peripheral that doesn't support Bluetooth LE, it will suck battery fast.

[Luc4]

Just did some battery tests on Surface Pro 3 Core i3 at 70% brightness and flight mode (WiFi, BT off) and indeed makes quite a difference:

Video player MP4 1080p: 7 hours 42 min
+ flight mode: 9 hours 5 min

These are not 100% accurate since just took the difference in % after 1 hour only.
Also I noticed classic media player (desktop) lasted only 5 hours and 33 min. So seems that the standard video player app is quite efficient. So I can see in desktop only mode 4-5 hours is not that uncommon with default settings (except with WiFi/BT turned off or maybe some gain with capping CPU). I use hibernate since drain in sleep mode is bit much I think and personally don't really need anything from connected standby.

Also interesting is the effect of the display (again could be some rounding error as I just measured 1 hour):

Reader app with 70% brightness: 9h 5 min
Reader app with 20% brightness: 12h 30 min