Battery Drain in Sleep

[Cleavitt76]

That doesn't sound normal, but it's hard to say for sure without more details. If you were watching a very high resolution and high quality video it could push the CPU/GPU pretty hard. Otherwise, watching a video for an hour shouldn't burn through battery that fast in my experience.

Open Windows Task Manager and sort the processes by CPU usage. That should give you a better idea of what program/service is making your SP3 work. Keep an eye on it while you are using the device to do stuff. Once you establish a pattern or identify a specific program that is using lot's of CPU we can help you troubleshoot further. You might want to try playing that video again to see how much CPU it uses.

If you were having the battery issues right after you first started using the device, it's likely that it was running updates, synching things, etc. in the background for the initial setup.

 

[spasell]

Ok...last update about battery life from me but some who don't own it yet may be curious where all this ends up before they purchase one. I've now had the Surface 3 for 4 nights. Last night, it drained 4% overnight. So, in the 4 nights I've seen drain from 0% - 6%. Obviously, it depends on what it's doing after I close it up.

I love my Surface 3 but it's definitely nowhere near the battery sleep performance of my MacBook Air ( 0% drain overnight) or my current generation iPad (0%). Somehow, Apple knows how to make their products sleep while consuming zero or near zero battery. It's clearly a remarkable achievement.

And, the Surface 3's slow wake up still kills me. Thanks for all the suggestions and I've implemented a number of them. Some say the Surface is a Tablet - fine, so it should wake up instantly like an iPad, right? Not even in the same league. iPad = instant. Surface = 5-10 seconds from a dead sleep after it goes into 'deep' sleep at 4 hours.

Ok, others say it's a fully functional laptop. Fine...then it should wake up instantly like a MacBook Air, right? Not even in the same league, either.

Apple products clearly spoil you that when you want to use them, you just open them up and they work without complaint. 5-10 seconds for the Surface to wake up may not seem like a lot but it reduces the 'always ready' capability of just wanting to look something up quickly, check a quick email, etc. It changes the nature of what the device can do, and for those that disagree, use an Apple product and see how them always being ready to go truly changes how you use them.

Microsoft clearly has some work to do if they want Surface to be a serious contender in a market with some really outstanding products. Not disparaging the Surface 3 because I love it and I wouldn't give it up, but I do shake my head at its battery drain and slow wake up after 4 hours when directly compared to the products Microsoft themselves say we can replace it with.

So waiting 5-10 seconds is an issue because?

 

[Intrepid00]

After really enjoying my Surface Pro 3 for the entire afternoon and evening yesterday, gave it a good charge back to 100% and then unplugged it for the night to see how it performed. I used it a tad (maybe 1%) and then went to sleep. Woke up and found the battery at 93% which was pretty disappointing considering my iPad does not drain at all in sleep mode.

Also, the Surface was sleeping 'so much' (ironic since it was also draining battery) that it needed a reboot. Didn't just wake right back up upon opening it like it should have. NEVER have this type of issue with my iPad that reliably wakes right up each and every time after turning it on.

Love the Surface 3 but for this price, it really needs to meet (or exceed?) iPad standards when it comes to standby/sleep battery drain and waking back up reliably. Interested to see what others experienced last night.

The Surface Pro 3 really isn't an apples for apples to the iPad or the MacBook Air. There really isn't anything on the market to do a direct compare on. Comparing them as such isn't fair especially against the iPad. Can the iPad run a Hypervisor? Nope. Is the iPad using the x86 instruction set? Nope. Can the iPad multitask? Nope. The iPad only has one digitizer. The Surface Pro 3 has two and that's also more power drain but gives you finger touch and pressure sensitive pen input. Can the iPad use USB devices? Sometimes in rare cases but never anything useful. Does the iPad have a SSD drive? Sort of, it doesn't have a very fast one though and does like 15 to 30 megs a second while the Surface Pro 3 does several times over that. All these facts effect what the iPad and Surface Pro can and can't do between the two. If you want a comparable device against the iPad go get a Surface 2. The Surface Pro 3 should be compared somewhat to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro but not really.

That being said, there could be several reasons why you have bad drain now. Are you for example leaving the device in Connected Standby where it barely has signal? Does your router support WiFi PSM (low power mode for a WiFi device that allows the receiver to stay on but transmitter to remain off and on)? Some routers do not support WiFi PSM and a lot of them are ISP ones too. Did you do any advance settings? Like turned the WiFi radio to always max transmit?

Don't forget you can use powercfg /sleepstudy to see what is draining your battery in connected standby.

 

[hopmedic]

the surface pro 3 really isn't an apples for apples to the ipad or the macbook air. There really isn't anything on the market to do a direct compare on. Comparing them as such isn't fair especially against the ipad. Can the ipad run a hypervisor? Nope. Is the ipad using the x86 instruction set? Nope. Can the ipad multitask? Nope. The ipad only has one digitizer. The surface pro 3 has two and that's also more power drain but gives you finger touch and pressure sensitive pen input. Can the ipad use usb devices? Sometimes in rare cases but never anything useful. Does the ipad have a ssd drive? Sort of, it doesn't have a very fast one though and does like 15 to 30 megs a second while the surface pro 3 does several times over that. All these facts effect what the ipad and surface pro can and can't do between the two. If you want a comparable device against the ipad go get a surface 2. The surface pro 3 should be compared somewhat to the macbook air and macbook pro but not really.

BUT THE SURFACE TAKES MORE THAN THREE PICOSECONDS TO WAKE UP SO IT IS USELESS!!!!
/s

 

[EraserX8]

I had my pro 3 at 30% last night and in 3.5 hrs it dropped to 5%(I checked the battery report). Trying to figure out what's causing this. I don't want to keep waking up to a dead sp3. I left a couple apps open and that's about it. This is a non issue with my iPad.

 

[mozman68]

I had my pro 3 at 30% last night and in 3.5 hrs it dropped to 5%(I checked the battery report). Trying to figure out what's causing this. I don't want to keep waking up to a dead sp3. I left a couple apps open and that's about it. This is a non issue with my iPad.

3.5 hours for 25% drop means 14 hours for 100% use.... seems better than an iPad to me....

 

[WillysJeepMan]

3.5 hours for 25% drop means 14 hours for 100% use.... seems better than an iPad to me....

That's not 3.5 hours of use... that 3.5 hours of standby. That is far worse than an iPad.

 

[emperor_skull]

After the latest update mine drains like hell, 40% in 19mins

 

[mozman68]

That's not 3.5 hours of use... that 3.5 hours of standby. That is far worse than an iPad.

D'oh... my bad... so what did the battery report say?

I'm just confused why I never have any of these issues? Had plenty of the typical iPad bugs (nothing mayor) with all of those that I had, but nothing with the Surface.

Charge it when I sleep and it lasts the entire next day at work (not all day use) and up until I go to sleep again.

 

[WillysJeepMan]

D'oh... my bad... so what did the battery report say?

I'm just confused why I never have any of these issues? Had plenty of the typical iPad bugs (nothing mayor) with all of those that I had, but nothing with the Surface.

Charge it when I sleep and it lasts the entire next day at work (not all day use) and up until I go to sleep again.

Since you "think someone has installed one of the gazillion programs out there without the proper driver or some other extremely rare software issue" then maybe it's because you're running your Surface without any apps. :smile:

I too didn't experience any issues on my Surface devices for the first month (even when others did). But soon after that, I too started experiencing those issues... and as time went by, things got worse.

I hope that you fare better than I (and may others) did.

 

[mozman68]

Since you "think someone has installed one of the gazillion programs out there without the proper driver or some other extremely rare software issue" then maybe it's because you're running your Surface without any apps. :smile:

I too didn't experience any issues on my Surface devices for the first month (even when others did). But soon after that, I too started experiencing those issues... and as time went by, things got worse.

I hope that you fare better than I (and may others) did.

Yeah... unless iTunes or Office screws it up, I should be good...:winktongue:

 

[astondg]

I've been re-reading this thread and I think my take is that there seems to a few things at play here. Firstly MS has chosen a certain compromise and feature set that they think will work best for SP3 owners. Secondly there are obviously issues switching power states (particularly going into connected standby and coming out of hibernate) caused by applications, drivers and maybe some OS & firmware issues. These issues need to be fixed, and hopefully MS is getting on top of this. The fact that many of the issues extend back to the first Surface is concerning, but at the same time Windows 8 and the whole Surface range is less than 2 years old. That last part isn't an excuse, just a hopefulness that given time MS can sort it out.

Given a perfect world I think the comparisons with the MacBook come down to MS choosing, rightly or wrongly, a different approach. e.g.:

SP3 sleep compromise:
1. The SP3 uses connected standby for the first 4 hours, which is likely where the majority of the overnight drain comes from, and allows receiving of emails, notifications, etc.
2. The SP3 enters hibernate and battery drain should be very minimal. This likely 'makes up for' some of the drain in the first 4 hours but the downside of hibernate vs sleep is the longer start up time
3. The SP3 enters a deep hibernate with Microsoft claiming the battery will last up to a year, again a longer start time

MacBook sleep compromise:
1. MacBook enters a non-connected standby, start up is quick and without being 'connected' battery drain is still low but, from what I've seen, it's unlikely to last more than a week or two in this state
2. My old MBP did enter hibernate at a certain point (I think after 12 hours or so), I don't know if this is still the case. Once in hibernate it definitely did take longer to wake up