Battery life - Software or Hardware?

[pettor]

Hi,
I have a Surface Pro 4 i7, 512gb disk and 16gb ram. I love the device for most reasons and just think Microsoft have created a truly amazing device.

The only complaint I have is the battery life. I have a lot of things installed and use it for Visual Studio, painting, Visual Studio etc. OneDrive and Adobe Cloud service are running but I try to limit the background tasks and don't keep anything running I don't need. I usually use Edge instead of Chrome. It just behaves much better with the Surface.

However, even when I just browse the net, maybe use the mailapp, some easy paint app (like Bamboo Paper) the battery drain is quite heavy. I usually don't use laptops without having them being charged in a dock, so therefore I have no idea if this drain is uncommon.

I am happy to get 4 hoursof usage with "preferred" brightness. I have never ever seen the battery estimation saying 7, 8 or 9 hours which seems to be what I can expect according to specs.

There are more persons having similar problem and my question is basically, is this a software or hardware problem? Have someone any experience with this i.e. returned the Surface to get a new one and saw a dramatic change in battery drain. Or is this just something I will have to optimize myself and wait for better drivers? I don't see much reason why the battery quality would differ with newer batches.

// Petter Gustafsson

 

[Rattso2005]

I have had this same unit twice and returned them both because of issues ( constant bugs, screen would become unresponsive, BSOD., driver display issue and bad battery life...) The last one I exchanged for the i5/256/8gb and so far the battery seems to be better and haven't had BSOD issue or display driver issue come up once. This experience leads me to believe it's a combination of both hardware and software. Just my opinion having owned many gadgets over the years.

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