Battery questions

[Vasrias]

Hi guys,
I would like to know some things about the batteries in the Surface Book.

The tablet has 3 hours and the keaboard 9. I heard that if the tablet battery is used up, the keyboard part doesn't recharge it, it only recharges via charger.
How exactly does the 12 hours work out then? If your battery is nearly empty (say 10 or 15%), where is the battery left? In the tablet, the keyboard, both. Can the keyboard battery used up without the tablet part. Does the dGPU work then? If I recharged tablet and keyboard to 100% and only use it with the keyboard, does it drain the tablet battery too in the same extent. If I have, say 50%, left and I want to use the tablet alone, does it have 50 too and lasts only 1 1/2 hours instead of the full 3 hours?

I hope somebody can answer these questions. I am really curious about how it works.

 

[ALpHa.Q.RoUgH]

Yes I'm trying to understand this battery myself.

Started off with 100% on both batteries today. Get to school use it, down to about 74% (Battery 1) in two hours and 100% (Battery 2). Couple more hours later 55% (Battery 1) and 87% (Battery 2). Never did I detach the screen today or anything, it just went down. Finally detach the screen and use the clipboard for all of 5 minutes (Battery 2) 37% left and only 33 minutes remaining.

So I'm lost on how they get the advertised battery length as it seems each battery decreases on its own accord. With screen attached and regular use with brightness around 86% from 100% both batteries I'm getting 4 hours. With screen detached in clipboard mode I'm only getting an hour of use. Last night also while charging my SurfaceBook, it's charging on the table but as I pick it up, the fans are running and the laptop is hot as heck just from charging. Could be because I didn't "Shutdown" but when I close laptop it goes into sleep but still why would the fans run and get hot?

 

[valadon]

I am having similar issues. Battery one drains first....for a while, then battery 2 will start to drain as well. As soon as I detach the screen the battery drops rapidly. We are suppose to get at least 3 hours in tablet mode, but I can't get more than an hour max before it dies. There is also the problem of the device not actually going to sleep, so on top of the battery draining quickly when in use, it is also draining while NOT in use.

I think this is a new problem related to launch day firmware upgrade as most reviewers said it had pretty great battery life. I hope they come up with a fix soon. For now, as has been mentioned elsewhere on the site, you can fix the battery drain during sleep issue buy setting the computer to hibernate instead of sleep, but I also feel that the battery is draining too rapidly while in use as well.

 

[Stocklone]

I really hope they fix the battery drain issue. I'm trying to make my clipboard work all day without charging while I take notes and it's so frustrating to see it drop while it sits there on the desk doing nothing. If it didn't drop, it would be no problem to get through the day. I use a brightness of 25% to extend the battery life.

 

[ALpHa.Q.RoUgH]

I really hope they fix the battery drain issue. I'm trying to make my clipboard work all day without charging while I take notes and it's so frustrating to see it drop while it sits there on the desk doing nothing. If it didn't drop, it would be no problem to get through the day. I use a brightness of 25% to extend the battery life.

Surface 4?

 

[geraldem]

I am seeing about 5 hours after 4 days of solid use. I have switched to hibernate on day1..so the drain I get in hibernate is small. It is during active usage. Very frustrating to only get 5 hours, but I agree it must be the firmware from launch day. looking forward to an update

 

[JOHNGAETANO]

For me, I love the surface book, but if the clipboard battery life doesn't improve, it's nothing more than a gimmick for me then and it will go back. I'd hope, a firmware update could cure this.

 

[TheMoonbeam]

My understanding is that Battery 1 is the primary battery, but when it reaches a certain level, Battery 2 will also start to drain. My guess is that the tablet begins to "sip" energy from it's own battery to extend the length of Battery 1 so that you can use the Surface Book in laptop mode for "up to 12 hours".
Personally, I'm able to get 3 hours in tablet mode. I'm also getting close to, and in some cases more than, 12 hours in Laptop mode. Not sure what I'm doing different, but the battery life is fantastic for me. The other day I used mine to draw in OneNote for about 40 minutes, and still had 96% battery left afterwards. On release day (Monday) I used it for about 6 hours, and had a little over 50% left over, after installing several programs, and multiple reboots. In general I'm pretty darn happy with mine, and the battery life I'm getting.

I do know though, that Chrome and Chromium based browsers (Opera, Vivaldi, etc.) do drain significantly more battery life.