Does the Surface 3 have a slow charging problem?

[Phoibos]

I'm not sure whether this is still relevant, but charging the Surface 3 in the dock is much faster than than charging via microUSB. The dock charges the Surface 3 via additional pins in the USB Type A port.

 

[Steve Adams]

I'm not sure whether this is still relevant, but charging the Surface 3 in the dock is much faster than than charging via microUSB. The dock charges the Surface 3 via additional pins in the USB Type A port.

I was just going to say this. Can you get a charging cable to plug into the USB port I wonder?

 

[mms-pc]

I have another charging issue with Surface 3, every time I plug in my Surface 3, I notice the batter icon in the taskbar section would change, but the flyover indicates that my machine is plugged in, but not charging, I must un-plug and re-plug it, or wait for some certain moment of time, then it will display as charging. Compared with my previous experience with Surface RT, which starts charging moments after plugged in, I think Microsoft should try to fix or improve this issue.

 

[Phoibos]

I was just going to say this. Can you get a charging cable to plug into the USB port I wonder?

I'm pretty sure you can't At least not from Microsoft. Maybe there's a third party one, out there in the interwebs....

 

[Steve Adams]

I knew there was not one from MS. I will have to look around. But the entire package with the dock is awesome.

 

[Ygglens]

It charges significantly slower than other laptops, tablets and other surface models.

 

[Steve Adams]

Has anyone compared the 20awg to the stock charging cable yet?

 

[DALEcz]

Has anyone compared the 20awg to the stock charging cable yet?

It works every time (ofc depending also on the charger), but I didnt measure the time to charge the surface...

 

[Steve Adams]

It works every time (ofc depending also on the charger), but I didnt measure the time to charge the surface...

Do you have both cables. plug the surface in with the original, check the time to charge on the battery icon, and do the same with the 20 awg cable. see if it reports a difference.

 

[DALEcz]

Yea, I may try that - probably not today, but tomorrow I will.

 

[Steve Adams]

Yea, I may try that - probably not today, but tomorrow I will.

You know what they say about tomorrow! ha ha ha...let us know!

 

[DALEcz]

so my surface 3 was at 47% of battery. With the stock cable it said 3h 33min to full charge and with the portapow 20awg cable it said 2h 59 min (just swapped the cables and waited for the time to show up) - all that with the PortaPow Crystal USB charger. So there is some difference..

 

[Steve Adams]

Cool. Time to order two! thanks!

 

[ngold]

Definitely the cable makes a difference. Bought two longer USB cables and an iclever 2.4a usb charger so I could have two ports and work at a longer distance from the outlet.

Noticed slow charging and the fact that if I was working while plugged in, I was still losing battery.

Just ran some tests after seeing this thread. Both chargers with the generic USB cables were slow and didn't charge faster than the machine was using power. However, with the Microsoft cable, both chargers charged faster than the machine was using power.

Guess I just learned that all USB cables aren't the same. Didn't know that.

 

[M3GRSO]

They're using weak chargers. Like Tsang Fair mentioned, you need to use the right charger. This is universal with all USB charging devices. The more power it consumes, the stronger the charger will have to be. It's like trying to charge an iPad with an iPhone charger..... Very very slow.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Just bought it back in Dec '15 and I'm using the charger my Surface 3 came equipped with and recently it took over 6hrs to charge from 0% - 100%. It's hard to be portable with charging speeds that slow.

 

[rbcameron]

@M3GRSO - are you using the original USB cable? As others have noted, that can make a big difference.

 

[Smithy London]

I no longer use the standard charger and USB cable as their not really up to the job.
I bought the following - Anker PowerPort 5 (40W 5-Port USB Charging Hub) + Volutz Equilibrium Series Nylon Braided Micro-USB to USB Cable 19 AWG.
I no longer suffer from the "plugged in and not charging" issue. The above charges my Surface 3 at 23% an hour and the Anker charger doesn't even get warm, unlike the stock item!!!
Very pleased with this upgrade.

 

[Jon62]

I'm using my old venue 11 23 watt charger and it seems to be charging twice as fast as my surface 3 charger. 13 watts?
MUCH better!