Surface book batteries discharging at the same time?

[Jugler]

Hi everyone!

Was wondering what is the supposed way the batteries are supposed to work when using it as a laptop only.

In a 100% charge for both scenario, should I see one discharge to 0%, and then the other begin to discharge? or both discharging at the same time?

Mine after around 3 hours shows like this:
Battery 1: 39%
Battery 2: 79%

So it seems on mine they are both discharging at the same time... is this the expected behaviour?

Thanks,

 

[Jugler]

Also Im running some batch processing that is pretty much keeping my cpu at 100% and I plugged it in to charging, but it seems to be not charging fast enough, I plugged it at 10% and after a few minutes it went down to 6% even while says its charging... should I be worried that the Surface Book will shutdown even while plugged in?

 

[zerospace-net]

Yes, both batteries discharge while in use as a "laptop". Battery 2 is in the tablet portion, battery 1 is in the base.

As far as usage/charging while plugged in: I have never had mine die while plugged in, and I dock my SB to a keyboard, external monitor and mouse all day in my office (I have the SB's screen turn off when "docked" in this way). I'm usually running Photoshop or other adobe apps and/or seriously multi-tasking the whole time. That said, have you made sure your SB is actually charging and not indicating "plugged in, not charging"? When I first plugged my SB in in my office, I had too many things on my battery backup and the SB wasn't getting enough power to charge (this sucker seems to draw quite a bit of power). Once I unplugged some old accessories that I didn't need, it charges up fine now even when being used while charging.

 

[Jugler]

Yeah verified it was charging, at somepoints it seemed to gain 1%, but it lost more battery than actually gained. mind you this was a heavy video processing stuff that kept the cpu at 100%, also was using the SP3 charger, not sure if that might be the issue.

After done processing, the battery charged normally.

 

[Larry Piercy]

The Surface Pro 3, Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book without the GPU all appear to use the same 30-watt brick for charging. The Surface Book with the GPU has a larger 60-watt charger. While you can use the 60-watt brick with all of the different models, the 30-watt brick doesn?t have the power to charge the Surface Book with the discrete GPU while under a heavy load. It will only charge it when off or when at idle.

I read this online - PC World I believe.

 

[lewinr]

you would think it would try to discharge only the base battery first, so if you want to take the tablet you would have the maximum battery life... I guess it doesnt work that way, but it should...

 

[Talldog]

you would think it would try to discharge only the base battery first, so if you want to take the tablet you would have the maximum battery life... I guess it doesnt work that way, but it should...

It sorta does. I've never paid attention to the exact percentages, but initially the SB does discharge only the base battery. When the base gets down to a certain percentage (somewhere under 80%) it starts to use the clipboard battery, but it always uses the base battery at a higher rate.

At least that's how it works on mine.

 

[lewinr]

ok, that's good. I didnt pay any attention to how it actually works, I just based my answer on what I read above....

 

[EnemiesInTheEnd]

You don't want any of the batteries to be fully depleted though. That will kill the life cycle of the battery

 

[Hardcore1973]

It is supposed to discharge the base before touching the tablet battery. I have noticed that if i use the tablet at all even after I re-dock, then it still discharges them both.

 

[Razor237xp]

The only time the surface book died while I had it on the charger is when I used a surface pro 3 charger that is lower watts and was playing fall out 4 so I was working it hard .... My base seems to drain to 40% then the tablet starts to drain but I haven't paid close attention to it

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android

 

[EnemiesInTheEnd]

It is supposed to discharge the base before touching the tablet battery. I have noticed that if i use the tablet at all even after I re-dock, then it still discharges them both.

I hope that's not the case. That would kill the battery life.

 

[zerospace-net]

I hope that's not the case. That would kill the battery life.

It's not. If you watch your batteries drain, you'll notice that while the lion's share of the battery used while clipboard is docked is the big battery in the base, a smaller amount does come off the tablet battery during this time, too. It is very small in my experience, but it DOES actually use some of the clipboard battery, even early on in the discharge process. The lower your overall battery level drops, the more it starts drawing from the clipboard's battery, it seems. This actually makes some sense to me from an overall battery life perspective (and by battery life, I mean the total lifetime of both batteries, not the amount of use you get out of each charge). Does it result in less time to use just the clipboard battery if you want to detach it after you've been using the machine for awhile? Yeah, but my guess is that this is a laptop first and a tablet second sort of thing, so it makes sense that MS would expect people to be detaching the clipboard relatively infrequently, or only for short periods of time. If you're looking for more out of the tablet portion of the SB, you might be better off with a Surface Pro -- each has its strengths. Surface Book is a laptop first, Pro is a tablet first. I've now used both devices (Surface Pro 3 and now Surface Book) and both have their strengths & weaknesses -- you have to choose based on your overall usage. There isn't a no-compromises device yet on the market in the 2-in-1 category, and there may never be...

 

[EnemiesInTheEnd]

It's not. If you watch your batteries drain, you'll notice that while the lion's share of the battery used while clipboard is docked is the big battery in the base, a smaller amount does come off the tablet battery during this time, too. It is very small in my experience, but it DOES actually use some of the clipboard battery, even early on in the discharge process. The lower your overall battery level drops, the more it starts drawing from the clipboard's battery, it seems. This actually makes some sense to me from an overall battery life perspective (and by battery life, I mean the total lifetime of both batteries, not the amount of use you get out of each charge). Does it result in less time to use just the clipboard battery if you want to detach it after you've been using the machine for awhile? Yeah, but my guess is that this is a laptop first and a tablet second sort of thing, so it makes sense that MS would expect people to be detaching the clipboard relatively infrequently, or only for short periods of time. If you're looking for more out of the tablet portion of the SB, you might be better off with a Surface Pro -- each has its strengths. Surface Book is a laptop first, Pro is a tablet first. I've now used both devices (Surface Pro 3 and now Surface Book) and both have their strengths & weaknesses -- you have to choose based on your overall usage. There isn't a no-compromises device yet on the market in the 2-in-1 category, and there may never be...

I meant it would kill the battery life if it fully depleted the base before using the tablet portion of the battery.

 

[Hardcore1973]

They always drain from the base down to about 30% before touching the tablet portion. I have 40% on battery 1 and 100% on battery 2 right now. I have bought and setup 10 of these so far with the exact same results.

 

[zerospace-net]

They always drain from the base down to about 30% before touching the tablet portion. I have 40% on battery 1 and 100% on battery 2 right now. I have bought and setup 10 of these so far with the exact same results.

That's interesting, because I've seen mine at about 70% on the base and somewhere in the 90s percentage -ish in the clipboard after a couple of hours of use with the clipboard flipped around backwards on the base.

Did you happen to apply that update to the battery driver? I did not...

 

[EnemiesInTheEnd]

That's interesting, because I've seen mine at about 70% on the base and somewhere in the 90s percentage -ish in the clipboard after a couple of hours of use with the clipboard flipped around backwards on the base.

Did you happen to apply that update to the battery driver? I did not...

I didn't either. Mine does the same as yours. It seems to use battery from both in operation.

 

[zerospace-net]

I didn't either. Mine does the same as yours. It seems to use battery from both in operation.

I'm beginning to think that it depends on usage. I find that it waits longer to start using the clipboard battery if I don't ever detach the screen (leave it in traditional laptop configuration the whole time). If I detach the screen (even just to flip it around), it usually starts using the clipboard battery sooner.