Terrible battery life of surface pro 4 - do you agree?

[Hardcore1973]

9 Hours of battery life is probably screen set to 30%, battery saver on, Airplane mode, etc. Why does everyone think when ANY company says 9 or 15 hours of battery life they think streaming Netflix (Huge battery drain from pulling data and the app), or playing a game (taxes out the CPU), or having brightness on 70% (thats around 300 nits which is 100% brightness on most laptops. 9 Hours has always been around 5-6 hours of real work, 15 hours has always been around 8-10 hours of real work. Notice the new Dell XPS 13 says 11 hours now instead of the claimed 18 hours of battery life lol. Tell all manufacturers to run the exact same test using the exact same brightness, wifi, bluetooth, brightness (controlled), and anything else that draws power. Otherwise it's all BS isn't it? Since I have owned every Surface and Surface Pro I knew exactly what it was going to do. But since I have owned thousands of laptops I know pretty much what all of them will do based on battery capacity, screen brightness and technology used, power consumption of the processor, RAM, etc..

 

[ttsoldier]

I don't know how you guys have the screen so bright.I have mine at 25% when on battery. That's bright enough for me! Plugged in it goes up to like 60 or something. Don't remember.

One mans trash is another mans treasure. I love my Battery life.

 

[snakebitten]

Admittedly, the office, data center, and bedroom are all low light environments. And it's true, I have curiously touched the 25.50.75.100 cycle a few times just to reassure myself. But 25 gets the nod most of the time. Numerically it just seems wrong for that screen to be so wonderful. But for me, 50 is BRIGHT. 75-100 is for the beach.

 

[polbit]

I get 6 - 8 hours, using Chrome Canary, MS Office, Visual Studio 2015 and sometimes Spotify, etc. Screen at auto, power saver kicks in at 20%. No it's not awesome, but it's definitely better than 4.5 hours people are saying. My fan also is silent, unless I'm really pushing it...

 

[smanmit2]

Exctly what I have been saying!!

Like. What are people expect?! You have a device with bleeding edge technology... Intels 6th gen processor...

You know if Microsoft made the device bigger to allow for a bigger battery.. People would complain.

No matter what, people will never be satisfied.

Me? I'm happy with my sp4 and it's battery life.

I don't understand your response. One buys a product considering the value and offering claimed by the seller. It is not about how much I should expect but more about delivering the claim. If Microsoft would have been honest about battery life, I have no issues. But selling the product for 9 hours and then getting half of it has nothing to do with satisfaction. I don't want to even start the conversation on what other tablets are offering and how they are able to give 8 plus hours of battery life.

 

[CygnusOrion]

Smells like a class action lawsuit to me.

 

[GatsbyGlen]

Microsoft states, "Up to 9 hours of video playback. Testing conducted by Microsoft in September 2015 using preproduction Intel? Core™ i5, 256GB, 8GB RAM device. Testing consisted of full battery discharge during video playback. All settings were default except: Wi-Fi was associated with a network. Battery life varies significantly with settings, usage, and other factors."

Of video playback, and doing nothing else? We probably draw more power using our device in a normal everyday fashion. I'm not going to watch 9 hours of video on it

 

[kjparfekt]

I get 4 hours roughly. At 12% as I type and it's a frustrating experience because I'm temporary lodging so I have no desk and there is not a single plug near me where I end up doing most work. I solved this by getting a $5 external battery on a slickdeal for my iPhone/iPad but don't really want to spend the money on a quality external battery pack that would let me charge my SP4 because I'd still need to drop extra money on a second charging adapter since I prefer to leave the power cord plugged in next to my bed where I charge all of my devices nightly.

Considering this is how long it lasts now I can't imagine it lasting more than 30 minutes in 2 years which would be painful for such a portable device.

 

[ttsoldier]

I don't understand your response. One buys a product considering the value and offering claimed by the seller. It is not about how much I should expect but more about delivering the claim. If Microsoft would have been honest about battery life, I have no issues. But selling the product for 9 hours and then getting half of it has nothing to do with satisfaction. I don't want to even start the conversation on what other tablets are offering and how they are able to give 8 plus hours of battery life.

so you're saying if Microsoft announced 4-5 hours, you would have been fine?

Please, tell me about these other tablets that are offering 8hours battery life....

 

[ioaniro]

Microsoft states, "Up to 9 hours of video playback. Testing conducted by Microsoft in September 2015 using preproduction Intel? Core™ i5, 256GB, 8GB RAM device. Testing consisted of full battery discharge during video playback. All settings were default except: Wi-Fi was associated with a network. Battery life varies significantly with settings, usage, and other factors."

Of video playback, and doing nothing else? We probably draw more power using our device in a normal everyday fashion. I'm not going to watch 9 hours of video on it

The newer processors are optimized for stuff Intel thinks people need/want/use, in this case video playback. So while you might get 9h of video playback you will not get the same battery life when using the same settings and just write in word or onenote even if that should, in theory, consume less battery. This is why most reviews get decent battery life on the loop video test (some even close to the 9 hours mark). For a device marketed for productivity Microsoft should have however advertised the battery life in a different scenario (not pure entertainment).

 

[boltman2013]

Do you believe gas mileage claims too people? Or wifi speeds?

This is such a non-issue

Wake up to the world and product claims

 

[MobileVortex]

I sat and did some heavy web surfing and youtube watching while video skyping. and got about 6 hours last night, but i had the brightness at 10%. i've honestly never had my brightness over %50... While i would love to have better battery life, i'm defiantly not outraged..

 

[bugelrex]

The battery life should be revisited after today's "Threshold" update. I wish MS had not chosen to put a smaller battery in the SP4 vs the SP3

 

[Krystianpants]

Chrome can actually kill battery especially with hardware acceleration enabled which is the default.

 

[badMojo69]

Do you believe gas mileage claims too people? Or wifi speeds?

This is such a non-issue

Wake up to the world and product claims

This has gotten much better over the past few years. My car gets nicely over it's estimated MPG.
Also this is an issue claiming 9 hours (All day use) is complete and utter BS in most normal use cases it's not 1/2 of that.

 

[Marcin Dabrowsky]

My battery life sucks big time. Also, the damn display driver keeps crashing. I don't understand why the hell there are so many issues with this if it is so similar to my SP3 that I gave to my wife. I am ready to return this pos.

 

[boltman2013]

My battery life sucks big time. Also, the damn display driver keeps crashing. I don't understand why the hell there are so many issues with this if it is so similar to my SP3 that I gave to my wife. I am ready to return this pos.

Its 4000 new parts out of 20000 or 20% different...I have not heard ff any M3's having issues only i5's..which is back to my premise i5 is not a good choice for this SP4

 

[badMojo69]

Intel drivers! Still why did Microsoft allow them to be rushed out before they were ready...maybe to beat the Ipad Pro?
Which is beyond me seeing at that thing is...well just huge for the sake of being huge.

 

[Marcin Dabrowsky]

Its 4000 new parts out of 20000 or 20% different...I have not heard ff any M3's having issues only i5's..which is back to my premise i5 is not a good choice for this SP4

Does this mean that they will eventually fix all the bs through firmware updates? I don't want an m3, I'd get an surface 3 (non-pro) if I was going to go with a low powered machine, or stick with the air 2

 

[snakebitten]

Just loaded 10586 on the SP4. Here's hoping that this amazing machine is even more amazing.