Terrible battery life of surface pro 4 - do you agree?
- Thread starter smanmit2
- Start date
Hi, thanks for the suggestion. I will try it, but for instance this morning I uswd the fully charged device for about 15 minutes and now about 30 minutes no flash sites. The battery shows 72%left and 3 hours 30 min left... The problem with disableing flash is that the win 10 ecosystem has very few usable apps, you have to visit the websites and many of them demands flash, like the tv channels to watch shows. If I had an ipad I could simply use the app... So I have to say I am rather disappointed in this device, and adding to the pain the screen often has a small flicker when in low light setting in dim lit room 
While I agree this isn't great, it's not a deal breaker for me. A lot of my usage is when I have access to a power socket anyway. The other tablets with Skylake CPU such as HP Spectre X2 aren't any better either in terms of battery life.
neo158
Active member
zkyevolved
New member
I'm also getting around 7 hours of usage time, with suggested screen brightness along with wifi and location and bluetooth on. I'm not an intense user. I browse the web, edit documents and powerpoints. Sometimes I stream my music from Google Music.
I do, however, get bad standby time. Today I did a sleep study and I got the graphics card as the top offender, by far.
Can anyone confirm or deny that using the beta drivers will alleviate this? Right now I'm sitting at 71% battery life after a morning of usage, and 3 hours of sleep (but in reality, only 2 since it goes into hibernate after 2).
I think it's actually decent battery life of USAGE... But def. not bad. Can it be improved upon? Sure, why not.
I do, however, get bad standby time. Today I did a sleep study and I got the graphics card as the top offender, by far.
Can anyone confirm or deny that using the beta drivers will alleviate this? Right now I'm sitting at 71% battery life after a morning of usage, and 3 hours of sleep (but in reality, only 2 since it goes into hibernate after 2).
I think it's actually decent battery life of USAGE... But def. not bad. Can it be improved upon? Sure, why not.
The beta drivers don't, I can confirm that. You can test yourself, and if you don't like it, roll back the driver.
I'm using a driver from September, and it's at 1% per hour now. I posted the following over at answers.microsoft.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...scussion/d9dae553-97af-45af-bcb8-f94c94e92f6f
I'm really hoping that it's a driver issue and will be addressed in a future update. The advantage of the beta driver is that there is a lot less crashing in Edge, if you like to use it.
I would love to ditch Chrome but edge is not compatible with lastpass and firefox has terrible scrolling on surface 4. So there are no viable alternatives...��
badMojo69
New member
No normal user is going to jump though all these hoops to get this thing to work as advertised.
Microsoft failed when it comes to battery life.
Microsoft failed when it comes to battery life.
I would like to add my small experience so far.
I bought a i5/8/256 four days ago.
And i have read before that a user had fan problem with a batch/lot #1541. So I checked that before i bought it.
My Surface Pro 4 has a lot #1544 and so far i havent been bothered by the fan.
I have to lean close to hear the fan at all. My laptop sounds more, but my Nexus 7 doesnt sound at all.
But its hard to compare these three as they are so different.
I was a bit disappointed when it showed 4h30m on estimated time when the battery was fully charged.
But today I got the november update to 1511 and it took a long time to update.
But after that it was so much better. It said 9h:30m instead.
I have been watching some youtube and just had it relaxed on battery and after 3 hours it still says 75% and more than 6h left.
Im a happy camper and love it.
But I will put it to the test this weekend to see how long the battery can last when I use it continuesly.
I bought a i5/8/256 four days ago.
And i have read before that a user had fan problem with a batch/lot #1541. So I checked that before i bought it.
My Surface Pro 4 has a lot #1544 and so far i havent been bothered by the fan.
I have to lean close to hear the fan at all. My laptop sounds more, but my Nexus 7 doesnt sound at all.
But its hard to compare these three as they are so different.
I was a bit disappointed when it showed 4h30m on estimated time when the battery was fully charged.
But today I got the november update to 1511 and it took a long time to update.
But after that it was so much better. It said 9h:30m instead.
I have been watching some youtube and just had it relaxed on battery and after 3 hours it still says 75% and more than 6h left.
Im a happy camper and love it.
But I will put it to the test this weekend to see how long the battery can last when I use it continuesly.
Last edited:
rocketboy
New member
i5/4GB/128
Really with screen density of the SP4 and its small form factor I can see ~5 hours being realistic if somewhat disappointing. I think as Win10/drivers matures it can get better, but I'm skeptical it could ever hit 9 under real world usage. For me, 6 hours regular usage would be a happy place for me.
- I've found Win10 in general to use more power vs. Win8 regardless of device (I have upgraded a SP2 running Win8.1 and noted decrease in overall battery life).
- I haven't had a chance to use the device on one charge and log the actual usage times since I've had it less than a week, but if I had to project the power consumption I'd say 5 hours tops for my usage (PDF, WiFi, note taking, web browsing).
- I don't trust the time readouts from the OS. It tends to fluctuate wildly within a session.
Really with screen density of the SP4 and its small form factor I can see ~5 hours being realistic if somewhat disappointing. I think as Win10/drivers matures it can get better, but I'm skeptical it could ever hit 9 under real world usage. For me, 6 hours regular usage would be a happy place for me.
neo158
Active member
zkyevolved
New member
Personally I can't find that driver. Could you please sure? I have the ones from 7/15, and the ones from this 10/15... But not the ones from 9/15...
It's dated 9/24/2015, version 10.18.15.4293. There is also 7/17/2015, 10/27/2015, and 11/18/2015 (beta). I can't say why you don't have 9/24/2015.
I've reset this thing a couple times now, including once after installing the beta driver. I'm considering a complete clean install instead of a reset, as a reset seems to keep around previously installed drivers?
zkyevolved
New member
I tried searching for them but that didn't turn up anything on Google. Could you back up those drivers and share them? I'd love to test them out. 4% an hour is outrageous!
Perhaps 4293 was installed when doing a reset from the 10240 image. On Intels website they have a slightly older version, 4279. Perhaps that would work. Otherwise, I'm not sure how I would roll up all the files that make up that driver.
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25274/Intel-Graphics-Driver-for-Windows-7-8-1-10-15-40-
zkyevolved
New member
I'm sure it would be too much of a hassle, but the way to back up a driver is to search on google for an app that backups up drivers! Personally, I've always used dd driver, How To Backup Windows Drivers | Ubergizmo, it's free.
The fan runs when the cpu/gpu generates heat sufficient to warrant the additional cooling created by the running fan. I have mitigated it somewhat by adding entries to the hosts file routing the most common ad sites to local host. Where I am still confused is what is causing the cpu/gpu to generate the heat when the system should be sleeping. When actually using the system, mostly for coding and compiling, I am getting near 6 hours of constant use. I can live with that, but having to hibernate the system any time I'm away it is driving me buggy. I've applied all the MS updates, but all that seemed to make a difference was the eliminating the ads while browsing with Edge.
Did you get a preconfigured host file or did you generate it yourself? Do you have a link?
I find if I leave this site open for a few minutes then the fan will go on and the cpu usage will spike.
I find if I leave this site open for a few minutes then the fan will go on and the cpu usage will spike.
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