Greetings,
I'm on Day 2 of my Surface Pro 4 experience and thought I'd share the findings from my one-time, non-scientific battery study with you all.
Introduction
Prior to this SP4, I owned an SP3 i5 8GB 256GB that I purchased shortly after they were released. It wasn't until the third one after returning the first two that I settled on one that didn't have some sort of issue. After the dust settled, I was running Windows 8.1 and getting around 8-9 hours of battery life with it. Then I upgraded to Windows 10 and battery life was reduced to 6-7 hours. I suspect that it was mostly due to the fan, since it was on most of the time when plugged in to the dock, even when I had Chrome closed (and set to not run in the background). On any given day, I use Office products, both locally installed and via Office 365. I also use Photoshop daily (probably average around 2 hours per day) and Illustrator a couple of times per week (at approximately an hour per instance). Beyond that, I'm using an assortment of tools that I use to build websites (primarily WinSCP and Notepad++). I also use Chrome as my daily driver browser, despite knowing that it is considered a battery hog -- I use several Chrome extensions that help me with my work and I simply cannot function properly without them (note also that hardware acceleration is turned off in Chrome settings). Additionally, I have Hitman Pro Alert running in the background. I did make a point to disable auto-startup for unnecessary processes related to Adobe updates, Spotify web helper, etc.
I decided that many of my problems with the SP3 were due to the fact that I got the first couple from very early batches. The third one was a bit later on and didn't have any troubles (other than the ongoing fan in W10). So this time, I decided to wait until the SP4 had been out in the wild for awhile first, keeping up on the forums here at Windows Central to see what others were experiencing. From what I read, I'm glad I waited until the drivers had been mostly ironed out. Interestingly, I ordered my SP4 and it arrived the same day as the latest drivers were released.
Before The Study
The first thing I did after unboxing the SP4 was perform a full reset, based on suggestions from others here in the forums. I had read about issues people were having right out of the box, which had been fixed after they ran a reset. So I didn't waste anytime at all jumping right into that. Besides, what could it hurt? Then I installed all of the software I needed, configured OneDrive for my personal and business accounts, allowed OneDrive to complete syncing, and made sure I had all of the latest updates. I also made sure the battery was fully charged overnight.
Next, I took more advice from the forums by performing the registry tweak to enable more power options. I then set my SP4 to use the Power Saver plan and configured it as follows:
I also turned off standby wifi and completely disabled hibernation.
Then I completely shut down the SP4 and left it plugged in while I grabbed a cup of coffee (and drank it) to ensure it would truly be at 100% battery.
During The Study
While I conducted the study, I worked. What I mean is, I worked on actual client projects -- I viewed and responded to emails in the Outlook web app, edited some graphics in Photoshop (about 30 minutes), watched a couple of videos (about 2 minutes each), edited some files via FTP, and used Chrome extensively (it was open for the entire study and used most of that time).
As the day went on, I occasionally checked the battery level by hovering on the battery icon in the taskbar. I was hoping to catch it at 10% intervals, but time got away from me several times. Still, I think I managed to collect a good sampling of unscientific data. With that, here is the data I collected:
Study Results
I think it's safe to say that my overall usage, averaged over the entire study period, would be somewhere between low and moderate. That said, you can see that I got 5 hours and 13 minutes out of it. I'd be willing to bet that the biggest overall drain was probably Chrome. If I had used Edge, I'm thinking my numbers would likely have been a bit better.
This is about what I expected so I'm not really disappointed. Would I like to get more time? Sure. But I was very productive during those 5 hours and I'm rarely away from a power outlet for more than a few hours at a time anyway.
Not sure if this is helpful for anyone, but I hope so. :-)
I'm on Day 2 of my Surface Pro 4 experience and thought I'd share the findings from my one-time, non-scientific battery study with you all.
Introduction
Prior to this SP4, I owned an SP3 i5 8GB 256GB that I purchased shortly after they were released. It wasn't until the third one after returning the first two that I settled on one that didn't have some sort of issue. After the dust settled, I was running Windows 8.1 and getting around 8-9 hours of battery life with it. Then I upgraded to Windows 10 and battery life was reduced to 6-7 hours. I suspect that it was mostly due to the fan, since it was on most of the time when plugged in to the dock, even when I had Chrome closed (and set to not run in the background). On any given day, I use Office products, both locally installed and via Office 365. I also use Photoshop daily (probably average around 2 hours per day) and Illustrator a couple of times per week (at approximately an hour per instance). Beyond that, I'm using an assortment of tools that I use to build websites (primarily WinSCP and Notepad++). I also use Chrome as my daily driver browser, despite knowing that it is considered a battery hog -- I use several Chrome extensions that help me with my work and I simply cannot function properly without them (note also that hardware acceleration is turned off in Chrome settings). Additionally, I have Hitman Pro Alert running in the background. I did make a point to disable auto-startup for unnecessary processes related to Adobe updates, Spotify web helper, etc.
I decided that many of my problems with the SP3 were due to the fact that I got the first couple from very early batches. The third one was a bit later on and didn't have any troubles (other than the ongoing fan in W10). So this time, I decided to wait until the SP4 had been out in the wild for awhile first, keeping up on the forums here at Windows Central to see what others were experiencing. From what I read, I'm glad I waited until the drivers had been mostly ironed out. Interestingly, I ordered my SP4 and it arrived the same day as the latest drivers were released.
Before The Study
The first thing I did after unboxing the SP4 was perform a full reset, based on suggestions from others here in the forums. I had read about issues people were having right out of the box, which had been fixed after they ran a reset. So I didn't waste anytime at all jumping right into that. Besides, what could it hurt? Then I installed all of the software I needed, configured OneDrive for my personal and business accounts, allowed OneDrive to complete syncing, and made sure I had all of the latest updates. I also made sure the battery was fully charged overnight.
Next, I took more advice from the forums by performing the registry tweak to enable more power options. I then set my SP4 to use the Power Saver plan and configured it as follows:
- Display brightness: 50%
- CPU minimum (battery): 50%
- CPU maximum (battery): 70%
I also turned off standby wifi and completely disabled hibernation.
Then I completely shut down the SP4 and left it plugged in while I grabbed a cup of coffee (and drank it) to ensure it would truly be at 100% battery.
During The Study
While I conducted the study, I worked. What I mean is, I worked on actual client projects -- I viewed and responded to emails in the Outlook web app, edited some graphics in Photoshop (about 30 minutes), watched a couple of videos (about 2 minutes each), edited some files via FTP, and used Chrome extensively (it was open for the entire study and used most of that time).
As the day went on, I occasionally checked the battery level by hovering on the battery icon in the taskbar. I was hoping to catch it at 10% intervals, but time got away from me several times. Still, I think I managed to collect a good sampling of unscientific data. With that, here is the data I collected:
- 09:47 -- Power on
- 10:31 -- 90% remaining
- 11:36 -- 70% remaining
- 13:46 -- 30% remaining
- 14:03 -- 21% remaining (battery saver auto-activates)
- 14:43 -- 10% remaining
- 15:00 -- 6% remaining (battery icon claims 30 minutes left)
Study Results
I think it's safe to say that my overall usage, averaged over the entire study period, would be somewhere between low and moderate. That said, you can see that I got 5 hours and 13 minutes out of it. I'd be willing to bet that the biggest overall drain was probably Chrome. If I had used Edge, I'm thinking my numbers would likely have been a bit better.
This is about what I expected so I'm not really disappointed. Would I like to get more time? Sure. But I was very productive during those 5 hours and I'm rarely away from a power outlet for more than a few hours at a time anyway.
Not sure if this is helpful for anyone, but I hope so. :-)
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