After one day of use - some minor issues (mostly battery life)

[king182]

First of all I want to say “Hi” to all of you!

This board is really a great place to learn about the Surface-world and after all the reading over the last year I´ve decided to chip in after I bought my Surface 2 yesterday.
I´ve let out the first generation (I´m still impressed I was able to do that…) and what I can say after one day of heavy use is that I am very IMPRESSED. Great device and finally MS was able to put it out right away also in Austria…

Despite all the positive experiences I came across some (hopefully) minor problem. Hope you guys can help me: (Note: I haven´t changed any of the power saving settings, screen brightness is still balanced  maybe there is room for improvement with some little changes???)

1. How long does your Surface 2 Charge?
After the unboxing mine was done in approximately one hour. I unplugged it right after it hit 100% and then I used it for more or less 5-6 hours. Was a bit disappointing because I heard about at least 10 hours.
I was watching 2 hours nba league pass and the rest of the time multitasking with videos and music.
My second loading circle was about 2 hours (I left it plugged in for a few additional hours)  Is your loading circle also that short? I thought the Surface would take a lot longer to load…

2. Battery power is pretty fast going down. After a few minutes of typing (just typing) already 5% are gone…
3. When you done charging, is there also the purple light still on (on the charger)? I thought the light should go off after the device is done loading. (It´s this way with all my other electronica…)
4. Do you guys also experience a quite loud sound (piep) and a little vibration when hitting the windows button? If yes – how can I turn that off?

Sorry for the long text.
I wanted to cover everything. I had a big issue with the battery life before (with a Sony Vaio), so I´m a bit paranoid when it comes to shorter running time than expected…
Hope you guys can give me some tips!

THANKS!

 

[fastfed]

lol dude..

My first test after a 100% battery was about 4 hours, straight usage.


it died.. Which is NORMAL! I cycled this process (full charge and it dying) about 2 or 3 times.

Now I'm getting anywhere from 8-12 hours of use! I can play videos 10 hours straight at low brightness.
bottom line, they are not nicad batteries, they should't need much of a "break in" lithium still will break in regardless what manufactures want to claim.

After it dies let it sit for a few minutes and then charge it.. you can turn it on if you want. Then do this cycle a few more times.

 

[fastfed]

oh and for the windows softkey on the bottom.. yet it will have tactical feedback (vibration) so minor I don't know why anyone would want that off.

As for the sound, I hear nothing

 

[beman39]

OP what you have to realize is that all tablets and electrical devices that have rechargeable batts need to be conditioned for the first few times, so that means that you have to drain the battery till the device shuts off and charge it FULLY and then repeat the process again and that should bring the battery to optimal charging levels/state and you will see your Surface last longer...

 

[king182]

Ok, thanks. But I am sure the magazines which did the tests did not go through a few cycles before doing the battery test, and they get out 10+ hours - that´s what I find a bit strange...

And how long does you Surface Charge? Also done after ~2hrs?

 

[beman39]

well we don't know what Microsoft did before sending them the testing unit, MS could have conditioned the battery before sending it to them. I think that would be wise for MS to do. and as for charging time, well that depends on how depleted the battery is, the more depleted the longer the charging time...

 

[jnjroach]

Also... remember that when you set up a new Windows Machine it does many background tasks like indexing and optimizing the SSD, this also impacts battery. Also we tend to load up the machine with our data and load applications, setup email accounts, etc...all of this impacts the initial battery life.

I can get anywhere from 9 to 14 hours on my Surface 2 with normal use, getting 6 to 8 with the Pro 2.

From 0-5% battery to fully charged takes 90 to 120 minutes.

 

[king182]

and as for charging time, well that depends on how depleted the battery is, the more depleted the longer the charging time...

Wow really...
It is clear that it depends on how much battery is left - I just wanted to know what loading times you guys experienced. 2hrs is a pretty fair time compared to other devices.

 

[king182]

I can get anywhere from 9 to 14 hours on my Surface 2
.

Was it this way right "from the beginnig" (after a few cycles)?

 

[EMINENT]

I've actually noticed mine increase after a few days. One thing you might want to do is turn off auto brightness.

 

[king182]

That´s good to hear.

I will make a testrun tomorrow - playing a video all day nonestop to see when the Surface shuts down automatically. Will be interesting to see if I can get similar results all the magazines have experienced.

 

[fastfed]

When I first got my Surface 2, I used it normally and got 3-4 hours if I remember correctly, it died and I let it sit on the charger for a while.

I then turned it back on, went to max brightness and looped HD videos non stop. after almost 7 hours or whatever it was, I kept looking at it waiting for it to die , lol.
It must of been at 5% for almost an hours, lol.

Now its fine