battery life for surface pro a concern?
- Thread starter tatwood
- Start date
The short lifespan of an Intel tablet's battery is one of the reasons I went for RT over Pro. If you're looking for an Intel tablet with long battery life, my recommendation is to actually avoid the Surface Pro, and choose a tablet with an Intel Clover Trail CPU.
J515OP
Super Moderator
Just look at the average time for similar laptops. The real world usage will be similar. Most i5 processors are getting between 4-6 hours of battery life in run down tests. These are actually quite amazing battery life times considering the small size (and therefore small batteries) and far better than laptops were getting a few years ago.
You shouldn't have any more battery concerns than with any other laptop. The battery life of the Surface Pro isn't "short" it is average (assuming 5 hours reported) for this devices class. If your real world usage is more sporadic than looping video at 65% brightness (or whatever they do) then you can expect to get a longer day out of your device unless you are doing something like an hour long gaming session or CPU intensive work.
Here is a standard chart included in most Verge reviews.
BATTERY LIFE
Acer Aspire M5-481TG 5:37
Acer Aspire M5-481PT 5:34
Dell XPS 12 4:33
Acer Aspire S7 (13-inch) 3:55
HP Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 5:11
Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13 5:08
MacBook Air (13-inch, mid-2012) 5:34
Lenovo ThinkPad X230 7:10
Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A 5:46
HP Envy Spectre XT 5:21
Samsung Series 9 (13-inch, X3C) 5:19
Dell XPS 13 4:55
You shouldn't have any more battery concerns than with any other laptop. The battery life of the Surface Pro isn't "short" it is average (assuming 5 hours reported) for this devices class. If your real world usage is more sporadic than looping video at 65% brightness (or whatever they do) then you can expect to get a longer day out of your device unless you are doing something like an hour long gaming session or CPU intensive work.
Here is a standard chart included in most Verge reviews.
BATTERY LIFE
Acer Aspire M5-481TG 5:37
Acer Aspire M5-481PT 5:34
Dell XPS 12 4:33
Acer Aspire S7 (13-inch) 3:55
HP Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 5:11
Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13 5:08
MacBook Air (13-inch, mid-2012) 5:34
Lenovo ThinkPad X230 7:10
Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A 5:46
HP Envy Spectre XT 5:21
Samsung Series 9 (13-inch, X3C) 5:19
Dell XPS 13 4:55
J515OP
Super Moderator
Welcome tatwood. Not sure where you fly but "most" flights is totally relative. For my most frequent flight the time listed is 116 minutes (less than 2 hours) for a 900+ mile route. Subtract take off and landing times where you have to have the device powered off and it is probably a lot closer to 90 minutes. Based on the chart above I wouldn't have any issues with any of the recent ultrabook type laptops. If you are a long haul flyer you may need to invest in battery packs no matter what laptop spec'd device you go with.
JP
J515OP
Super Moderator
I guess this is also a relative matter. I don't think the reported 5 hours is bad at all but some how it has turned "short," "bad," "horrible," and "concern" in most references. I understand it is an important feature but it was never an issue like this for other laptops. Sort of like the whole 128GB of storage thing. Not an issue on other laptops then becomes an issue with Surface Pro because you "only" have 83GB of free space and the world is going to end. Apple suddenly makes a 128GB iPad and it becomes an enterprise device because it can hold large files. Craziness I tell you
I guess this is also a relative matter. I don't think the reported 5 hours is bad at all but some how it has turned "short," "bad," "horrible," and "concern" in most references. I understand it is an important feature but it was never an issue like this for other laptops. Sort of like the whole 128GB of storage thing. Not an issue on other laptops then becomes an issue with Surface Pro because you "only" have 83GB of free space and the world is going to end. Apple suddenly makes a 128GB iPad and it becomes an enterprise device because it can hold large files. Craziness I tell you
I agree totally. It's incredible to read the wording of the articles: "Apple reveal...", "Apple release..." versus "Microsoft admit..." etc. about devices with about 30gb diff in memory and one runs a full OS and has expandable storage, and the other doesn't.
It is an issue with me, because the Surface Pro is a tablet, but the short (for a tablet) battery life would make me treat it as a laptop. It is a compromise, and although I think a reasonable one for now for the power, I seriously look forward to the time in the near future when compromise will not be necessary.
