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Battery Life

kristalsoldier

Well-Known Member
Hi All...

Considering that my SP4 is having battery issues, I am seriously thinking about picking up the SP6 (i5/ 256) within the next few days or so.

I wanted to know what has been your experience with the SP6 battery life. Battery life is important to me as I travel (sometimes) and work remotely (very often). Usually, I am on 2 or 3 Word documents, 2 or 3 PDF documents, Edge (usually) with 4 tabs or so open with sync set to OneDrive, Telegram desktop app open, and I am connected to a WiFI connect on work premises (relatively good) and at home (very good). On my SP4 I get about 2 hr 40 mins, which is totally abysmal.

MS says the SP6 delivers about 13 hours of battery life. But i am guessing this is under very controlled conditions. Even if the battery life is around 8 hours (with the above-mentioned usage), then that works perfectly for me. Standby time is important too, especially when traveling (again, this is something that is horrible on the SP4 - my experience).

Can you guys please give me an insight into your real-life battery experience on the SP6?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: Pity about the SP4 though because in every other way the machine seems to be doing fine!!

Edit 2: Picked up the Surface Laptop 2 today. Interesting and new experience!
 
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Fast-T

Member
My experience so far:

Consuming media in airplanes (either via streaming or offline) my SP6 lasts for a complete intercontinental flight to Asia. Doing office work like you do with a few ppt's and word documents open, I get between 5-7 hours, depending on the complexity of work. I usually run the device in power savings mode.
Some apps such as Flipboard and LinkedIn tend to consume lots of battery, so I keep them closed unless I really use them.
What I have learned is during the first couple of days battery life is terrible due to indexing and photo thumbnails creation. I have a 85gb photo library and let the surface on power for the first night to let Windows do what it does. After a few days, battery life stayed constant. However, a lot depends on what little helpers are running in the background. Keep startup items disabled unless you need them really at windows start.

6h should be doable.

Sent from my SM-N960U1 using Tapatalk
 

Turbo4AWD

Active Member
I get roughly 10hrs per charge out of my Surface Pro 6. It does depend on what I am doing or what apps I run, however somehow I managed to get 10hrs use while playing "Northgard" for at least an hour during that time frame. The days of burning my lap are over and I won't look back unless its a gaming laptop. I make an exception for those because I keep them on a desk/table. Surface Pro 6 for me from now on for work/consumption. Lapability claims are just ridiculous denial of accepting new tech.
 
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kristalsoldier

kristalsoldier

Well-Known Member
Thanks. As I mentioned via edits above, I had picked up a SL2 but returned it for a ThinkPad. Battery life is very good though AR sucks, imo, that is!
 

Gamendorf

New Member
What I have learned is during the first couple of days battery life is terrible due to indexing and photo thumbnails creation. I have a 85gb photo library and let the surface on power for the first night to let Windows do what it does. After a few days, battery life stayed constant. However, a lot depends on what little helpers are running in the background. Keep startup items disabled unless you need them really at windows start

This makes me feel better. On my first charge right now and dropped 20% in just about 30 minutes.
 
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