Can someone please explain this

[bjablonka8120]

I had some major issues with battery life (max 4 hours watching videos) and fan/heat where the fan was running constantly and the heat was extreme in the upper right hand corner. I was ready to return it to Bestbuy when I gave it one more try. I opened up the display brightness slider in power options and adjusted it first to the right and then back down to what I thought it was originally (I might have gone a couple of mm lower). I then started netflix and played it for close to 5 hours and had 49% battery life left and the fan did not come on a single time. No heat issues anymore, the back is cool. I cannot explain this Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[CustomSurfaceP2]

I find HD videos draw more CPU power such as 1080p and 1440p videos, netflix is usually in SD or 480p or 720p HD? Not sure if that's the reason, but the only one I can think of. I watch a lot of videos and draw a lot using mangastudio, I get about 8hours on battery life, sometime 9.

 

[bkydcmpr]

I had some major issues with battery life (max 4 hours watching videos) and fan/heat where the fan was running constantly and the heat was extreme in the upper right hand corner. I was ready to return it to Bestbuy when I gave it one more try. I opened up the display brightness slider in power options and adjusted it first to the right and then back down to what I thought it was originally (I might have gone a couple of mm lower). I then started netflix and played it for close to 5 hours and had 49% battery life left and the fan did not come on a single time. No heat issues anymore, the back is cool. I cannot explain this Any ideas?

Thanks

what player did you use for the first one? I know some player/codec combinations like videoclan/vcl use more battery than others. netflix is using silverlight if played in ie and it's quite efficient even in full hd. when do the comparison, you have to use the same software to play exactly the same video.

 

[bjablonka8120]

Before and after I used the normal Netflix app. That is why it doesn't make sense to me. Don't get me wrong I am happy about it because I couldn't stand the noise and heat. Was already looking for another hybrid but could find one either.

 

[DanL]

Did you by chance do a reset or hard reboot before the second round of movies?

 

[bjablonka8120]

Did you by chance do a reset or hard reboot before the second round of movies?

No I didn't, but good idea.

 

[Seneleron]

I think a lot of people forget about disk indexing and windows automatic updates, but disk accessing heats the CRAP out of mobile computers. I can't tell you WHY, but I've seen it on all 3 Surface Pros, a 2012 MSI 683-DXR, an old Asus G73-jh, a 2014 MSI Ghost, and a 2014 Razer Blade pro. If you're just sitting there and it suddenly kicks on and heats up, you can almost guarantee that's what's causing it.

I can't SAY that this caused the O/Ps issue, but I'd suspect it. Fortunately, disabling indexing/windows search is a very simple matter

 

[vancamp]

In the "old days", the latency (waiting) involved with hard disk access would keep the CPU from running at that high a CPU level. Now, with SSD's, there's not nearly the amount of idle time on the CPU, which means it runs faster and hotter.

If a device seems to be hotter than expected (from what you're doing), check to see what's going on in the background using the task manager. There's usually something else that kicked in (indexing, anti-virus, background process, etc.)

 

[bjablonka8120]

Thanks so much for your comments. So far it has not heated up again. Will monitor.