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Guide: All About Battery Life

Bruno28

New Member
I did a factory reset as I got it 2 weeks ago.

I was using vlc to play MKS files on 720p.
Should I do another factory reset and start over again?
 

Bruno28

New Member
It's vlc player from their website. The app store only plays full screen. Is there a way to play it in window?
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
It's vlc player from their website. The app store only plays full screen. Is there a way to play it in window?
On Windows 8.x only with 3rd Party Software, on Windows 10 yes Universal Apps can be Windowed.

VLC Win32 is most likely the cause, other culprits tend to be Chrome and over-aggressive security suites....
 

Bruno28

New Member
I'll try on vlc from app store and report back. Thanks for tge info on app power consumption. I had no idea.
 

Bruno28

New Member
Ok. So after some test of using IE and watching videos on vlc from windows app store, I still only got 5 hours.

What's best to do with the charge cycles on the li-ions of these computers?
Always charge fully to 100% and always drain fully to 0%?
I've heard we should only discharge to 20% and once a month to 0%.
What's your experience with this to get a good longevity on the batteries?
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
Ok. So after some test of using IE and watching videos on vlc from windows app store, I still only got 5 hours.

What's best to do with the charge cycles on the li-ions of these computers?
Always charge fully to 100% and always drain fully to 0%?
I've heard we should only discharge to 20% and once a month to 0%.
What's your experience with this to get a good longevity on the batteries?
The batteries in the Surface Pro 3 are designed for 1500-2000 Charge Cycles which 2-3x greater than the industry standards (most tablets and laptops have 600-700 charge cycles), the theory is that within 3 years you would still have at least 80% Capacity. Microsoft's recommendation is to at least run that battery down below 10% once a month. If you are getting down to 0 that is impressive as with the standard Power Scheme it hibernates if it gets below 6%.

If you are still only getting 5 hours with Video Playback, what Codec are you using on your movies? What else is running? Have you killed all of the Chrome background processes? Which video driver are you using?
 

Bruno28

New Member
The batteries in the Surface Pro 3 are designed for 1500-2000 Charge Cycles which 2-3x greater than the industry standards (most tablets and laptops have 600-700 charge cycles), the theory is that within 3 years you would still have at least 80% Capacity. Microsoft's recommendation is to at least run that battery down below 10% once a month. If you are getting down to 0 that is impressive as with the standard Power Scheme it hibernates if it gets below 6%.

If you are still only getting 5 hours with Video Playback, what Codec are you using on your movies? What else is running? Have you killed all of the Chrome background processes? Which video driver are you using?

I can get to 1% and sometimes 0% before it forces into hibernate.
I don't use Chrome Web browser. I did the test on the IE but I like using Firefox.
The format of videos watched where .mkv in 720p.
And I used the VLC from windows app store.
Nothing else was running beside the task manager screen. So I can monitor how much % of processor and screen is used.

During Internet use I had about 2 tabs open most times. Both tests done with 20% brightness.
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
I can get to 1% and sometimes 0% before it forces into hibernate.
I don't use Chrome Web browser. I did the test on the IE but I like using Firefox.
The format of videos watched where .mkv in 720p.
And I used the VLC from windows app store.
Nothing else was running beside the task manager screen. So I can monitor how much % of processor and screen is used.

During Internet use I had about 2 tabs open most times. Both tests done with 20% brightness.
Use and installed on the system are two different things, if Chrome is installed it has background processes. Also mkv files are just a "wrapper", so they were encoded with a codec, that codec will either render in CPU or GPU, those that render in CPU use more battery power. Also, task manage open consumes resources.

If you are curious what is consuming use the powercfg command from an elevated CMD Prompt with the switches /energy and run it again with /batteryreport as the other, do an advanced search on how to use these....
 
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