How to get 8+ hours?

[firemountain]

Hello


I had first gen Surface Pro and had about 3 hours of battery life, and I read all that comments that people get ~6 hours from it. I tried all recommendations but never got more than 4 hours.


Now I bye the second gen device, it had 33 cycles on battery, so it’s alive. However, I can't get more than 5-5:30 hours from it, by reviews and other users claims about 8 or even 10 hours.


So what I do wrong?

My average usecase is MS Office + Chrome , WiFi, 30% brightness and type cover connected.


Not mentioned the games, I think device survives about 2-2:30 hours of gaming (I played recently Far Cry Blood Dragon runs good in 720p)


Sorry for my English.

 

[leeshor]

Welcome to the forum

Some other people will chime in with some technical under the hood suggestions but I would look at your live tile activity, mail fetch/sync frequency and any other background processes. You may also want to see what improvement you get if you use the Meto IE for a few cycles to replace Chrome. It's a known battery sucker.

 

[dutchiedave]

Most likely it is because of chrome.

I get 6hrs on average according to the battery report, and actual usage.

If performance is not an issue apparently you can turn down the maximum processor state to significantly extend battery life, but I haven't tested it.

 

[firemountain]

Thank you for your reply

I decreased to 70% maximum processor state, and switch to IE modern ui.
Also I find useful link to the SP3 battery guide.

Hope the results will be better

 

[toaf]

if you got a sp2 i would get a power cover, makes allot of difference. i almost never use it as a keyboard but at least its a cover.

 

[GoodBytes]

Chrome is a battery eater. Reviews confirm this.
For the best battery life, and as must as you don't like to hear it, it is true: IE11.
Second place, and actually very close to IE, is Firefox.

So my recommendation is get Firefox.

This will help. In addition, setting the Surface Pro to Power Saver when on battery will help out further. Of course, expect a performance hit when doing this. In the Power Saver power plan, you can even set the min and max CPU. Set the minimum to 0%, and maximum to 30% or 50% to lock it at its low speed. Of course, you'll get a performance hit again, but you gain battery life. There is no magic solution.

Lastly, you can get Intel Extreme Tuning Utility, found on Intel web site, and you can down volt the CPU a bit to reduce system heat, noise, and increase battery life. The trade off is that the system might be less stable (can have BSODs or software/drivers crash on you), all depending on the CPU, and how far you go in reducing the voltage. Every CPU is different, as its location on the production wafer maters. Intel uses the same specification for all chip produced for the CPU model you have, and assume worst case scenario to provide the highest yield. So you may not be able to drop voltage a bit (and now you know you got the worst chip, and probably was on the edge of teh silicon wafer), or can drop a lot without any problem, even after 24h of testing, and you can see that probably your CPU was dead at the center of the silicon wafer.

 

[hertsjoatmon]

I had wondered why my battery life was low and the tablet got warm when browsing. I've not read up on browsers for a while though. Time to move away from Chrome it looks like!...

 

[firemountain]

Quick update.
Didn't use chrome, undervolted a little bit, max frequency 70% in power saver plan
I'm glad with result.

But sometimes device stars heating because of windows defender, so what antivirus can you recommend?

 

[Mini]

how much undervolting have you applied to your device?

 

[firemountain]

At start I made -70 everywhere and it's stable for me, so I didn't try anything else.