Surface Pro - Battery and SD card Woes - Return or Keep it!?

[SirPennywise]

Good Afternoon!
After trying all of the other tablets, Android (Nexus line, Galaxy Line), Ipad 2,3,4,Air, I decided to give the Surface pro a shot. (I purchased it refurbished from a authorized agent, it came with a 30 day no questions asked replacement.)

It was love the first time I began working with it. I've only had it two weeks but the freedom of being able to do anything I want on it is a great feeling!

Now that the new has worn down some I have began trying to setup everything how I want it.. I have ran into a few issues and would love some comments on if I am just too critical or if there could be something deeper.

First off The SD card slot. I originally purchased a Transcend 64GB Class10 U card, (supposedly rated for 30mb/s write/80mb/s read) The card seemed to do fine, I installed a few apps to the card then it stopped working entirely. I could not erase or format the card and nothing else would write to the card. I returned it and picked up a Sandisk 64GB Class10 U card. This one seemed a bit slower but I can read and write to it. I used a program to test the read/write capabilities and I am getting only 3.5MB/s write and 35MB/s read... Seems very slow to me, I installed a game to the card and it sat at 100% usage the entire time with a max write of 3.5MB/s downloading Games from Steam to the card is terrible as well, it causes the download to peak, then drop to nothing while it writes to the card... Its almost unbearable...
I'll put the card in my Macbook Pro's SD slot tonight and test it there to see if its any faster. Just curious if anyone else is getting slow read/write on the pro


Secondly the battery life! UGH! I made a custom power plan, changed all the settings to low , set the display at 15%, cpu throttling to 20% max cpu on battery, set every other option recommend to extend battery life. At 100-99% charged the power meter says it will last 2 hours an 50 minutes.
A friend at work has one and he said he can get 6 hours or so out of his surface pro with similar settings, this seems like a huge difference to me, Do you all normally get life like his ?

I am wondering if it may be worth a shot swapping this for another one, Or getting a refund and putting that towards the Pro2.... other than the SD card woes and the low battery life the thing works great
I'd hate to trade two issues like that for possibly some other issues.

Any idea's would be great!

Thanks!

 

[Dane]

I'm not an expert, but I believe SD cards should be reserved for storage, while using the main storage on the device for apps. You'll probably notice better performance using it that way.

As far as battery life goes, try not to read too much into the time estimate that Windows gives you - just remember that it's only an estimate. If you want to reduce battery drain, there are lots of things you can do. Reduce screen brightness will be most effective. Turn off adaptive brightness. Turn off live tiles. Make sure you've run all the Windowns updates. Etc. There are lots of threads on the forum dedicated to battery drain if you want to look around.

 

[SirPennywise]

Thanks for the quick reply!
I understand the storage aspect, I have been pleasantly surprised that I have been able to install and play many games from the SD card <Skyrim, League of Legends, Torchlight II, Civ5, etc.> The reading seems to be fast enough to allow them to play, just the initial install writing to the card is painful.

As for the battery, I realize that its all relative, but I guess I have been spoiled by my Macbook pro 15" <about 8 hours of battery life> and my Ipads <15+ hour battery life without trying to do anything special to save battery> having to put everything on the lowest settings possible and barely being able to read the screen because the back light is so low to get over 2 and a half hours on a full charge seems pretty excessive to me.

Being refurbished maybe I am looking for any excuse.

 

[Wayne Orwig]

Is the actual battery life only 2.5 hours, or are you only looking at the estimate.
If the actual life is 2.5, I would get it swapped out. Or if you really plan to run battery heavy programs, get your money back and put toward the pro2.

 

[munakib]

The battery seems really off, did you buy it as a manufacturers refurbished? Doesnt that mean, MS also covers you for 1 year? Contact the seller and get a clear feedback - most likely, get it replaced.

 

[lovemysurface]

Agreed,

It seems a lot short. We did some benchmarking and saw closer to 5 hours for the Surface Pro (Gen 1)

Surface Pro 2 Battery Life Benchmark Test - Love my Surface

The Pro 2, of course, did better but it seems you're only getting half the life you should unless you're steaming movies over wireless 100% of the time. Return it.