Trick to reduce battery drain in sleep!

[leebo]

Ok, seen this discussed over at Reddit so can't take credit for this.

If you install the Hyper-V feature in Windows 10 on your Surface Pro 4 and reboot as prompted after the install you should now see your Surface Pro 4 enter Low Power mode (DRIPs) during Connected Standby sleep and see a lower drain rate on your battery during sleep. I have tested this and it is working for me along with a couple of other users over on Reddit.

It's still not perfect, as although it is now entering a "Low Power State" it is seems not to be able to completely put the SOC into it's lowest power mode which is indicated as a percentage against the 'HW: Low Power State'. So still work for Microsoft / Intel to do!

 

[leeshor]

That has been brought up before though it's been a while. You may also want to check this. Four ways to improve Surface Pro 4 battery life

 

[stammie]

A word of caution over this Hyper-V "fix",
I thought I'd try it out, I didn't see much battery improvement in sleep although I do still have Windows Hello enabled which might explain that,
but more alarmingly the next day my screen kept going very flickery then going off altogether, after rebooting the screen worked again (cue huge sighs of relief on my part).
I found I could reproduce this fault using Edge on certain websites every time I visited them most notably Facebook (hey don't judge me lol) and I was also getting random bsods which I've never had before on my SP4, I then narrowed this down to Hyper-V from the new things I've installed/enabled recently, disabling Hyper-V has resulted in an error free SP4 again, phew.

 

[ptapang]

I tried this, and even though my surface book goes into low power It ended up being even worse battery drain. I lost 54% in 7.5 hours and before that 75% in a whopping 2.5 hour nap

 

[leeshor]

I tried this, and even though my surface book goes into low power It ended up being even worse battery drain. I lost 54% in 7.5 hours and before that 75% in a whopping 2.5 hour nap

Are you leaving an app open when sleeping? If so, what app. Have you turned off the setting to keep WiFi on during sleep?

 

[ptapang]

I was running this test to see if it would sleep in normal working conditions. I had manga studio open and chrome open with one tab. Wifi is set to off during sleep.

These conditions were fine in my previous hardware (cintiq companion) running windows 10. That equipment however did not have connected standby.