Surface Pro 3 - Battery Life

I'm starting a few new threads to (hopefully) organize some of the Surface Pro 3 commentary.

Please post your experiences, comments and questions on the Battery Life of the SP3.

For a great overview of the SP3, please see the first post in the Surface Pro 3 Discussion Thread.

Note: these new threads will include:

• Surface Pro 3 - First impressions & hands on experience
• Surface Pro 3 - NTrig digitizer comments, questions & reviews
• Surface Pro 3 - Keyboard cover comments and questions - as well as case options
• Surface Pro 3 - Battery Life
• Surface Pro 3 - compare i3 vs i5 vs i7
• Surface Pro 3 - I hate it because it doesn't work for typing in my lap (ok, maybe I wont create this thread....)
• Surface Pro 3 - Dock options
• Surface Pro 3 - Screen resolution, glare, pen calibration, etc

 

Microsoft is claiming up to 9 hours of battery life on the Surface Pro 3 and that there is no difference in battery life between the i3, i5 and i7 versions.
In a review review on ZDnet, Ed Bott indicates he was able to get 7hrs and 21 mins with "continuous activity". He also mentions that he was able recharge the battery to 50% in an hour and back to a full 100% in 3 hours - but I don't believe he mentions what % the battery was at when he started charging.

In a story on winsupersite, Paul Thurrott writes he was able to get 7 hours of battery life watching HD movies. Paul also notes that his pre-release review unit has some power management issues which he believes are related to the Connected Standby functionality. He also indicates that he expects those issues to be fixed at or soon after release.

The SP3 review on TPCR says "The Surface Pro 3 lasted 5 hours continuously streaming Netflix over Wi-Fi with Bluetooth on and with the display set at max brightness"

In the Reddit AMA session with the SP3 team, they mention that failed batteries will be replaced when the SP3 is under warranty, and that if it fails after the warranty period, you can have the battery replaced for $200US.
As far as battery longevity, they also state "the battery can get charged daily (5 days a week) for over 4.5 years and still maintain 80% capacity".

Some of the other reviews of pre-production units claim battery life of less than 5 hours in high-performance testing. We'll likely have to wait until some of the forum members buy their SP3's to get some real world battery tests.

 

I think the Macbook Air only gets good battery life based on a TN panel with low resolution (less LEDs required to backlight it). I think this does pretty well with it's dense res screen.. Not sure why Windows devices like to run more aggressively then OSX, Apple sure knows how to finely tune the hardware to their OS.. I would think that this being a Microsoft made piece of hardware and their own OS they would be able to achieve numbers like Apple can.

Edit: And primarily battery life issues are directly related to Windows itself (Microsoft doesn't seem to care much about optimizing the OS in this regard and nobody is sure why, this is proven when you natively install Windows onto a Macbook Air and it fails to achieve it's 12-13 hour battery life. Getting also about 7-8 hours (roughly equal to the SP3).

But i'll take 7+ hours of normal usage, that should be plenty of time before I can actually plug into the wall.. I rarely if at all am away from an actual power receptacle for longer than a few hours anyways (Airports).. and if you really need power, every airport i've been to provides power receptacles every few chairs or so in each waiting area.

I think the hype over battery life is a little overblown these days, I really dont know who truly needs all day battery life where they are physically unable to plug in their devices? Maybe a handful of people.. But let's be honest, we're all "techie" people.. Most people picking up a SurfacePro are probably a little more tech savvy than the rest and we should be crafty enough to snag power when we need to or are in areas where power is available.

 

In my experience, the Surface Pro 3 battery can last an entire day with typical on-off activity. I still had 40% battery left after a New York-LA flight. Recharging is very quick, as noted by Ed Bott.

 

They really need to do something about the "false" sleep all these tablets have. I've owned probably half a dozen Atom tablets and EVERY single one of them did this, some occasionally, others more often. You close the lid, it goes to sleep and you stick it in your bag. Invariably later on you pull it out and it's very hot and the battery is half dead. I don't know if it's coincidence or some common driver between the core tablets and the atom tablets, but it seems this is the 2nd report by a journalist I've read about this issue on the SP3. It may also be an issue with the lid coming loose, which should also be addressed. From my research there is no way to disable the lid power function, at least on the ones I've tried.

Microsoft Surface Pro 3: The Real World Road Test

 

The Pro 2 had this same problem but Microsoft did release a firmware upgrade that solved it. They are apparently already aware of the battery issues and are supposed to release an update to fix it before the 20th release date. From what I've read its the true standby mode which is different from the SP2 that has created this new bug. Hopefully they can resolve this one as successfully as they resolved the issue on the SP2.

 

There is already a lively discussion in the Dell forum about CS, and how it doesn't work on the Venue 11 i3 and i5 models. My hope is that MS actually get's it right with the SP3. I have one on pre-order now.

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/del...on-connected-standby-battery-drain-issue.html

 

I suspect it has more to do with the design of the cover, than Connected Standby in Atom. My TP2 has an Armourdog cover that physically clips closed, and it has never once shown the issue that you describe.

 

Setting the system to not wakeup on from a keypress has helped eliminate this on my side.
You can also diagnose sleeping issues with the command: powercfg /energy. A report will be generated in the folder location you are in. (Admin priv required).

Not really true. When you install Windows on it, you use Apple drivers for Windows. Power saving features looks to be disabled in those drivers, and the drivers aren't optimized at all, to ensure that MacOS has not only the best battery life, but also greater performance. Clearly made on purpose. Similarly with iTunes. iTunes on Windows requires 50 super computers to be able to responsive, it feels. But on MacOS, it runs fine. We have run far more demanding software than iTunes on Windows, so we know it is isn't Windows. And if you are a developer with experience on developing for Macs, you know that: MacOS has horrible task scheduling, and memory management, which requires frequent reboots during the day to keep the system responsive, something you don't do under Windows. With Windows you can leave your system on 24/7, and do massive multi-tasking (and by multi-tasking, I don't mean surfing the web and playing music, or something, I am saying running and switching continuously between large demanding applications). They are threads on the web about these issues, but they are being brushed off as "faulty hardware", "your not suppose to use a computer like that", and what not. More fan boys justifying OS issues, resulting that instead of complaining and pushing Apple to fix it, they live with it. Their loss.

You want at least 9h of battery life. The goal is that you get 7h, if you do more than reading a document or surf the web.. like playing music at the same time.
Keep in mind that battery life reduces itself over time. It usually drops within 1 year or so, then stabilizes a bit, and drops again. Of course, it depends on the Lithium-ion/poly battery used by the manufacture. But in general for most system out there is works that way. So people that think a 3h battery life system is good for them, they quickly realize that after a year, they get 2h or even 45min. Granted those are cheapo batteries, but still. So you want to have a couple of hours more.

For my current needs, assuming I just don't want to carry my power adapter, and just leave it home. A device with 12h battery life would be nice. I don't need 12h... I need 7-8h. But I know that if I need to increase the brightness to fight reflection or strongly lit area, play music, or decide to program, I won't have to worry about anything.

 

Interesting, how do I set the system to wake with a keypress? Do you set it to use the windows button, or just use the physical power button?