Surface Pro 3 short battery life

Well, I have been running the tablet today, all day, on battery.  I was going to display the powercfg report but the tablet keeps coming up with an error and generates a blank report.

However, that is okay!  Never trust a utility to diagnose itself.  I used a stopwatch instead and did a real time tracking of the power usage.

Right now, the machine is at 33% battery level and watched two movies, did two local government reports, browsed the Internet (in fact, I am on it right now - on battery) and most of the time has been online.

My stopwatch is still going but is displaying 6:12:20:32

Like I said, I still have 32% on the battery meter.

My machine is configured with default settings, power plan is balanced with sleep mode OFF when on A/C.  I have the screen at 100% brightness (I did get a message regarding I can get more time by adjusting it) and along with Internet, I also printed 2 sets of reports wirelessly.

I am going to go ahead an end the tracking now, but this machine is definitely "a keeper"!  The most I ever got out of a laptop was barely over 4 hours and that was a low end AMD CPU.

So, I would say consistent 6.5 hours minimum on a single charge for the i3 model.  That is what I got twice before.

Yeah, it all depends what you have running on the Surface, so I've tested the Surface 3 i5 256gb and I got about 5-6 hours of battery life (don't remember the hours cause it was long time ago when first time used it) when watching movies with no other programs running in the background including Norton 360 , but I'm willing to test it again. If I can only watch 2 movies average 2 hours per movie, then I'll have to install another anti virus program, cause I know that Norton takes up a lot of CPU and memory, if not then which means need to figure out what drains the battery life, besides using WiFi and connected the network watching movies.

For gaming I got about 4 hours, depending which game. I've played Diablo 3 on it and it works 100%, but unsure of the battery life.. Ive also played Imperial Glory and I got about 3-4 hours because its a low end key game originally made for Windows XP.

When your computer is in sleep mode it will still consume power, because the device is still running.

So the battery life depends what programs you have running.

Also the iCore 5 takes up more battery life than the iCore 3 I think.The average use is 9 hours of battery life of web browsing as Microsoft said.

so far I'm happy with the battery performance. But to improve battery life it depends on your settings, as I assume its at default (so is mine) for battery life and depends what programs you have running.

Also there been some Windows Updates about the battery life.

I forgot to mention that on most video playback test results, the Surface i5 can run 7 hours.

CTMVP,  I started noticing this, too.  I would shut the lid, which I assumes would put it to sleep.  I come back hours and hours later and the battery is just about dead.

I don't want to start a side discussion, but many times when I wake up the computer from sleeping....it's like I rebooted the computer, or powered up the computer. 

If others have experienced this we can start another thread.

Gary

Just to be clear.

On Battery:

0-4 hours - Connected Standby

4-12 hours - Modified (Lite S4) Hibernate

12+ hours - Deep Hibernation (Traditional S4 Power State)

What I'm going to do today is use the task manager and start shutting down what I perceive to be extraneous programs running in the background.  We'll see if that helps.

CTMVP,  I started noticing this, too.  I would shut the lid, which I assumes would put it to sleep.  I come back hours and hours later and the battery is just about dead.

I don't want to start a side discussion, but many times when I wake up the computer from sleeping....it's like I rebooted the computer, or powered up the computer. 

If others have experienced this we can start another thread.

Gary