Surface Pro 3 short battery life

I shut off the dimming feature on the Pro 3.  Did the same thing with my RT when I got it.  Before, it would dim when it needed to brighten and brighten when it needed to dim.  Bugged the heck out of me so I shut it off.

LEDs do not drain much in electricity and has very little effect on overall battery life.

Now, saying that, yesterday, my keyboard/cover arrived (was using a Bluetooth keyboard on the battery test) and will probably try the test again to see if the keyboard/cover makes much of a draw with the battery.  It probably will.

Dear James, thank you for your reply. What is your screen brightness percentage? Thank you in advance for your information.

Best regards,

Jordi

It is 100%.  Like I said, I shut off the dimming feature.  It does draw on the power but is minute.

I have a small flashlight that is LED and runs on a single AA battery.  I bought it 3 years ago and am still using it with the original battery today.  I use it to view inside computer cases when doing repairs or a build up.  In fact, I don't even think the thing even uses electricity.

Dear James, you got 6.5 hours of battery use at 100 % brightness??? I get 4 hours at 30 % brightness...

Now, I do have the i3 CPU and not the i5.  The i5 has a lot more "under the hood" plus it also has Turbo Boost which kicks in automatically when needed (no control for that).  The i5 is the only one in the "Haswell" family that has that feature.

The i3 is much like a Celeron compared to a Pentium.  The tablet does clock in almost as fast as the i5 in most situation.  I am surprised in how much speed I am actually getting from it.

Now, also remember that you streamed videos.  When I ran mine on battery, I only watched one video and that was the latest episode of "Falling Skies" in Xbox Video.  When you stream videos on the Internet, that cuts your battery life down quite a bit because of the demand made on the WiFi adapter to maintain bandwidth.

So, in your case, it is not the screen brightness that is cutting you down.  Constant web browsing can cut you down as well.  Again, you are tasking the WiFi adapter.  Networking adapters use more power than other devices because that is how they work.  No way around it.  Bluetooth is part of the Marvell adapter but eats little as long as it is only controlling a keyboard or mouse.  You use a headset or sending output to a Bluetooth printer and then it eats power as well.  There are some things you cannot trim on or the device would not work.

I have worked with i5 laptops quite often and 4.5 hours would usually be the maximum they would run on battery.

Now then, you are probably going by the 'supposed' 9 hour battery life potential that was advertised.  That was most likely an i3 model with no keyboard and the machine was only turned on and not used.  That is usually the method of battery life tests with computers.  Don't go by that.  Nobody can ever guarantee the recommended life limit because another factor is involved as well - the batteries themselves.  No two batteries are exactly alike.  Lithium-Ion batteries are also unpredictable.