Surface Book Battery Life - what are you getting

Such a shame. I have my screen brightness at 53% and battery saver on, getting about same as you. 4-5 hrs. I need to actually TIME it because I haven't done that. How does everyone else gauge what they are getting? You seriously can't trust what the battery icon reports because the time remaining changes with each thing you do.

I'm running at 75% brightness, battery saver is not on. I've been on battery for 5.5 hours now watching videos and surfing the web. Took one break where my surface book went to sleep (set to sleep after 30 minutes) but I was only way for just over 30 minutes so it wasn't sleeping long.

I'm showing 28% (battery #1) and 19% (battery #2) with a calculated remaining time of 1 hour and 51 minutes.

I haven't had my battery fail on me yet but I've never needed it for much longer than 5 hours between being connected anyway. I usually have it on a docking station all day at work and then use it on battery when at home. I only end up plugging it in at home on weekends with the way I use it so I've been very happy.

Update: at 6 hours the battery saver kicked in. Saying I have 54 minutes left now so I burned 1 hour of calculated time in 30 minutes. My screen is still at 75%.

Agreed, my friend! It's a beautiful machine with much promise! The start of something great. I'm glad to be an early adopter like you. Patience is a virtue that many of us could learn from you.

I typically get a full 3 hours on my clipboard. (i7/16GB). I make sure Chrome is closed and have the brightness around 50% because that's ideal for reading anyway. I'll have open Drawboard PDF (great program), along with OneNote, Outlook, and a few other things. Wifi and Bluetooth on, but I make sure Location is off (swipe from the right edge of your screen). Curiously adding the keyboard only gets me another 3 hours typically, which makes me think the machine is capable of 12 hours if they fix the excessive battery drain from the keyboard to display.

Same issues. Wanted to change from SP4 to SB (i7, 16gb 512 SSD), Got one to test

I spend lots of time running in-between meetings/workgroup sessions. Carying around a laptop (SB base) into meetings is frowned upon  or looking for a power point before a meeting is not on. Used the clipboard today. Started meeting at 100% (75% screen and battery saver enabled). At end of 1.5 hr meeting battery was at 39% and did not make it through my next meeting. Basically using One Note to minute/note/draw in meetings. Took over an hour to charge up again

As much as I like the unit very much, lovely keyboard, clipboard screen nice to use (although has some DPI scaling issues), but battery life of the clipboard is a non-starter unfortunately, so back to Microsoft it goes and I'll need to stick to the SP4, it seems [Pity]   

Cheers, all

Well, I've returned the SB to MS and gone back to my SP4

Frankly I miss the SB, esp. the clipboard size, ease of use and Light Room is much batter using the discreet GPU.

I'm not saying either the SB or SP4 does not have issues.. They do and some irritating ones. Hopefully in the next month Microsoft will come out of hibernation (like the SB/SP4 does to sleep and does not come out again), actually talk to their consumers and offer some real customer service... SURFACEGATE !!! Feedback across majority forums, blogs etc is that Microsoft is perceived to have really dropped the ball here and users seem very unhappy bunnies. We all make do but that's not what we expect when paying nearly $3000 for a unit. I do expect better. Well, that's my personal opinion and I do hope MS snr personnel read these forums and can pass our feelings up the chain somehow  Gripe done now. Apologies for venting.

That said, I will be replacing my SP4 (i5, 8gb etc) with a new unit beginning April (as my son needs my SP4 for school) so I have a choice of Sp4 or SB (both i7, 16gb and 512 SSD). I don't really want to go back to my MacBook Pro and really like the SB.

My killer is the SB battery life of the clipboard in meetings. I need "grab n go" and at least 3 hours usage to convince me it will work for me (when I tried the SB before I only got 2 hrs but to be fair, I did not use it for a full week for the battery to calibrate properly. I would be comfortable with 7 hours (full unit) and 3-3.5 hrs clipboard only

The docking/undocking, hanging when undocked, sleep, battery drain etc are all software/firmware issues which MS will I hope sort out by March (wishfully)

My question is:

How much real clipboard usage are existing users getting in meetings/workgroup sessions (even mind mapping)  when

1. 50-75% screen brightness, (maybe battery saver on) Bluetooth on for pen and even if I need to turn off wifi/use flight mode
2. use of OneNote for notes/drawings in meetings and Excel to update actions/lists

Thanks all