Surface Book Battery Life - what are you getting

Gary.. No, you aren't the only one. I'm happy with how my SB looks and the many ways I can use it to get work done.. (But looks and usage scenarios aren't everything. What about power and battery?) Either you have a better unit than the rest of us or you are way more forgiving than we are. I've read your posts and you seem like the perfect Microsoft cheerleader. Ha! Not putting you down, but you've read these forums as much as I have. It's apparent that others have worse problems than others do, which means every unit and user is NOT the same. (Remember the guy on here who was giving a business presentation and his SB overheated and switched off right in the middle of it? Embarrassing.) Different configurations, different expectations and different use cases. So no, you aren't the only one who's happy. I'm happy with my SB, but NOT the way it is now if it stays this way. Excessive battery drain.. These power mgmt issues. And the keyboard on mine failing ocasionally. This is not what was advertised and it needs to be fixed immediately. I have already seen 10+ tech friends return theirs hands down. With each return, Microsoft loses out on a lifetime of potential sales and repeat customers. Such a shame. They could stop the bleeding with a simple public acknowledgement of the issue, don't you agree? We all know you are having the best user experience on here, but put yourself in others' shoes. Don't you agree this is inexcusable? I love my SB. But I can't recommend it or rely on it when it won't last more than 5 hrs on battery with all the bells and whistles turned off.  I had a MacBook Pro before this that had 0 problems in 2 years.

Kevin.. Totally right there with you. I'm satisfied with 7 hrs but not what was advertised. I'm thinking things are quiet because they're fine tuning the firmware update, it is indeed based on the one you installed (and newer ones) an update was expected on the 19th according to Paul  Thurrott and Mary Joe Foley but nothing yet. Pauls article "surface gate" is exactly on the money too. If Ms wants to retain its customers, new SB customers too (I switched from a perfectly fine working MBP!) they should release a statement saying it is coming. Not in here, but in their general press releases. 

Are you listening, Microsoft?!!!

I really don't know what to make of all of this.  I'll freely admit that I'm on my 4th SB i7/16GB/512GB, but I started exchanging what I know now were perfectly good Surface Books because of video driver errors.  Those errors were fixed for me with the Dec 2nd driver update and I've not had a single error since.  The ONLY problem I have now is the "sleep" issue and for me it isn't a real problem if I simply power down COMPLETELY before putting my SB in my courier bag.  I get 8-10 hours of battery life at 75% brightness.  I can get 12+ hours if I'm willing to go to 50% brightness, and quite frankly I don't want to.  I like 75%.  My Surface Book is in use from early morning to late evening every day of the week.  I use it full time in my business and then on in to the evening.  It never fails me.

Quite frankly, if nothing changed whatsoever I would still be very happy with my Surface Book.  Having "sleep" work the way it should would just be icing on the cake for me as everything else is working perfectly.  For me the "sleep" issue is only a very minor inconvenience and nothing more.

My Surface Book settings are all at the defaults except for turning auto brightness off.  I've applied all the updates available so far.  I'm doing nothing exceptional or unusual with my settings.

In my trading business I run Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation.  I run Microsoft Office 365 subscription and use Excel, OneNote, and Word a good bit.  I run Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop CC subscription a lot with my photography.  I do a bit of software development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2015.  My data and photos are kept on Microsoft OneDrive.  I think I probably push my SB more than most.

Can I really be the only one out there that is actually using his Surface Book as his only computer and is happy with how it is working?

Kevin.. Totally right there with you. I'm satisfied with 7 hrs but not what was advertised. I'm thinking things are quiet because they're fine tuning the firmware update, it is indeed based on the one you installed (and newer ones) an update was expected on the 19th according to Paul  Thurrott and Mary Joe Foley but nothing yet. Pauls article "surface gate" is exactly on the money too. If Ms wants to retain its customers, new SB customers too (I switched from a perfectly fine working MBP!) they should release a statement saying it is coming. Not in here, but in their general press releases. 

Are you listening, Microsoft?!!!

This is a story of ups and downs for me too.  Luckily I don't have it as bad as some people, I get 7 hours or so doing random things but also if I loop a local movie it gets about 7:20 with low volume and 50% screen light.

When I first got this SB 256GB and GPU setup, I never got the battery life advertised.  I tried a bunch of stuff recommend by several forums (drivers, resetting PC, turning off Hello and/or Cortana, etc etc etc.).  Then one night I signed up for developer builds...and voila there was build 5011 (I think that was the version anyway), downloaded it and woah...12 hrs!?!  I looped a movie overnight and after 6-7 hours of looping I was only at 48% battery!  

So I said, woah, great!  That means the battery is fixed in build 5011, little did I know, 5011 was released to the public a day or two later.  So, rather than continue to receive possibly buggy dev builds, I opted back out of the program, reset my PC, then installed the new build off of the general updates.  

Annnnnndddd....pew pew...with that, my whisp of a hope of advertised battery life was GONE.  Never again could I repeat such good results.  Since then I have NOT opted back into dev builds as I'm just hoping one day a firmware/build will come that will fix the issue because I saw it fixed right before my eyes.  Maybe it was some concoction of the order in which I installed updates or did step A B and C but....I don't know.  I'm just...hoping.  

What confuses me is Microsoft seems strangely quiet on the subject?  All I hear is about people getting replacement SB and still getting the same thing.  Isn't someone up in arms about it and Microsoft is releasing a statement about a fix?  

To be honest, I am in fact pleased with 7-8 hrs of battery life - however its still 30% less than what was advertised; which was part of the reason I was willing to pay the big price tag.  I dreamed of the day I could go traveling for a weekend and not need to worry about charging it.

I would think that the 256 chip-set would have better battery life than 512.  The CPU/GPU would be the same, of course.  

I do find that during the daylight hours the keyboard is much easier to see if I turn off the keyboard back light.  I don't use the back light unless I can't see the keyboard at night.  

With my timeouts set to 5 minutes, my SB does turn off quite frequently.  I wake up only by touching the touchpad and the instantaneous face recognition.   I'll be completely turned off during lunch, of course.  And I'm frequently turned off if I'm watching something on financial TV or reading something, (I have a large number of trading and technical books on Kindle that I read on my Android Nexus 9 which sits on an Incipio stand beside my SB).  

So when I'm doing a battery timing, I'm not timing a SB that is turned on the entire time.  I'm timing my typical workday, and that is all that really means anything to me for battery life.  The battery tests I've made, I've gone to battery at about 8 AM and gone back to the charger sometime after 8 PM.  There's my 12 hour workday test.

And, of course, my computer normally stays attached to the charger 24/7 unless I'm going out for a seminar or meeting with someone.  Although sometimes I'll take my SB to the family room for the evening and it will be on battery the entire time.

For the way I use my SB, the battery life I'm getting is way more than adequate.