Surface Book Battery Life - what are you getting

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

I spent a year with my Surface Pro 3 and enjoyed it a lot.  Then I got my Surface Book i7/16GB/512GB and discovered that I was, after all, a laptop kind of guy.  I'm self employed, my office is in my home, I don't go to meetings, and I'm a fast touch typist, so I don't have a real need for only a tablet.  My Surface Book is exactly what I wanted all along but just didn't know it yet.  For the software I use, Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation, Office 365, Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop CC, there are no scaling issues.

I'm still getting astoundingly good battery life with my SB.  At 50% brightness I can easily get 12+ hours and that more than gets me the battery life I need if I'm going to be out for the day.  And if I'm only gone for the day I simply put my SB in my Brenthaven Pro Sleeve with no need to pack the charger.  I love it!

Robinsof, are you a MSFT employee?  I haven't read one thread or one person who has even come close to 12 hours. I can't even get 4 hours. They are sending me my third Surfacebook this week?  WE'll see. I asked if i could pay for an upgrade, perhaps the model i have is what is screwed up. we'll see!!!

Robinsof, are you a MSFT employee?  I haven't read one thread or one person who has even come close to 12 hours. I can't even get 4 hours. They are sending me my third Surfacebook this week?  WE'll see. I asked if i could pay for an upgrade, perhaps the model i have is what is screwed up. we'll see!!!

If you're replying to me, no, I'm not a Microsoft employee, although before I started trading for a living 15 years ago I worked as a Microsoft Windows software developer for a large corporation.

Whenever I've tested my battery, or whenever I'm out for the day, my brightness is set to 50% and my power settings are set to both turn off the screen and sleep at 5 minutes.  I use (and love) Windows Hello Face Recognition and then all I have to do to instantly be back is to touch my touch pad and Windows Hello instantaneously recognizes me and I'm right back to where I was.  So my actual computer "on-time" wouldn't be anywhere near 12 hours, but my time using my machine certainly would be.

If you can't get even 4 hours of battery life, where on earth are you keeping your brightness and power settings?

I am keeping them no more than 50% and all I am doing is email and web browsing. nothing intensive at all. a few excel files. I'm getting terrible battery life. have the back light keyboard turned off, no audio or steaming anything.  This is my second surface book and apparently they're sending me a third next week but I've been plagued with issues ever since my first one.  Happy to hear you're having such good luck with it. I have a 256 gb and i'm wondering if that chipset is the issue compared to say your 512.

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.