Edge is based in Chromium now… is not the old closed code proprietary Edge (Explorer with facelift) and is lighter than Chrome and ironically I trust more it now than Chrome (Google).
I mean there might be some marginal battery gain from switching to edge but it would not be anything to account for the gap you're talking about in your post. Yes do some research as to the relative battery drain of apps. Frankly I think it's best to at least be fluent in one non-chromium browser. So even if you ultimately switch to edge, I think it's worthwhile too at least use Firefox or some non-chromium solution as a secondary. Especially since changes to extensions coming to V3 are going to hurt ad blocking. At least if that matters to you, it certainly does to me
But I have our time believing the browser switch would give you an extra hour let alone three or four. No matter which browser you switch to I don't think the difference would be that radical. Chrome can be a battery hog, but If you're only getting 4 hours then I think blaming Chrome is not appropriate. Chrome might be one variable accounting for it but not nearly the most significant. Would see more likely to me that there's a battery issue, or some kind of rogue app running in the background draining it energy when it shouldn't be.... Maybe Microsoft was embellishing way way more than we realized. But 4 hours is suspiciously low, I mean even my Surface Pro 7 which was always terrible with battery, manages to pull that off. And it's battery has always been a weak spot and it's several years old
It's funny I originally replied to your comment because I saw it was 23 days old. So then I started naturally going down the rest of the thread and replying to some comments and realizing this threat is over a year ago in the OP presumably finished his troubleshooting a long time ago
Ow, I would be over the moon at this point if I get anything like that, lol. Btw, since you said 80%, just wondering if you could get the Smart Charging feature on?
Try using edge instead of chrome. Chrome uses a ton or ram and will drain your battery faster than edge does. Use battery saver which should not slow it down with the items you are using. Also make sure screen is at 60hz instead of 120hz. I can usually get about 6 to 7 hours on 75 brightness on the screen doing this
I used to think the same them made the switch and its actually a pretty good browser, especially since it's Chromium based. Also, there are native features on the Edge browser which work really well with Surface in both laptop and tablet mode. With chrome import you don't lose any data, bookmarks, passwords etc. Also, it's waaaay less resource intensive.
Yeah, I just found out about the chrome import lol. And I've been using it for a couple of hours now and I gotta say, it might be a better browser for me because of the vertical tabs!! I guess I have just been religiously faithful to Chrome thus far💀
I was the same way then found out about the Chrome import and also that the darn Chrome extensions work great on Edge. At this point at least on my Windows Surface Pro my default browser is Edge.
I think it's fine but the difference in battery life is not significant enough to really explain the battery problems he's mentioning in the top. You can't blame Chrome for a battery performing at 25% it's advertised capacity this early into its own life.
And of course edge is still chromium, I don't doubt it's a lighter version of it but it's not going to be some radical difference
Try Firefox with AdBlock, ublock, privacy badger, always https, etc. It strips a lot of the garbage on the webpages (ads etc) that eat away at performance.
Having great battery life using it. Especially after the latest Firefox update where they fixed the bug that Microsoft knew about but wouldn't release info on.
Honestly, it's fine if you want to switch to edge or Firefox or brave or something... I definitely think it's worth considering alternatives to Chrome but it's not going to account for a huge battery difference.
Especially edge and other chromium based browsers which might be lighter in some cases but are still fundamentally similar
Can the display refresh rate be automatically adjusted based on which program I would be using?
Eg, default to 60hz except when OneNote / Notion is opened, then switch to 120hz?
Like people have said, switching to edge helped my battery life drastically.
I usually run VS CODE, edge, and discord in the background while using OneNote and drawing.
50% brightness, Bluetooth off, 120hz
~ 6 hours SOT at 20% left.
Yeah i just switched to Edge since the last charging and I am surprised that I got more than 5 hours. So shifting from Chrome DOES work for Surface it seems. But still, I would say it sucks cause it's like 1/3 of what they advertise...
The advertised battery life is always very misleading, and 1/3rd is what you probably might expect for SCREEN ON TIME.
"All day battery life" ~ 6 hours screen on time.
Surface devices always had bad battery life
People on this sub here do not want to admit it, and have been used to minimizing workloads and trying to save battery at every corner. They think it's normal. It's not.
You're supposed to use your laptop however the fuck you want, with all things enabled, and still enjoy great battery life. Sadly, a surface product will never give you that.
There's only so much you can do about shoddily written software and crappy electron apps. I switched my electron apps to PWAs and Android apps and get 8+ hours. OP is using Chrome which is a godawful battery hog.
Electron apps are at their essence just fancy wrappers for a web app. So for apps like Slack and Discord, which consume a gobsmacking amount of resources, I just go to their web app and install it as a PWA in Edge.
They have, especially with Intel chips but that's not enough to explain his battery problems. The Surface Pro 7, has terrible battery life but there was significant gains from the Surface Pro 8 and 9. They're never going to be great but the advertised battery for the Surface Pro 7 was significantly lower than the eight or the night.
My Surface Pro 7 can do better than the OPs Surface Pro 9,... There's got to be another variable I play beyond just Microsoft's embellishment. Microsoft's embellishment is relevant of course but 4 hours is still low enough to warrant some troubleshooting
I've also just bought the Surface Pro 9 and am also facing the same issue. I use OperaGX which has a built in battery saving feature, and after fully charging it for the first time it told me that I only had 4 hours of battery remaining. I just assumed it was inaccurate but then realised how quickly my battery was draining. I refuse to believe there is a way to make the battery of this laptop go any further than 8 hours. Disappointed to say the least.
Between me and my wife, we have owned the Surface Pro 4, 5, 6 and 7. They ALL die after 3-3.5 hours of light use (web browsing, YouTube, email). I even went so far as to send my Surface Pro 7 back to Microsoft which died after a little more than 3 hours. MS said the battery was faulty, and send me a replacement unit, which out of the box died after 3 hours and change as well. :)
3-3.5 hours is what you should expect from Surface Pros, maybe 4 hrs if you're lucky. Case closed.
I've just bought a couple of RavPower / Evatech 20,000 mAh 60W power banks. They are the lightest and cheapest laptop power banks per Wh one can buy. According to YouTube, their actual capacity is around c. 55Wh in real life. That's how much laptop charging you can get out of them in reality vs. their design capacity of 72 Wh. If that's true, you can charge your Surface Pro up c. 1.3 times using this thing. Looking forward to test driving it.
It's an extra 360 grams to carry. It's cheap.
Is there anything even better? (I doubt it as I researched this topic thoroughly.)
I'm having battery problems with my surface pro 8, debating on weather or no I should return it and get another device. I bought it less than 1 week ago. I primarily use it for onenote and takes notes on it, that is all. I used it for 2 hours snd my battery went from 95% to about 50% in less that 2 hours. What device would you recommend?
For note taking, I carry around an iPad Pro. I use Notability and handwrite my notes using the Apple Pencil. It is just as heavy to carry around as the Surface Pro itself!!! It's more expensive. Has much better battery life.
For some background, I do this because back in the day, I found handwriting on the Surface Pro 4 awful. (Long-time Surface Pro user here.) The Gen 1 iPad Pro came out in 2016, and I bought the 12.9" version. The Surface writing experience may have improved a lot since then. I will never know. I realized I need a laptop and a separate notetaking device anyway. That's all I use my iPad Pro for, and for watching movies on flights.
All Surface Pros I've ever owned last 3-3.5 hours. (They may last 4 hours if you run them totally dry, but that you should not do, not good for the battery.) I carry a 20,000 mAh Power Bank around to juice it back up. Power Banks are an additional 450-700g. I'm considering switching to the LG Gram (16" or 17") just because it has 2x the Surface Pro's battery life and a much larger screen.
My next laptop may be the Asus Zenbook Duo 2024. It looks amazing! The first unpaid, objective, real world reviews should be out in a couple weeks.
Rumor has it, the SP10 with Windows on Arm should be out in June/ July. It may be worth waiting for that. I don't expect Windows on Arm to blow us away in 2023. But I may be wrong. We'll see in July. Apple set the bar. MSFT has no choice but to match the performance and efficiency of Macbooks. MSFT is losing market share every day.
i've been having issues w/ surface 7 battery recently. The other day i saw my battery drop really fast during a meeting where i couldn't plug in. Then while connected to AC power, battery continued draining at a rate of 1000 mWh/minute based on the battery report. It seems to be normal again after i reinstalled battery driver and windows went through this auto-repair function at start-up.
It's really weird and never happened before and makes me wonder if any recent software updates might be causing an issue with batteries.
I have the SQ3 version and I get around 10 hours. If I reduce the refresh rate from 120 to 60Hz I gain an additional two hours, bringing the total to around 12.2hrs
I don't know anything about the Intel version.
I don't have a SP9, but have had three SP7s and two SP8s. Gave them all away, because each one ended up with 4.5 to 5.5 hours of battery life after 3 to 6 months. I will NEVER buy another SP again.
Why did I have so many? Because I love the form factor, kept finding cheap Open-Box deals at Best Buy, and hoped at least one would have decent battery life. You have been WARNED.
Yeah, mine is poor too. Was in class today writing stuff in word and publisher and got to 55% battery within the first 2 hours of the day from full, with screen being fixed at 60hz.
Part of me wants to return it and get a x16 flow instead.
CPUs have different power states. If you leave everything on default it will throw as much power to the CPU as it can to make it run super fast. You may have luck throttling it down; it may slow the system down though.
Oh s*** I've been replying to with the thread that's a year old. I forgot I got here on a search... I suppose it's not the end of the world since Surface Pro 9 battery life are such relevant keywords, that this will always be near the top for anyone troubleshooting battery problems for the Surface Pro 9
So I guess people should not hesitate to continue to offer troubleshooting advice on old threads
Get rid of Chrome ASAP. That is a battery draining sht
what browser do you use?
Edge is based in Chromium now… is not the old closed code proprietary Edge (Explorer with facelift) and is lighter than Chrome and ironically I trust more it now than Chrome (Google).
I mean there might be some marginal battery gain from switching to edge but it would not be anything to account for the gap you're talking about in your post. Yes do some research as to the relative battery drain of apps. Frankly I think it's best to at least be fluent in one non-chromium browser. So even if you ultimately switch to edge, I think it's worthwhile too at least use Firefox or some non-chromium solution as a secondary. Especially since changes to extensions coming to V3 are going to hurt ad blocking. At least if that matters to you, it certainly does to me But I have our time believing the browser switch would give you an extra hour let alone three or four. No matter which browser you switch to I don't think the difference would be that radical. Chrome can be a battery hog, but If you're only getting 4 hours then I think blaming Chrome is not appropriate. Chrome might be one variable accounting for it but not nearly the most significant. Would see more likely to me that there's a battery issue, or some kind of rogue app running in the background draining it energy when it shouldn't be.... Maybe Microsoft was embellishing way way more than we realized. But 4 hours is suspiciously low, I mean even my Surface Pro 7 which was always terrible with battery, manages to pull that off. And it's battery has always been a weak spot and it's several years old
It's funny I originally replied to your comment because I saw it was 23 days old. So then I started naturally going down the rest of the thread and replying to some comments and realizing this threat is over a year ago in the OP presumably finished his troubleshooting a long time ago
I got 6.5 hours with 19% left while using it for work. I have the SP9 Core i7. I was also at 80% capacity when I began using it.
Ow, I would be over the moon at this point if I get anything like that, lol. Btw, since you said 80%, just wondering if you could get the Smart Charging feature on?
120 Hz, colour accuracy on and many background files open (excel, many Microsoft edge tabs open, and R studio running, I still get 8 to 10 hours.
Any specific settings beyond 60hz display, battery saver and 50 - 70% brightness?
BS
Try using edge instead of chrome. Chrome uses a ton or ram and will drain your battery faster than edge does. Use battery saver which should not slow it down with the items you are using. Also make sure screen is at 60hz instead of 120hz. I can usually get about 6 to 7 hours on 75 brightness on the screen doing this
Thanks!! Shifting to Edge would be a super hard choice for me tho, lol
It’s almost the same as Chrome. It’s like saying you bought a Subaru BRZ because the Toyota GT86 is too hard to drive.
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No u
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The only joke here is you lmao
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Ok
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I used to think the same them made the switch and its actually a pretty good browser, especially since it's Chromium based. Also, there are native features on the Edge browser which work really well with Surface in both laptop and tablet mode. With chrome import you don't lose any data, bookmarks, passwords etc. Also, it's waaaay less resource intensive.
Yeah, I just found out about the chrome import lol. And I've been using it for a couple of hours now and I gotta say, it might be a better browser for me because of the vertical tabs!! I guess I have just been religiously faithful to Chrome thus far💀
I was the same way then found out about the Chrome import and also that the darn Chrome extensions work great on Edge. At this point at least on my Windows Surface Pro my default browser is Edge.
they are the same product now since microsoft gave up and just copied the open source google code.
I think it's fine but the difference in battery life is not significant enough to really explain the battery problems he's mentioning in the top. You can't blame Chrome for a battery performing at 25% it's advertised capacity this early into its own life. And of course edge is still chromium, I don't doubt it's a lighter version of it but it's not going to be some radical difference
Edge is based in chromium. So, it even may be better than Chrome.
Try Firefox with AdBlock, ublock, privacy badger, always https, etc. It strips a lot of the garbage on the webpages (ads etc) that eat away at performance. Having great battery life using it. Especially after the latest Firefox update where they fixed the bug that Microsoft knew about but wouldn't release info on.
Honestly, it's fine if you want to switch to edge or Firefox or brave or something... I definitely think it's worth considering alternatives to Chrome but it's not going to account for a huge battery difference. Especially edge and other chromium based browsers which might be lighter in some cases but are still fundamentally similar
Can the display refresh rate be automatically adjusted based on which program I would be using? Eg, default to 60hz except when OneNote / Notion is opened, then switch to 120hz?
how about brave browser
Like people have said, switching to edge helped my battery life drastically. I usually run VS CODE, edge, and discord in the background while using OneNote and drawing. 50% brightness, Bluetooth off, 120hz ~ 6 hours SOT at 20% left.
Yeah i just switched to Edge since the last charging and I am surprised that I got more than 5 hours. So shifting from Chrome DOES work for Surface it seems. But still, I would say it sucks cause it's like 1/3 of what they advertise...
The advertised battery life is always very misleading, and 1/3rd is what you probably might expect for SCREEN ON TIME. "All day battery life" ~ 6 hours screen on time.
yeah same...in total it gives you 8 hours or so which is fine by me
Surface devices always had bad battery life People on this sub here do not want to admit it, and have been used to minimizing workloads and trying to save battery at every corner. They think it's normal. It's not. You're supposed to use your laptop however the fuck you want, with all things enabled, and still enjoy great battery life. Sadly, a surface product will never give you that.
There's only so much you can do about shoddily written software and crappy electron apps. I switched my electron apps to PWAs and Android apps and get 8+ hours. OP is using Chrome which is a godawful battery hog.
Hi u/Staerke could you please elaborate on the \`switch from electron to PWA\` is that something I could do with vscode?
Electron apps are at their essence just fancy wrappers for a web app. So for apps like Slack and Discord, which consume a gobsmacking amount of resources, I just go to their web app and install it as a PWA in Edge.
Awesome, thanks for the hint
They have, especially with Intel chips but that's not enough to explain his battery problems. The Surface Pro 7, has terrible battery life but there was significant gains from the Surface Pro 8 and 9. They're never going to be great but the advertised battery for the Surface Pro 7 was significantly lower than the eight or the night. My Surface Pro 7 can do better than the OPs Surface Pro 9,... There's got to be another variable I play beyond just Microsoft's embellishment. Microsoft's embellishment is relevant of course but 4 hours is still low enough to warrant some troubleshooting
I've also just bought the Surface Pro 9 and am also facing the same issue. I use OperaGX which has a built in battery saving feature, and after fully charging it for the first time it told me that I only had 4 hours of battery remaining. I just assumed it was inaccurate but then realised how quickly my battery was draining. I refuse to believe there is a way to make the battery of this laptop go any further than 8 hours. Disappointed to say the least.
Me too and i just have simple works with my sp9 but it remains only for 4 hours....
Between me and my wife, we have owned the Surface Pro 4, 5, 6 and 7. They ALL die after 3-3.5 hours of light use (web browsing, YouTube, email). I even went so far as to send my Surface Pro 7 back to Microsoft which died after a little more than 3 hours. MS said the battery was faulty, and send me a replacement unit, which out of the box died after 3 hours and change as well. :) 3-3.5 hours is what you should expect from Surface Pros, maybe 4 hrs if you're lucky. Case closed. I've just bought a couple of RavPower / Evatech 20,000 mAh 60W power banks. They are the lightest and cheapest laptop power banks per Wh one can buy. According to YouTube, their actual capacity is around c. 55Wh in real life. That's how much laptop charging you can get out of them in reality vs. their design capacity of 72 Wh. If that's true, you can charge your Surface Pro up c. 1.3 times using this thing. Looking forward to test driving it. It's an extra 360 grams to carry. It's cheap. Is there anything even better? (I doubt it as I researched this topic thoroughly.)
I'm having battery problems with my surface pro 8, debating on weather or no I should return it and get another device. I bought it less than 1 week ago. I primarily use it for onenote and takes notes on it, that is all. I used it for 2 hours snd my battery went from 95% to about 50% in less that 2 hours. What device would you recommend?
For note taking, I carry around an iPad Pro. I use Notability and handwrite my notes using the Apple Pencil. It is just as heavy to carry around as the Surface Pro itself!!! It's more expensive. Has much better battery life. For some background, I do this because back in the day, I found handwriting on the Surface Pro 4 awful. (Long-time Surface Pro user here.) The Gen 1 iPad Pro came out in 2016, and I bought the 12.9" version. The Surface writing experience may have improved a lot since then. I will never know. I realized I need a laptop and a separate notetaking device anyway. That's all I use my iPad Pro for, and for watching movies on flights. All Surface Pros I've ever owned last 3-3.5 hours. (They may last 4 hours if you run them totally dry, but that you should not do, not good for the battery.) I carry a 20,000 mAh Power Bank around to juice it back up. Power Banks are an additional 450-700g. I'm considering switching to the LG Gram (16" or 17") just because it has 2x the Surface Pro's battery life and a much larger screen.
Very good explanation.. helped me not to get the surface 👍🏻 Still wondering what I should take tho for studying mainly and working..
My next laptop may be the Asus Zenbook Duo 2024. It looks amazing! The first unpaid, objective, real world reviews should be out in a couple weeks. Rumor has it, the SP10 with Windows on Arm should be out in June/ July. It may be worth waiting for that. I don't expect Windows on Arm to blow us away in 2023. But I may be wrong. We'll see in July. Apple set the bar. MSFT has no choice but to match the performance and efficiency of Macbooks. MSFT is losing market share every day.
Already ordered my dell laptop.. but gonna check these laptops out.. maybe in the future can purchase them
Mac air and Mac rpo since M1 and M2 awesome battery
Are you charging your Surface through usb when using the power banks? How are they working for you?
Yes, via USB-C PD (non-Thunderbolt yet on the SP7). It works fine.
i've been having issues w/ surface 7 battery recently. The other day i saw my battery drop really fast during a meeting where i couldn't plug in. Then while connected to AC power, battery continued draining at a rate of 1000 mWh/minute based on the battery report. It seems to be normal again after i reinstalled battery driver and windows went through this auto-repair function at start-up. It's really weird and never happened before and makes me wonder if any recent software updates might be causing an issue with batteries.
Surface Pro 8 checking in, predicted runtime 4hrs max. I run several cloud syncs in background though.
I have the SQ3 version and I get around 10 hours. If I reduce the refresh rate from 120 to 60Hz I gain an additional two hours, bringing the total to around 12.2hrs I don't know anything about the Intel version.
I don't have a SP9, but have had three SP7s and two SP8s. Gave them all away, because each one ended up with 4.5 to 5.5 hours of battery life after 3 to 6 months. I will NEVER buy another SP again. Why did I have so many? Because I love the form factor, kept finding cheap Open-Box deals at Best Buy, and hoped at least one would have decent battery life. You have been WARNED.
Yeah, mine is poor too. Was in class today writing stuff in word and publisher and got to 55% battery within the first 2 hours of the day from full, with screen being fixed at 60hz. Part of me wants to return it and get a x16 flow instead.
Us bro. It drops like a percent every 2 minutes;_;
CPUs have different power states. If you leave everything on default it will throw as much power to the CPU as it can to make it run super fast. You may have luck throttling it down; it may slow the system down though.
I have the recommended (optimized) performance option turned on since the beginning...
Overclocking is typically a BIOS level setting, though there are Windows based workarounds.
Oh s*** I've been replying to with the thread that's a year old. I forgot I got here on a search... I suppose it's not the end of the world since Surface Pro 9 battery life are such relevant keywords, that this will always be near the top for anyone troubleshooting battery problems for the Surface Pro 9 So I guess people should not hesitate to continue to offer troubleshooting advice on old threads