I Expected More From the Surface Book’s Battery Life

Dan Seifert:

Also missed on me is the increased battery life. In our rundown test, the Surface Book lasted 10 hours and 21 minutes, which is quite good. But in my real-world usage, browsing the web, jumping between a half-dozen apps, writing email, monitoring social feeds, etc., it struggled to last a full work day before calling it quits. Most days, the Surface Book would last between six and eight hours, which is about average for a laptop of this size. (Using the Book as a tablet worked for about two hours before it died, which is unchanged from last year.) That’s a far cry from Microsoft’s claimed 16 hours and less than my colleague Vlad Savov could get with the new 13-inch MacBook Pro. Fortunately, this Surface Book has no issues going to sleep when it’s closed and in my bag, which is a problem I’ve encountered with numerous Windows 10 laptops over the past year.

When Apple showed the new MacBook Pros, I actually looked around at the competition, and the Surface Book was one of two laptops that piqued my interest, mainly due to 16 hours of battery life. I had foolishly assumed that I could indeed use it for that long without a charge.

One other thing that completely put me off is its weight.