Battery Life

Surface Pro 2 retains the same 42Wh battery and 48W charger as the original Surface Pro. I wasn’t pleased at all with the battery life of the original design, and I had hoped for a significant increase in battery life with Surface Pro 2. Microsoft claims up to a 75% increase in battery life compared to the original. In our 2013 tablet battery life test that turned out to be a 40% advantage – not shabby, but not where it needs to be. Update: Microsoft issued a firmware update that brings Surface Pro 2 up to 8.33 hours of battery life in our web browsing battery life test, or 76% better than the original Surface Pro.

I’m also beginning to think that Haswell’s video decode engine may not be all that power efficient. We did see better results out of OS X, but it’s still nowhere near what’s possible on the best ARM platforms.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7orrAp5utnZOde6S7zGiqoaenZIR1gI9opKKboqTAsLLTZqquqpaWsKZ5z6umZmpdp7K3tcSwZm0%3D