Very disappointing battery life

I have noticed my battery life while on the iGPU is not even close to what was advertised. It's seeming to do 2-2.5 or so hours, wifi on, alienFX on, screen at half brightness, with regular computing, i.e. browsing, some music, some YouTube. Shouldn't I be getting 3.5-4 hrs?

I have tried the power saver and balanced settings, but they seem to make little difference. Are there some more things I can do, something I should check?

 

I have the same problem here

 

something is definitely wrong. I easily get 4 hours. Try using BatteryBar Pro trial to see if you can determine the "watts" used while unplugged. I usually am only using around 20W. This equates to over 4 hours since the battery capacity is 90W. BatteryBar will also give you your battery capacity.

 

I am already using battery bar and it always shows about 20 less minutes than the windows battery icon. I'll check how many watts it's using in a bit as I am charging right now. Thanks for the help.

 

Nice, thanks for the tip! I am now using it. I'm on balanced, iGPU, with Firefox and outlook opened, and it says I am using 23.6mW. How the heck do you keep it down at 20??

 

Install CPUID hardware monitor and tell us the wear of the battery.
Maybe it's not in such a good shape anymore.

 

AIDA64 and Battery Bar both say 0% worn.

 

Just turn off alienFX .

 

Eh, tried that. The difference is negligible. I do think I figured it out though, with Battery Bar's help. Youtube uses up much more battery than I assumed it would. The people reporting 4 hours must not be running any video. Correct me if I'm wrong please!

 

You would be right. Playing flash is a resource hog on any computer. Try a run down test without playing YouTube videos and you should notice a big difference.

 

I have been using my new M17x R3 on vacation in the evenings and regularly getting 4 hours plus doing basic web browsing etc. This is great for such a powerful system, loving it.

 

Through some PMs, and some testing along with Battery Bar, I have discovered that I am actually indeed happy with my battery life, and that it seems up to par. For some stupid reason, I always assumed Flash video was significantly less intensive than watching avi's, so I was underestimating how much battery Youtube was sucking up. Maybe I assumed the website was doing the video processing or something...

 

Depending on what I'm doing I will typically get 4-5.5 hours when doing surfing, word, etc. That is with about 30-40% brightness, AlienFX off, Wifi on, bt off, etc. You need to go through advanced settings in Windows, CCC, Intel control panel, etc and the battery life on the iGPU is amazing.

 

With minimal brightness, WLAN on, sound at 15%, AlienFX lights off, and surfing the web (nba.com, sports.yahoo.com, NBR, youtube here n there), I was able to play for more than 3 hours IIRC. Close to 4 hours, actually, cuz the battery still had like 15-20something percent. REALLY good for any laptop actually.