New M11x R2 - Possible Bad Battery?

Hey Guys,

Sorry for another Battery problem thread but i think i might have a bad battery or something wrong somewhere. Been reading over a good few posts now and more so on battery optimization and can see people have got times like 4-6 hours out of their M11x. What i am finding is that my Battery is very poor.

On a full charge and the battery setting set to balanced i get according to windows 2hours 55~ mins but in reality what i find i get much less. For example recently just doing some general transferring to and from an external HD and installing of applications and games i found i only really got 1hr 45 mins maximum. Even more so then when on full charge with ThrottleStop setup on the overclocked CPU playing Batman Arkham Asaylum i really only got 1hour out of the laptop.

I then from reading some posts set the battery to conservative and turned off the lights and still found according to windows my battery life did not go about 2hrs 55~ mins. Oddly i noticed when i started to play the game it shot up to 3+hrs which didnt make sense at all. Does this sound like a bad battery? Or is it just normal? Should i contact Dell because this isnt the sort of battery life i was expecting.

Many thanks for the help!

 

Have you installed battery monitoring tools like batterybar to determine your battery wear state and discharge rate?

 

No i hadnt heard of these. Thanks for pointing them out. Are they available for free download?

If so ill get them and report back here later after work.

 

yes they are. download them here : Osiris Development - BatteryBar, the most accurate battery meter for Windows

 

Ok cool so i got it up and running and have taken some screenshots. Laptop has now been running for about 2 hours from a full charge. No gaming and the battery mode set to Balanced since then. All that has been going on on the laptop is some internet browsing and then watching some tv shows through flash on the internet. The only thing is the screen has been on the highest brightness.

So the first screenshot is with just this browser open and no video playing on highest brightness:



Second screenshot is with the brightness turned way down, no video playing and just the browser open.



Third screenshot is with brightness up max, video playing through the browser, the Nvidea card active by viewing the 3D demo in the Nvidea control panel and throttle stop on set to overclock settings as per the guide on this forum.



So lets say i continue with the browsing and video watching online with full brightness ill be lucky if i get 20-30 mins max. So 2hr 20-30 mins on a full charge for just Web browsing and video watching with max brightness. Does this sound correct? No NVidea activated or overclock active during this time. doesnt make sense but can you make sense of the readings? Do they appear normal? Thanks for the help its appreciated.

 

Doesnt seem like a bad battery, but a discharge rate of 25,000mW doing very little is really high.

Try blowing out windows, doing a fresh install, setting the PC to power save mode, and see what your discharge rate is then.

 

in power save mode on my R3, web browsing, I'm at about 10,500mW an hour, sometimes even less (9,000 or so)

At bootup, hit F12 and run the diagnostic.

 

Is there a diagnostic for the battery? Is it a health check if i use F12?

I removed pretty much anything that was on it from Dell that i didnt want but i have installed my own things, MSE, Malwaybytes & Avast i suppose would be the always active programs from startup.

With anything else removed i didnt want will i see a big difference if i do a fresh install? Dont want to go to the trouble if i dont have to.

Cheers!

 

as far as I know, there is currently no option for battery checking in boot options (F12).

how long have you been using your m11x? longer than 3 months usually means your battery is not calibrated properly (or batterybar has not 'learned' your battery well enough), that is, your battery might have some percentage of wear.

If you have calibrated your battery (running them unplugged to the point of hibernating and then fully recharge), but still having that kind of discharge, I'd recommend clean install... It works for me. Never got above 9,000 when idling.

yes, it does troubling in sense of time and extra effort to clean install though.

 

Yes in the F12 diagnostic menu there is a battery checker.

 

I stand corrected