New ASUS N56VZ-S4035V battery life is not what it is supposed to be

Hello. Really couldn't think of a better title, but I guess it is better than the usual newbie's title: "Need help" or something. So.. to the problem.

Specs:
ASUS N56VZ-S4035V
CPU: i7-3610QM 2.3 GHz (up to 3.3 GHz with something called "Turbo-boost")
RAM: 8 GB DDR3 1333MHz
HDD: 750 GB 7200rpm
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 2GB
OS: W7 64 bit
Batter life: up to 6 hours

Now.. I know that 6 hours on a laptop is kind of utopic, but.. if I'd get a half of it, or 4 hours, I guess that'd be good. But I've got a feeling my laptop battery is not in a good condition.
So I googled a bit, to see what should I do to test my laptop's battery. And found this video:
How to Test a Laptop Battery - Video Dailymotion
This technician says that I should unplug my laptop for ten minutes, and if the battery loses 1% per minute, or if it has lost over 10% in ten minutes, then the battery needs to be replaced. So I ran some tests, and actually tested for more than 10 minutes.
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Processes: 106
CPU usage: 1-3%
Physical memory: 25-26%
Mode: Power4Gear Battery Saving - lowest brightness (so it was pretty dark, and it's uncomfortable to do anything on the laptop, and I didn't. Was just staring the battery time at the tray icon.)
WiFi: turned off (because I've heard that WiFi eats a lot battery, so I thought why not to test)

Started at 98%, and it showed 1h 57 min remainng. And here's the results of following 10 minutes:

97% - 2h 04 min remaining
96% - 2h 28 min
96% - 2h 08 min
95% - 1h 48 min - (after 4 min 40 secs)
94% - 1h 57 min
94% - 1h 57 min - (after 7 min 30 secs)
93% - 1h 57 min
92% - 2h 01 min
91% - 1h 49 min - (after 10 minutes)

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And then I waited until it had dropped to 80%.

90% - 2h 11 min remaining
89% - 2h 09 min
88% - 2h 05 min (after 13 min 25 sec)
87% - 2h 06 min (14:41)
86% - 2h 01 min (15:54)
85% - 1h 40 min (17:25)
84% - 1h 38 min (18:39)
83% - 1h 45 min (19:53)
82% - 1h 45 min (21:08)
81% - 1h 10 min (22:25)
80% - 1h 50 min (23:38)

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Then I turned to Balanced mode, which the computer recommends me.

Balanced (recommended) - Automatically balances performance with energy consumption on capable hardware.
Screen brightness: half of possible
WiFi: turned on

Results are here:
77% - 1h 34 min (27:25)
76% - 1h 37 min
(my mobile's battery died here, took the time with it, so the times will start from the beginning. Taking time with another mobile now.)
74% - 1h 39 min (00:00)
73% - 1h 31 min (01:14)
72% - 1h 21 min (02:30)
71% - 1h 18 min (03:44)
70% - 1h 18 min (04:58)
69% - 1h 20 min (06:13)
68% - 1h 24 min (07:27)
67% - 1h 26 min (08:44)
66% - 1h 26 min (09:15)


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(started Web surfing now, settings the same as previous)
Funny thing is that, when I'm opening new tabs in Firefox, they're some sort of lagging, or something. I have cleared FF from the crap with CCleaner. Maybe it's because I'm not on "High Performance" mode? But.. then again, I wouldn't expect this kind of thing with a laptop with i7. But I do remember that when the laptop was plugged in, the tabs were opening smoothly. And to think.. that I haven't cleaned cache, cookies and history on my PC computer for over a half a year, and the tabs are opening with no lag, on startup it opens quite fast. And to think that this PC has Intel Pentium Dual Core E2160 CPU, 1GB of RAM, and some low Intel GPU.

At 26 min it was on 52% (1h 07 min remaining).
At 51 min: 36% (38 min remaining)
At 1h 23 min: 7% (9 min remaining)
At 1h 25 min: 6% (6 min remaining)

And then it hibernated.

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So in total my battery lasted something like 2 hours - first I was on Battery Saving mode (at the minimum brightness possible), WiFi
turned off. Then I switched to Balanced mode (half of the possible brightness), WiFi turned on.

The reason why I'm making this topic is to get some advice how I should act. This laptop is only two weeks old. I didn't really put my attention to battery at first, but now it seems that something's wrong. Or maybe I'm overreacting and everything's fine? But maybe I actually should return the battery to the shop? I mean.. I still have warranty.
Or maybe there's something with the first times charging? I've heard that when the battery is new then you have to let it to 0%, then charge it to 100%, then again let it go to 0%, then charge it again - and you had to do this like 4 or 5 times. Or is this some sort of bs? I did do something like that, my cousin told me to do it. But.. maybe I did something wrong?

I'm not sure what to do now. If there are any tests that I can make more with my laptop's battery, let me know. Maybe the shop just gave me a laptop with a crappy battery.

Well, cheers, and thanks to anyone who's going to help me! =)

A-placid

 

The second part sounds nearly in line with notebookcheck.net's review. They got 6 hours with minimum everything and wireless turned off. With wireless on and browsing, they got 3 hours of use.

Since your laptop has Optimus, try make sure that no programs have activated the GeForce card which might explain the high power usage.

If you download HWMonitor, it should be able to tell you the battery wear state of the battery.

 

I guess I should choose Integrated graphics here:
http://imageshack.us/a/img839/7503/graphicsm.png
Then I think it'd start everything with Intel's GPU by default. And then I think I should make the test again? Or what do you think? Can I make this test for about ten minutes and then plug it in again? Or should I let the battery go empty?

Here's the screenshot from HWMonitor. Maybe you can read something out of it:
http://imageshack.us/a/img31/553/hwmonitor.png


A-placid

 

According to HWMonitor, batter wear seems to be just 5 percent which is very normal. It would also seem that your NVidia graphics card is turned on as well. Not sure if its enabled because of HWMonitor.

If you wan to do battery tests, it's probably better not to.run the batter all the way down to zero.

 

Well, something's definitely not right. So I unplugged the laptop and then I choosed the Intel's integrated GPU as default from here:
http://imageshack.us/a/img839/7503/graphicsm.png

Then I choosed the Battery Saving mode, then I lowered the brightness to medium, and started browsing. Thought that I had everything the same as the in the test made by Notebookcheck.net:
Review Asus N56VZ-S4044V Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

They got 3h 14min with just surfing through WiFi, medium brightness. But I got only 1h 53 minutes on my laptop. I was just surfing through WiFi, chatting on MSN... - I really think it's not normal. When the people at Notebookcheck were using maximum brightness they managed to get 1h 57 minutes. And let me remind you.. this laptop is only few weeks old.
Suggestions anyone?

A-placid

 

..chipset drivers? And the Power4AwesomeGear package? The laptop tends to not drop to 1.1Ghz "power-saving", if you don't have the chipset drivers and Asus' power-control application installed.

 

mine lasts 3-4 hr on battery saver. you must have the nvidia graphics enabled on max settings.

 

Good point.. If you turn the global nvidia setting from "adaptive" (that's the default) to max/high performance, and have some aero/desktop effect running.. that might drain the battery that way. There's this invisible pre-fetching preview application that is... supposed to run on the internal graphics only.

Just before you try several things at once - try just disabling aero altogether. Open a command shell as administrator (right-click on program, etc.), and type in "net stop uxsms". See if that changes anything when you're on battery.

Could be a million other things as well, though. Just found out that I had the windows media player streaming service present on my computer. I had deliberately disabled all the sharing services - and it still had this thing running that kept writing to the disk, indexing my files, and responding to other windows computer list requests. They were all automatic, by the way - no one on the network actually were accessing any files. But this was some.. 5-6% processor use, a lot of disk-activity, and a couple of hundred Mb memory use.

Frankly, Windows makes me paranoid. For good reason..

edit: So what you need is Process Explorer. Neat little program that shows you the processes and activity in Windows. And if you want to make the aero effects disappear permanently, I think (but I'm not sure..) that the service isn't started on bootup if you select a "basic theme" in the personalisation tab.