Dell XPS 15 9550 owners...what are your battery life like?

I'm very happy with my old XPS (signature) since nothing beats the storage space I can fit in there. However, the battery life and display are not so great, compared to what's out there. This is where the new XPS 15 w/ Infinity displays are very tempting for me to upgrade. I am leaning toward one with i7/1080p non-touch/84Whr battery as it appears there are various options/combos to choose from. I read through some of the latest posts here regarding battery life, but would like to create a dedicated thread to that effect. For the XPS 15 owners out there, please post your battery life/usage!

Preferred format:
- i5/i7 processor
- 1080p/4K (touch/non-touch)
- 56/84Whr battery
- Operating System
- Description of usage

 

If battery life and portability is your top priority, you might want to consider an XPS 13 (1080p version). Those get about 9 hours of real-world use out of a single battery charge.

However, they do have smaller screens (13.3" display), a lower-power dual-core CPU; and integrated graphics. They also only have one storage slot (M.2 SSD). So if you need the ridiculous storage capacity that you have in your current laptop, discrete graphics, and/or a larger 15" screen, then I'd stick with the XPS 15.

One more note about the XPS 15... I'd recommend you get the 1080p model (instead of the 4K model). It's a 1080p matte display (versus 4K glossy), non-touch, and will get much better battery life than the 4K display. I'd argue that a 4K display on a 15" laptop is kind of useless, since you'll never have anything that needs that resolution. Even in Windows, you're just going to be running DPI scaling anyway to compensate for the high resolution. A 4K display won't give you any more useable screen real-estate... it will just make your screen real-estate sharper, in exchange for a glossy display and lower battery life.

 

Im also very interested in real world results of their claimed "17 hour battery".

Owners- please tell us your screen & battery- and how many hours of use you get out of it

 

People report 4-5 hours on the 4K version which is really bad, especially given Dell's promised 10 hours: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...and-power-savings.783601/page-2#post-10133172

 

https://plus.google.com/105862828790766878384/posts/FnJ2AznWV1a
"That's excellent news! I have the 56Whr FHD one on order right now so I should expect some decent time on that. 12-13hrs * 66% of the capacity is still 7.92-8.58 hours I was expecting a lot less."

tl;dr

12-13 hours on the FHD 84Whr battery
7-8 hours on the FHD 56Whr battery

 

These are very, very unlikely numbers. Just check out the new xps 13 (not 15) test as example at notebookcheck.com. The new xps 13 gets 7 hours without a discrete graphics card. Here and all over the web users are reporting 4-6 for the 4K display and 84Whr battery and the reports for the FHD vary about 6-8 hours on the 84WHR battery. If you get 13 hours of the xps 15, then you just turned off the display and let it sit on your desk.

 

The guy in the youtube video is a student so he was probably just taking notes and web browsing which is also my use case but I've also read the posts about the 6-8 hour battery. I think somewhere in the middle would be a decent estimate but I'll see when mine arrives next week.

 

Just for comparison, the early 2015 version with 4K display and 91Whr runs about 5 hours on light use (basically surfing the Web with reduced brightness); see http://www.notebookcheck.net/Dell-XPS-15-Notebook-Review.138209.0.html . The new version has a smaller battery but the Skylake CPU if more efficient. Thus, the 4K version will probably run 5:30 hours, while the FHD display will run for about 6-7 (maybe 7:30) with the 84Whr battery. This is also in line with what is reported on the Web.

I am really just trying to prevent people from buying into the story that the XPS 15 magically runs 3 hours longer than what Dell advertised. In fact, experience tells us that laptops usually run >30% shorter than whatever value the manufacturer provides.

Finally, if you look on the numbers you posted, the 84Whr battery seems way more efficient. In other words, the laptop consumes less energy with the 84Whr battery which would be extremely hard to explain.

 

So it's my thinking that 4K would be kind of useless on the 15" screen for me, heavier, and also wastes more battery. FHD is the way to go. What storage options are available with the 56Whr vs. 84Whr battery?

 

Hi Hanime, just keep in mind that some users reported quality issues with the bezel of the FHD version. These worries aside, you can get the FHD+84Whr version with 512GB SSD from Dell. The 256GB SSD version as well as the versions with a HDD have the smaller battery.

 

I get 4 to 5 hours with normal use. Pretty disappointed here.
Display is usually under 50% and power management is set to balanced.

I7
4k
84Whr
Win10 Pro Threshold release
Mostly email and web browsing

 

What a bummer with the quality issues of the bezel. That is something to consider now until they fix it, perhaps on the next batch. From what I gathered, the XPS 15 has a PCIe slot for SSD drive and an extra spot for 2.5" drive with the 56Whr battery. We lose the 2.5" drive if we have the 84Whr version. Is this true? It would be nice to see a teardown of this laptop, but it's fairly new for anyone to open it up.

EDIT: The Service Manual (Page 15) shows a photo of the backplate off: http://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/xps-15-9550-laptop_Service Manual_en-us.pdf. Appears we lose a spot for the 2.5" drive with the 84Whr battery.

 

Here is a link to an image showing the bezel problem on the FHD version: http://i.imgur.com/H0rB5hO.jpg

And yes, you lose the 2.5" slot when going for the 84Whr battery.

Here is a first online review: --> 6 hours of battery.

 

First test after just a few days with the machine:
machine: i7/16GB/1TB/960M/4k/84WHr; Win10Pro (clean install)
use: light web, mostly chrome, screen up at the max bright for much of the time.
After 3h45m of active use, and maybe 90 mins of sleep mode in addition to that, I am at 7% battery remaining.
With the smaller battery and the 4k screen, your mobility would be very constrained by modern standards.

 

The Dell Power Companion (PW7015L) is rated at 18000 mAh.
At 20V, that is equivalent to 360 Whr (Watt hours).
The battery in the 9550 is 84 Whr or 56 Whr, depending on the option.
That would make the Power Companion either 4.29 or 6.43 times the capacity of the integrated battery.
Is that right?

 

(mAh)*(V)/1000 = (Wh)
18000 * 20/1000 = 360

Now are you sure it's 20V? Because a lot of the google results for that part number are saying either 5V or 20V. If it's 5v then it's 90 WHr

 

Regarding the power companion (PW7015L): "Item description: Battery, 65WH"

 

The main reason to go for the 4K reason for me, at least, has been not for the higher resolution - but unless I am wrong, the screen is actually noticeably better in quality/colour reproduction. If a 1080p version of the 4K panel was available I would have chosen that, but as of now, the 1080p panel is worse than the 4K panel when you don't even factor in resolution (imo).

 

It is possible because of the matte display on the FHD (1080p) vs. glossy on the UHD (4K). Glossy usually makes color look enhanced.

 

That bezel is such a shame... The laptop would be perfect if it would have been the same as the 4k one (completely glass). Man, makes me want the FHD version even less now.

 

Agreed, but these are the compromises. A 15" bright 4k screen with a quad core processor is going to take it's toll on battery. It will be very interesting to see what skylake Macbook Pro Apple comes out with in 2016. Apple seems to place a major priority on battery life, so we'll see what compromises they to get to 8 hrs +.

 

Yes, but 4-5 hours is close to pointless. The current MacBook Pro gets about 9 hours so the new one will show similar results. I agree on the need for a compromise, but Apple is typically very good in finding this compromise while DELL and HP are not.

 

Those are some pretty terrible numbers, especially if this thing is a rmbp competitor. What is the point of infinity display (other than aesthetics) if you will not be able to take advantage of the extra portability as much as the competitors? If the FHD model does not get around a solid 9-10 hours of battery life, then I will probably opt for the macbook pro skylake refresh. These laptops are far too expensive to offer that kind of battery life.

 

From what we know, the FHD version should give you 7-8 hours. 4K reports from reviews and owners range between 4 and 6:30.

 

The current MacBook Pro has a 100 Whr battery, up from the 85 or so larger XPS 15 battery. If they can save some power on the screen and keep with the same or bigger battery, they could get better time on battery.

 

Edit to this:
Running an i7/16GB/1TB/960M/4k with a fresh install of Win10Pro November update.

Today got 5.5 hrs of continuous use with the screen on the entire time at 50% or more brightness. Use was MSWord/Chrome typical business use. Hibernated at 7%.
Booted back up with the 18000 mAh PowerCompanion (which was fully charged)
Ran that until it hibernated at about 5% (changed the settings).
Total uptime w/PowerCompantion: 8h:41m. (5h:28m internal batt + 3h:13m on PowerCompanion)

Notably, the PowerCompanion did its work quickly. In about an hour, it powered the laptop from dead and charged the battery to about 50%. The PowerCompanion was out of the picture in the hour and could be disconnected. The XPS then ran for about another 2 hrs on the charge before shutting down.

 

I just got a i7/8GB/256GB/960/1080p laptop. I'm having terrible battery life...only getting 3-4 hours of light use - just browsing websites. Literally only using Chrome (which I heard may be the problem?). I've been using the computer at 20% brightness too in battery saver mode. Seems way too low for the 1080p screen...anyone have any suggestions. I uninstalled McAfee as I heard that could be an issue. Should I do a reinstall of Windows, use a different browser, uninstall other programs??

 

Is this on the 56Whr battery? I'm devastated at the reports of battery life on this. I can see myself crossing over.... to the other side

 

Battery people should launch Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del then select it). Sort by CPU, descending. Some apps are problematic. I found the Dell color app was hanging up and hogging the CPU. At idle, you should see well under 10% total usage.

 

Posted several controlled battery test runs last week with my FHD/56Wh here running Hulu on autoplay (4+ hours) and idle (7+ hours).

 

Yes- thanks for this one. I want to find out about the 84Whr. I need a reliable 8 hours as a minimum (actual productive work).

 

Anyone know more about this: "This Dell XPS 13 Bug Fix Adds 2 Hours of Battery Life"
http://www.laptopmag.com/articles/dell-xps-13-battery-life-fix#sthash.Okzyf5p0.dpuf NVME power bug. Maybe the 9550 has it as well?

 

Had the i7, 56whr battery. Could not deal with the 3hour max battery time. I dont do any gaming, but I do stream video (hulu/netflix/youtube)

Returned it, going with the 84w and 1080p screen.

I really want to like this laptop ... I hope I'm able to get 5-6 hours (seems like I should be able to). That would be sufficient for my purposes.

 

Just saying guys. I have a surface pro 3. When I use chrome for web browsing, my tablet gets hot no matter how light the web contents are. And the battery can't run past 3 hours. But if I do the same things using windows edge, I got 5+ hours without overheating issues and can go through 4 episodes on Netflix easily. True that edge is annoying, but it is very optimized for mobile devices.

If you really wanna test a battery capacity in "lightly tasked environments" please do it without chrome. That browser is everything brilliant BUT battery life. I'm so frustrated when I see people testing their battery life for normal usage based on chrome. I do always use chrome when plugged in and on my desktop rig and I understand why it is favored.

 

Hey all - feel like most reviews here are speculative and not really well checked, so OP, YMMV with these results. Basically, the QHD version of the XPS15 is probably a 6-8 BL under light use, and FHD is 8-10. Those who are coming here don't represent the majority, rather a minority doing searches for "battery life" to figure out why they don't seem to get what they want.

That all said - I generally get 6-7 hours on mine using Chrome. I think EDGE is terrible for memory and CPU, I have never had a great EDGE experience other than for watching 4k videos on YouTube!

My specs
i5
256
QHD

Not sure other specs matter.

For those expecting a magic BIOS to come along to "improve battery life" like on the XPS13, remember, just because the XPS is shared, the internal architecture between both is vastly different. The XPS13 uses a ULV Skylake whereas we use a full 45 watt TDP part in the XPS15. I don't believe the Intel Speedstep C feature on the i5-6200hq includes a 3 watt option like the 6200U on the XPS13 has, but I'd have to look at some details of the processor voltage tables. I'm not expecting Dell to release the next BIOS that extends battery, and I think their claim of 10 hour BL on the FHD version is reachable.

That said, I'd be happy if Dell surprises me. Right now, I'll just take the BIOS that fixes the throttling issue capping the CPU at max 1.6GHz when going off of and back onto AC power.

 

Oh, I guess one more stat that matters - I use power saver to get to this result.

 

Even though the internal structure is different, most of the technologies are the same - SSD is connected to the CPU PCIe lines and therefore, if there's some problem in the implementation of NVME in Dell's Bios (and maybe other manufacturers) it can prevent CPU entering low power states. More specifically, CPU cores would be able to go into low power states but CPU packages (I'm not sure if the concept of CPU packages is same/similar to the CPU packages in Haswell) would not go (I had similar issue in Linux with SATA power state being set to max performance which prevented CPU packages of my i7-4700MQ going into low power state and thus consuming at least ~3W more).

Also, in the owners thread for the xps 15 has been reported windows battery report which warns that CPU is prevented from going into deeper sleep states because of NVME...

Maybe, those with Linux installed, could try to see how the program called "turbostat" works with skylake and what it reports (running "turbostat --debug"). For my 4700MQ report looks something like this (which is pretty much self-explanatory and shows that under light usage CPUs and CPU packages are mostly at very power efficient states which should be even improved for skylake):

Code:

Core     CPU   %Busy Bzy_MHz TSC_MHz  CPU%c1  CPU%c3  CPU%c6  CPU%c7 Pkg%pc2 Pkg%pc3 Pkg%pc6 PkgWatt CorWatt GFXWatt
   -          -           1.57     924       2394              0.30        0.03         0.03          98.07        6.46         3.15         86.93        1.43       0.03       0.01
   0         0          1.49     923       2394              0.34        0.02          0.02          98.12        6.46         3.15         86.93        1.43       0.03       0.01
...

Then we could see if we can expect improved battery life.

 

Personally I can do without the QHD, but I like the touch screen. It's not a popular choice, but it's very useful for me.
Unfortunately the touch screen only comes with QHD.
I get 5-6 hours on normal, light usage on 84whr 2016 as well as the 2015. Both are QHD.
On the 2016, I get 2-3 hours on light multimedia usage. So you really can't watch more than 1 movie (if that) without plugging in.
I have not played games with it. I think you will be lucky to get an hour out of it.
It is what it is. This was my choice. I traded battery life for display and touch screen. As for Dell's claim, we all knew it was doo doo
I gotta tell you though. I like this unit a whole lot more than the 2015.
It's smaller, slicker, and the rim no longer cut into my wrists.(my biggest gripe)

 

I am sure the screen is UHD, more pixels to drive than QHD

 

OMG 4k police:-D
Same thing as far as I'm concerned. It's the not 1080p screen. Happy?

 

Like I said, I would love to be proven wrong - a dual core ULV chip likely has lower votlage steps however is my only point.

RUnning Battery Report - I'm getting 5 hours, sometimes 5.5 hours. Not sure where to see if anything prevents the CPU from entering the lowest power state - do you know the command switch?

I should also mention I have the 84wHr battery.

 

comment 3293 Dell XPS 15 with Infinity Display (2015) as far as I understood he ran "powercfg" battery report, but I'm not sure.
and you have 84WHr with 4K display please?

 

I think I'm getting over 5 hours, after only one full recharge and a couple of partials. I think I read somewhere that it's supposed to do better after a couple of cycles. The other night, it said it had 7 hours of capacity left, but when I was at 55% capacity, it said I had just over 2 hours, so I dunno. Seems confused, so far. I'm only doing light work on it -- browsing the internet or other light work, and occasionally downloading/installing. Generally, the screen brightness is kept very low, as I'm using it in the evenings. Oh, I have the 4k display and large battery, with the i5.

 

@jkkj, is the screen defective upon arrival or is this something that pops up over time? I'd be more willing to roll the dice if it's something that is obviously a defect from day one.

Also, any idea whether the Infinity Display makes the screen more fragile than a "normal" display? I'm having a hard time settling on a skylake laptop.

"Hi Hanime, just keep in mind that some users reported quality issues with the bezel of the FHD version. These worries aside, you can get the FHD+84Whr version with 512GB SSD from Dell. The 256GB SSD version as well as the versions with a HDD have the smaller battery."

 

I've heard reports that turning off Windows indexing can make a considerable difference to battery life. Can anyone confirm?

 

I got mine yesterday (i7, 16, 512, 960M, 4K, Win10 Pro). I wasn't sure about the glossy touch display and 4k, but I needed the fastest specs and you can get those only with the 4K version in Germany.

I've been using a 13" Samsung Series 7 Ultrabook (i7 ULV, 10, 480, FHD, Win 10 Pro) for the last 2,5 years and it was a very good device but I needed more power for development, since I use it when I'm travelling or for home office stuff (at work I have the Dell M4800).

I was really tempted by the runtime of the XPS13, but I the XPS15 seems to be the most powerful 14" sized 15" screen device.

I've switched on the power saving profile and enabled the additional Windows 10 Power saving feature. You'll notice that some of the smootheness goes away (I think the CPU will be limited to 0,8 GHz), but my old Ultrabook was basically unusable in that mode. The XPS15 will even play 4K Youtube content (I'll lag a bit from time to time) and I can keep working in office with no problem, it will also keep it completely silent and cool even though it's a very silent device under load. And when I need to compile some stuff, I'll just hook it up to the power cable and crank it up.

The biggest downside is the crappy 4K support/scaling of Windows 10 which results in some bugs and blurry stuff in some places. Luckily there are some hacks (external manifests...) for some apps to fix them (Eclipse, Mendeley etc...). The touch functionality isn't as useless as I used to imagine. Sometimes it's really just faster to point at something on the screen and consuming web content is kinda comfortable.

I've also uninstalled almost all preinstalled Dell Apps. Especially that tool which manages the screen's color calibration and profiles was running wild with constant 30% CPU load and 2GB of RAM usage (WTF).

I'm a liiiiitle bit dissappointed about the battery life, but on the other hand this thing is a beast. I'll be traveling in the next days so I get a chance to put it to the test. And I didn't even try gaming.

 

I wonder if anyone has experience with the 54wh + UHD + 1TB HDD version, of course this won't be the long running beast, but i'd like to know some numbers

 

It seems like the latest BIOS addresses the same issue that is reported in that post

XPS 9550 A04 01.01.15 BIOS

1. Improve Audio performance and please ensure Audio driver is v7628 or later (Audio sound may have distortion)
2. Improve NVMe Battery Life
3. Fix CPU i7 CPU performance became low after AC remove and insert.
4. Enhance system Boot time
5. Fix System may saw NO Boot Devie error message with NVMe storage.
6. Enhance battery mode sleep resume time too long

 

I saw that the dell color profile app was using ~30℅ cpu also, if you update it to the new version through the dell website it fixes that. If I try to update it through the program it says it's the latest version (but it's not). Not that I use it that much anyways.

 

I got one of these for tests. Will be writing an off-forum review on it. i7-6700hq with 16gb ram, 1tb ssd, gtx-960m and 4k display.
I initially got 4-5 hours of battery. After flashing the latests bios, setting up power plans to extended battery mode, and setting up throttlestop with the settings below, I can now get about 8 hours with radios on, 10 with the radios off.
So yes, Dell's advertised numbers are possible, but definitely not out-of-box.