XPS 15 (9550) - Battery life only 2.5 - 4 hrs!? (at 50% bright and "power savings")

Just got the Microsoft "signature edition" i7 with 16GB, 4k screen, and 84 WH battery. When I'm in power saving mode, with the screen at 50% brightness, my battery life estimate is only about 4 hours!!! (and the discharge rate on battery bar is about 20W).

What's worse is that at full brightness, and "balanced" mode, the power consumption goes up to about 26-30W, and the battery life estimate drops to about 2.5 hrs.

And this is just with web browsing over wifi.

This is terrible battery life.

 

I'm guessing you have the nvidia GPU as well?

That battery life looks about right. Any 15" laptop with a power-hungry display (like a 15" 4k display) and a discrete GPU will have weak battery life.

I'm wondering how much battery life the 1080p variant has.

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

Can you manually disable the GPU when you don't need it?

 

Nope. Can't disable GPUs I this generation of laptop. Laptops with discrete GPUs these days either exclusively use the GPU for all tasks; or they use software-based switching like nvidia Optimus.

Even if there is switching going on, the discrete GPU remains on in a low-power state (usually around 125Mhz-150Mhz clock frequency).

Because of this, there simply hasn't been a laptop with a discrete GPU that gets ridiculously long battery life. But then again, most laptops with discrete GPUs are intended to be used primarily plugged in, for power-user or gaming-type activities.

It's actually pretty impressive if you can get near 4 hours of battery life on the XPS 15. For that class of laptop, yge average I've seen is 3 hours, and the max I've seen is 6 hours. If battery life (and therefore portability) are a primary factor for selecting a laptop, that almost exclusively pushes you to look at 13.3" and smaller ultrabook-type machines (e.g. MacBook Air, Thinkpad X-series).

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

No with Optimus the discrete gpu stays more in an ultra-low-power state, just sufficiently to allow a seamless iGpu - discrete Gpu when needed.

I have optimus in my haswell clevo laptop and get in your scenario at least 4hr with a GAMING laptop...so not something as efficient as a skylake xps 15...

my opinion is that :
1) something is running in the background and eating your battery : windows defender, updates, etc.
2) No optimus..or badly configured optimus (that would be a big mistake from Dell, optimus is great for laptops like the dell xps 15...)

 

In balanced power mode with the brightness set at 35% I am getting around 6hrs on mine.

 

Can you advise what browser you are using?

If Chrome, this might be the cause - even on my retina macbook 15, I find Chrome completely shattering my battery life on it (just for general browsing). I thought maybe my macbook was defective, until I noticed it was just Chrome being Chrome. Switched to Safari and my battery life went up to ~10 hours (with chrome it was like 3-4!)

 

You could also set power maximums in customer battery settings. Set it to like ~40% from my experience.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions! I ended up doing a Windows 10 RESET and starting from the factory configuration, and loh and behold, I'm now getting 6hr estimates on power saving and 50% brightness. And the peak power consumption now hovers between 15-20W.

 

Do you have PCIe NVM Samsung 951 SSD drive or different?
Try to look at your CPU usage - there may be some background tasks running and draining your battery.

 

My FHD model gets 8-10 hours of battery life under heavy use between 25-50% brightness. It gets from 12-13 hours on light use.

 

From my experience you must also give Windows 10 a couple of days to iron out its wrinkles, perform background updates, and index data on the drive before things really calm down. It's been typical of many of my clients' PCs following W10 upgrades such that I have made a habit of keeping them on the repair bench for a day or so after the upgrade completes to allow all of this to process.

Steve

 

Nonsense, it is a Dell Problem. My 2013 Macbook Pro has a retina display and a 750M Nvidia discrete GPU and runs for about 7-8 hours on 50% brightness. I am considering the XPS 15 but from what I read the display is too glossy and the colors are accurate, and the battery runs empty in less than 5 hours :-(. The FHD version has quality issues with the bezel...

 

Could you tell me how is the FHD panel and the exact model? Thank you

 

The so called retina display is a joke compared to 4k. it's only 2880x1800 which is over 3 millions pixels less than Dell.

 

Great Youtube vids!

Which battery are you on 56W or 84w? Thanks

 

Specs are listed on the video, he has the 84 whr battery.

 

4 hours only

 

I am not surprised, but this is really sad.

 

I'm really bummed about the battery life so far. I have the i7, 256GB, 1080p screen... and am only getting 3-4 hours of battery life. That is with battery saver mode on and using only 20% brightness. I'm considering returning the laptop at this rate...any suggestions to improve the battery life. I have been using Chrome - maybe that's the cause? Or should I do a full Windows reset?

 

Do you have the 84 or 56 battery? The 84 version should give you 7-8 hours on light surfing and office work at 50% brightness. The 56 battery will likely give you around 5+ hours.

 

I have the 56 battery, which I know won't give stellar battery life. But I was hoping for at least 5 hours!!

 

3-4 is very short, I think it may be a settings issue or processes running in the background.