XPS 15 L521X battery life and wear

Hi all-

did a search and not too many threads on battery life and wear of the xps 15 L521X

I got mine about three weeks ago...I7 Q3630Q 750GBHD 12Gb RAM version...from the outlet that came with ~2% wear (BatteryBar)

Three weeks later it is at 13% ( capaticity is 57000mWh out of original 66000 mWh) and at full charge, battery meter is at 3hr remaining.

Just checking with other XPS owners, is this rate of wear too drastic? And my battery life has never been stellar and always arnd 3-4 hours upon arrival...thanks for any input!

-background software - bitdefender internet security 2013, rapid START and STORAGE, HD Audio Manager and DropBox...

am I having a bad day with the battery here?

 

The overall endurance seems about right, people have been chiming in with 3-4 hour being "the range" that they get.

Don't know about the wear level, I should check mine some time. ;^)

 

13% after 3 weeks sounds a little high to me, I would consider having a chat with dell about a new battery

 

thanks for the comments.

Just off Dell chat, and they will send me a replacement battery.

just out of curiosity...are the xps batteries prone to wear? My previous xps 14 too had the same symptoms...i remember within 1 week of having the laptop, the wear was up to 6%. I returned it though due to wifi and HDD/SSD issues. The problem in that xps, and now this 15" one got me thinking....

PS: I must admit, though, that XPS technical support is just amazing. So fast and efficient with the chat...

 

glad to hear they are replacing the battery.

I would not expect no more than 6-8% for a year - really depends on the use though.

 

whao! 6-8% in a year? which means my battery wear is completely out of control..

my usage is only at night, with occassional 1hr game, and other time movies/web...mostly with it plugged in.

However it is stayed plugged in through the night and sometimes during the day while i am at work. Would keeping it plugged in all the time affects the battery this way? Or do you recommend unplugged when fully charged, and plugged in when low on batt...

I have reinstalled windows 8, so I no longer have that ~80% charge restriction utility thingy...

thankx again.

 

6-8% wear out in a year is expected even if you are always plugged in. this much wear is inevitable, nothing you can do about it.
And keeping your laptop plugged in with full battery is not gonna affect the battery.
It's just that make sure you use the battery every once in a while to keep it active. for example , one hour on battery every week.

 

I have got it already with 1% wear, now jumped to 5% wear of battery.
The system is just three weeks old.

 

How do I check battery wear? I recently got a XPS15 and the battery seems to last only 3 hours or so.

 

you can use hwinfo HWiNFO64 Download , or batterybar Download BatteryBar for Free

I think either softwares need a few charge/recharge cycle to report accurate numbers. My replacement battery, upon first installation, showed 4.3% wear. After a couple of recharge, it went down to 2.8%. So give it a few days before taking the number seriously.

Despite that, my xps15 can only last max 3hrs 20 minutes on power saving mode - cpu processor 0%-min, 5%-max, wifi - maximum performance. nothing like all those reviews out there. oh well...

 

OK I downloaded battery bar, my wear is reading 1.3% of 65,000mWh. This was a refurb Dell XPS(well Warehouse Deal on Amazon). Sorry I am a newb, so I don't know how to interpret the #

 

Under capacity, it should also says 64155mWh...which corresponds to 98.7% of your total capacity left.

1.3% is normal i guess...hope yours doesn't wear as fast as mine..

 

I second this. If your new battery jumps from 1% to 5% in one week, it doesn't mean that it wore out 4% in one week. Only after a few discharge cycles, software can give accurate reading.

 

on a replacement 9 cell L702x battery i'm carrying about 5.3% wear (battery bar too) after about 3 or 4 weeks


Dell consider batteries to be consumable, that's why if you get them to replace one, as i did, just before it's 1 year warranty point, due to excessive degradation - the replacement only has a 3 month warranty

 

My L702X original 9 cell (93Wh) battery wore out to 80% (20Wh) under brutal use of one year.
Couldn't find original 9 cell (93Wh) for replacement, so had to go with "Bay Valley 9 cell (73Wh)" replacement battery.
This new battery showed 7% wear level after calibration. So after all the math, i have now 68Wh battery.

Here is a HWMonitor shot of my brand new battery

 

you replaced with original Dell battery or some other replacement battery???
can you please share a HWMonitor shot???

 

how did u go about calibrating it?

 

when i pulgged in the battery , it showed only 1% wear, which is usually very unlikely as some wear is inevitable because of long term storage of these batteries.
So i let it charge for couple hours, then drained it completely and took it out for a couple hours.
Then put it back in and wear level was at 7% and capacity dropped from 73Wh to 68Wh which is real present capacity and now computer can estimate remaining time when on battery more precisely.

If you haven't drained your battery completely in months then software won't be showing correct wear level. So calibrate it and you are in for a surprise.

Note that it won't change your battery operating times or something, it will just give you accurate readings of your battery's current wear level.