Envy 14 Battery Life Log

I'd say it's because there laptops are clearly trying to take a stab at apple and one of the apple trademarks long battery life.

 

Do you think /w core i3 i would run less power on the envy14?

 

nope it uses same power as i5 models do since TDP is same for i3/i5 models

 

8k times 9 hours = 72,000. Envy 14's battery = 59,200. So either you've got a massively overcharged/overchargeable battery (what's BB say for your total charge when you're at 100%?), or your draw is more around 6.5k... Not to say that I'm particularly skeptical, since I've seen BB report mine at 6.5k before, but there's something off about your results, so I'd be interested if its your battery capacity or your mW readings from BB, or both.

 

Anyone know if there is a third party battery company that has a battery with a larger capacity?

 

None that I know of, but I wouldn't recommend it if you find one. Buying a third-party laptop battery is approximately as good an idea as buying an Appel I-Phene in China, you'd generally be better off giving your money to a homeless person, or dropping it down a wishing well, or burning it and using it to light cigarettes for some cool Facebook pictures...

 

how in the world have people managed to get discharge rates between 8-10K??

 

I am still waiting for a detailed answer to this. Many of us are getting 20K+!

 

Well, i'm not aware of anything special that we may be doing, but just based on specs, I do have an SSD and a bit more memory, but aside from the SSD I can't see the hardware being the difference. I average about 10K on my battery draw and 12K when i have Photoshop and the rest of my Web design tools up and running. That 7200 RPM drive isn't exactly the most energy efficient part of your set up, but I doubt it's using 10K extra on the battery

My process list is pretty thin also aside from the tools I mentioned above, so you may want to check how many applications start when windows loads and you may also want to try some different Web Browsers. You may also want to reset your battery bar profile just in case you have some stats skewing your results. Use CCleaner or msconfig to stop everything except the windows processes from loading on startup. Afterwards, add back only the process you can't live without. Don't go with any nice to have startup applications until you physically load them. Then check battery bar in about a week.

 

did you clean install or MIR?

 

To the people with poor or great battery life: Which AV software are you running?

I discharge at about 10-13,000mW on power saver and lowest brightness surfing using MSE. I think Ill try disabling the realtime protection on MSE and see how it fairs.

 

Nope! This is my business machine, so I still have the original HP setup right from the factory. I didn't really see the benefit of wiping the box when I knew I could kill any processes I didn't want running. I know in theory there could still be some unwanted clutter, but theory and reality for me tend to be a bit different. I still have the Corel and HP products on my PC even though I've never once used them, but it doesn't bother me in the least bit. If I was going to swipe the box I'd do a minimized recovery and keep the partitions. I use my ENVY for real work as opposed to entertainment, so I probably have a different set of use cases than most.

I have no music or video on my PC (I stream from my other computers and my HP Home Server) which means I'll never run out of space basically on my SSD. I didn't even bother sticking iTunes on my ENVY.

 

Can any of you guys help me understand the performance difference between the processors? I want to be able to use my ENVY for music editing / DJing, photo editing, and gaming (could range from light to heavy). I want to be able to perform these functions well and still have good battery life. I was thinking to go for an i7 720QM but I noticed that the battery life was significantly lower for people who had an i7 than those who have an i5 but I don't know how well an i5 would be able to handle my needs. Sometimes my computer jumps and freezes and bit when I'm doing video editing with my current processor so I want to be able to do everything without any of that. So which processor should I get? Also, would a radiance screen lower my battery life?

 

Last question first: I haven't heard anything about the radiance screen lowering battery life, though I imagine, with its brighter maximum brightness, it would have the potential to draw more power if you crank it all the way up.

Thanks to higher base clock speeds, the i5's are actually faster than the i7's on a lot of applications, since most apps can't use enough threads to take advantage of the i7 anyway. The advice that most users would give you is to go with the i5 - you save money, you get better battery life (lower TDP, integrated graphics), and you get equal or better performance in most apps.

However, if you know that you'll truly utilize the 8-threaded i7 (ask around about your preferred programs, I suppose), and you're willing to pay more and get less battery life, then you should go that way. That's not my general recommendation for most people, but it's the best decision for some people.

 

Thanks, that helped out a lot. I think I'll end up going for the core i5 but should I go for the 450M or the 520M. Their base clock speeds are the same so what would I be paying more for, just Turbo Boost speed?

 

Basically, I think if you have to ask you don't need the 520M. It has a few extra features that aren't used by anything yet. The turbo boost speed likely won't make any difference. The 450M is a fantastically fast processor, seriously. I was encoding video today using Handbrake and it was getting 80+fps, which was awesome.

 

I chose the 450 because it was newer than the 520 and has the same performance metrics. In the few performance test that have been conducted on the 450 it's basically been equivalent or marginally better than the 520. The 520 does have some virtualization advantages though, so if you run VM and like to dabble with several OS's you might want the 520. On the performance side of things I'd have to say save a few bucks and get the 450, because you won't see much of a difference.

If you want to see a performance boost, especially with your video editing, find a way to stick an SSD in your order. For Instance, Photoshop takes between 10 and 12 seconds to load on my Thinkpad. On my ENVY it loads in 2 seconds. From a fresh start it loads in 4.5-5 seconds. Now thats performance!! Everything else basically loads instantly. The hard-drive, which is basically the slowest part of your computer, now is moving as fast as your memory. That's a potent performance combination!

 

This.

Unless you're doing a lot of virtualization and encryption, the 450 is at least as good, possibly even better than the 520, and it's cheaper, so kind've a no-brainer.

I'll also add that the SSD is excellent for games - you won't eliminate loading screens, but you'll significantly reduce the time you have to look at them.

 

Man has this product been a headache for me. I had serious battery life issues (i.e. achieving only about 3hrs (6-7) with slice with power saver, brightness down to 0, no wifi or bluetooth, ending numerous processes so only the minimum necessary were still running, and not running a single program). I installed to most recent bios, and HP subsequently sent me a new battery. All to no avail. Finally, I had to send back the computer for repair on August 16th. I was told I would receive the computer on the 30th. No updates ever appeared on the HP site as to the status of the repair. I never received a call about any delay. Finally, on the date it was to arrive at my house, I received a call that there was going to be an additional 2 week delay. When I asked if they had determined what was wrong, whether they were waiting for parts, or if they still hadn't been able to isolate the problem, I was only told that it was still being repaired. I have never dealt with HP before, and I've got to tell you, from ordering delays (they never told us of an initial part shortage), to shipping delays, now to repair delays, during which HP made no attempts at communicating with me, I've come to the conclusion that HP's customer service is severly lacking, especially when compared with Asus (have ordered a number of motherboards from them and man are they responsive). I envy (no pun intended) those of you who have luck with your product, but I wish this whole ordeal was over.

HP Envy 14, i5 520, 1 x 4g ddr3, 500gb hdd, radiance infinity display

 

Oh, come on. No one is going to believe that jibberish. 8x9 = 72. Is your computer using magic math or are you in a capsule traveling close to the speed of light.

 

Though the slice is a wonderful accessory, it adds a significant amount of weight to the computer, which sort of defeats the reason many of us purchased it - lightweight, ultraportable, long battery life.

 

I read that the 520m will improve battery life and has more cache than the 450m. I'm not sure if this is true but if it is, will it give me any substantial improvement? Also, I may be running multiple OS's in the future so I'm wondering how well the 450m can handle that. Also, has anyone tried sticking a momentus XT into their computer, I was thinking of getting one of those if iI go with the 450m since it's much less expensive than an SSD and is almost the same performance.

 

I've heard that the 520m is marginally easier on the battery than the 430m, but I believe that the 450m is essentially equal to the 520m for battery life. I believe the 450m should be able to handle some virtualization, but if you're planning on doing a fair amount of it, the 520m makes more sense, since it's got virtualization technology built-in so it should be significantly better for that particular usage.

As for the Momentus XT, I've heard mixed reviews, but even the most positive reviews report that, even for its pre-cached tasks, it's still slower than a true SSD, if I recall, stuff that's pre-cached is about 2/3 of the way from a 7200 RPM HDD to a proper SSD, so it's still fast, just not as fast as an SSD, and good luck getting everything you want to load quickly pre-cached.

That said, most owners seem to be very happy with their Momentus XT's (unless they happened to get a dud), so I would definitely consider it a viable alternative. It's supposed to be quite a good compromise - the storage of an HDD, with significantly better performance when it counts, or at least some of the times it counts, for a price that's much closer to a traditional HDD than to an SSD.

Personally, though, I'm very happy having an SSD - everything loads faster without any special cache management, and 160 GB is more than enough as long as I have external storage for stuff I use less often, which in turn allows me to maintain a better-organized computer, since my drive's not so bloated with videos, music, and 200 GB of Steam games.

 

what is the battery like now with new owners? is it still in 2-3.5 hr range?

 

I am also very curious as I am getting my Envy 14 exchanged for a new one and am curious if the new batches are still having these issues.

Current battery life: Under 2 hours.

 

sad face :[ i want an envy, but i do not want to deal with the battery issue...

 

There are plenty of us who aren't experiencing these battery issues, so it's by no means a given that you'll have to deal with battery issues if you buy and Envy 14. As I've mentioned before, I use my Envy at work on the slice, and after 8 hours of a mix of use (browsers, IM clients always on, wifi, office apps) and idling, I usually have 25-35% battery life left, so I assume I could get at least 11 hours of this kind of usage with both batteries, and that comes to 5+ on the internal battery alone. Besides, the touted power management BIOS update should be coming soon, and will hopefully fix things for the users who are experiencing poor battery life issues, at least as long as they aren't pushing the battery too much with a ton of processes, full brightness, and suchlike.

 

i am aware that its a hit or miss on the battery, but i hate chance -.-
i still might get it anyways though

 

New BIOS helps a ton with battery usage, well for me atleast.
I used to go around 3-4hours battery life on normal use.
50% brightness, wifi, browsing, youtube, facebook, etc. 13-15k discharge.
Now with F.12 I can do the same with 4-5 hours battery life, my discharge is around 10-12k.

Huzzah? ha.

 

Really? I'll download it now then; hadn't bothered to get it.

 

This is th first person I've read that's had an improvement using the new BIOS. Or is there someone else?

 

What browser are you using?

 

I just installed the update, and I'm getting 16-17K, down from my normal 20-21K. I get almost 3 hours now, rather than 2.5, on WiFi.

 

Chrome with about 3 extensions and addons, nothing big.

 

Update on my saga... HP says the screen is the cause of the battery drain. They were going to replace it, but they are on backorder, so they are going to send me a new computer (which I don't know how they can do a new build if they are short on screens). Anyhow, when I get it, I'll let you know if the battery life improves.

 

Someone in this thread had a similar issue. It turned out the culprit was the motherboard and after he RMA'd he got 4 hours of battery life- NO slice battery.

 

my battery bar estimates is always jumping around... anyone know a better program?

 

The more you use battery bar, the more accurate it will become. It basically records a history of your usage and computes your average lifetime that way.

Also, if you're doing a lot of battery intensive tasks (like watching movies), it will affect your battery draw, thus affecting your estimate.

 

I been using it for two weeks now. I average about 14k-mW but it says I have about 2:30 full life, then somtimes 3hrs. With 14k, it should be 4hrs...

 

2-3 hrs for some people? why does it seem that the battery isnt as solid as it should be? :/

 

Is this limited to the reporting, or is the actual battery life more like 2:30-3 hrs.? If it's the former, BB is slow to adjust itself after the first few runs, and if it's the latter, then you're clearly drawing more than 14k mW...

 

This is not true, but it's a common misconception that tends to get around. The i5-450m has VT-x, which is the hardware virtualization technology that all current virtualization software uses. The 520m and i7s have VT-d, which is new virtualization hardware specifically for giving virtual machines direct access to hardware. No current virtualization software uses it though. So right now, the 450m does virtualization just as well as the 520m. And you don't even *need* VT-x to do virtualization, it just helps. Both Core i5s are incredibly fast processors that can handle virtualization easily.

 

I've been reading about some of the battery issues people have been having, and just curious if I may have a slightly defective battery. I am getting BB readings of about 2:50 hours. That's obviously not as bad as the guys getting 2 hours, but the thing that is troubling me is that my battery wear reading keeps jumping all over the place. At first it was at 3, then 5, back to 3, up to 7 last time i plugged in, now its back to 2 on battery power. Anything to be worried about?

The HP battery check says I am ok but says charge capacity 92%. Is that my maximum charge?

Thanks!

 

How long have you had it for squalo?

 

Guys, im getting a 17k discharge rate when LIGHTLY BROWSING - is wrong??

 

Same here. Not supposed to happen, but it does.

BTW guys, that BIOS update is 2 weeks overdue. I feel like calling HP again and bugging them a little more this time. Perhaps asking for a replacement battery, though I'm pretty sure it's a more serious issue than that.

 

There are a lot of possibilities for why you could be drawing that much while browsing:

If you're using multiple browsers.

If you're browsing pages with a decent amount of Flash.

If you're running a bunch of processes in the background, or have other applications open.

If you're using high brightness settings, the High-Performance profile, or the ATI GPU.

I would guess, without knowing you or how well you maintain a battery-friendly power profile, that it's some combination of the things above, but if not, and you're drawing 17k when I would be drawing 11-12k, then I'd suggest you wait for the BIOS update that's supposed to address power issues, and if it's a bust, call HP and get in line...

 

Hey guys I get about an 11k-12k draw. About how many hours should I be getting?

 

Divide you battery capacity by your average draw and you'll be in the neighborhood of your average battery life (hours) under standard use. Minimizing your battery draw will of course skew the results a bit. In short, you should get about 4 hours of battery life on average.

for instance 59/12 = 4.9 - Thats a bit high but believable for a new battery and a very small amount of historical data in BatteryBar.

 

in general you should probably get around 4 hours of battery life on this computer if you're on the intel gpu.

and ya know...lower brightness a little bit and aren't using processor intensive stuff (flash meaning youtube videos or a flash ad shows up or whatever, watching a dvd or video or playing a game or whatever).

That's about what I get (4-4.25 hours)