Envy 14 Battery Life Log

I just used about 30% of the battery through 1.5 hours, so 4.5 hours is a reasonable estimate. Not bad, I'd say.

 

So HP is working on a BIOS update that will help with the apparent battery drain problems? Wow after reading these posts makes me worried how bad mine might be when I get it.

 

That's what people are saying - I don't honestly know what source that information comes from, but it's been bandied about a fair amount.

I wouldn't worry about your coming Envy - it should be just fine.

 

the source was some random HP rep I think.

so *shrugs* take it with a grain of salt imo.

I think everyone who was only getting 2 hours of battery life had a crappy battery

 

Well, some people have had their batteries replaced and still had the same problem. My bet is that they've got a couple of those low battery-life 14's in the shop and they're tinkering around to figure out what's wrong. I doubt it's something that a BIOS update would fix, though - why would some E14's suck at battery life, and others do fine?

My guess is that there's a short somewhere in the high-drawing E14's - some connection that's easy to complete with a sloppy soldering job so it's showing up fairly often. But then, I'm not a computer or electrical engineer, so my 'educated guess' is fairly uneducated.

 

Don't worry about it, like I said a few posts above mine only burned through 30% of the battery over 1.5 hours (extrapolates to about 4.5 hours, although battery bar says 3.5 but I don't trust it) so I think they fixed some of the problems that some people were experiencing in the earlier batches.

 

Quite possible.

I just hate to send my laptop in.

 

I hear you gcrussell if I could only get a tracking number for my envy. I think my battery will be good to go. I know that this envy will get a hundred times more time than my Alienware M15x.

 

I did a Minimized Image Recovery to see what kind of improvements I'd get. I used to run anywhere from 3 to 3:15, and so far on light browsing BatteryBar is predicting 3:45. Just the first run, though. For some reason the discharge rate seems largely the same. Right now it's at 17K.

 

Whelp, right back to a hair above 3:00 again.

Why the hell did I even do this?

 

Sorry Been away. I've had it for a month, but only had about 5-8 power cycles. (I'll have to check what HP battery check reads).

 

My Envy's life is the best among all laptops I have ever owned. I had somewhere between 4.5-5 hours today at the courthouse with the brightness turned down 1-2 notches. Plenty enough for me.

 

damn zeth. did you have the wifi off or what?

 

I am seriously gonna call HP again then and ask about the status of the BIOS update. This 2-2.5 hours is just not acceptable.

 

I couldn't even access wifi, but I didn't bother to turn it off.

My BatteryBar time meter DID fluctuate slightly, but it was overall pretty consistent in terms of how many minutes would subtract themselves from the total as time passed. All I did the whole time was type in Microsoft Word 2010. I never opened a browser or attempted to multitask. I'm guessing doing neither kept my CPU from having to upclock itself and consume power.

After an hour spent at the court house, I recall my battery meter showing I had about 3hrs and thirty-something minutes left.


NOTE: HOPE this isn't like my car's gas meter which tends to take a WHILE to get to the halfway point. I'm deceived into believing I'm driving a really fuel-efficient car until after the halfway point after which it starts heading toward the "E" really quickly.

 

well my battery icon is the opposite.


it drops fast but has a lot of % left even though it looks like it should have 15.

(batterybar disappeared on me after the first day and..I just uninstalled it)

 

On the phone now. They're busy trying to come up with something (20 minute talk so far).

 

maybe try to get a replacement battery

 

From what I heard, the low battery life issue appears to be a problem with the motherboard. Another guy here got a new battery and still had a battery life of 2 hours or so. Turned out it was his mobo according to HP.

 

well that sucks.

 

Ouch, this makes me scared. I hope they have it fixed by black friday/ cyber monday.

 

If HP has plans to keep the Envy 14 alive and to keep improving upon it, I'm sure they'll at least consider it. If not, we'll probably have to wait until they figure out how to make their own power power management software beyond what Windows already does.

 

Light web browsing, max brightness, 3.15 hours.
720p video off HDD, 2.2 hours.

What is this I don't even. Shouldn't light web browsing leave me with a lot more?

 

Moderate browsing, medium brightness, I get around 4 hours. YOur numbers seem about right. Battery life on these supposedly high-end laptops that are meant to compete with MacBook Pros is really lacking. I hope they can fix this soon.

 

Well, was on the phone 80 minutes. So the guy ended up accessing my computer remotely (with my permission of course). Changed a ton of stuff relating to power, including shutting down processes. We reinstalled the BIOS update. Finally, I did a few BIOS changes, removed the battery and unplugged the power, and held down the power button for 20 seconds.

He said that unfortunately 2-2.5 hours was a reasonable amount of life, according to HP technicians, so that that department would not accept my computer due to this issue, as it wasn't 1 hour. He said to try it out for a day, and he'll call again tomorrow night to check up on it. But it sounds like I may be out of luck. Definitely not a battery issue though. My battery has been tested a ton of times, by him and me.

Finally, there appears to be no BIOS update on schedule. Apparently (according to him), we were mislead. Seeing as the last representative I spoke to 40 days ago said there would be an update in 30 days, something clearly happened.

 

"Light browsing" is a totally subjective term. If your "light browsing" includes a lot of sports and news sites, for example, you're probably loading up tons of videos and stuff that's eating up battery life. If you've got multiple browser windows or several tabs open at a time, that's not particularly light, either. Max brightness doesn't help either - you'll get a lot of time back if you turn it down. Then, there are things like other processes, power profile settings, which graphics adapter you're running on, if the speakers are constantly going, etc.

I would say that 3.15 hours browsing at max brightness is a bit low, though not extremely so. I would also bet that there are other factors that are bringing it down from an optimal level, so it's up to you to track them down if you want to increase your runtime.

 

I hate bad news

 

Hmmm... his fixes seem to have dramatically increased my battery life. I reset batterybar, and I'm getting a little over 3 hours now (watched 720p video for an hour, and wifi for the rest). 3:15 on wifi is definitely an improvement from 2:30.

 

If an hour of that was watching HD video, then you're in pretty good shape, as that probably drew at least 50% more power than light browsing.

 

i watched a 2 hour 720p video on 5650 gpu last night and got down to about 12% battery. left wifi on the entire time as well and had the speaker volume quite high (if that matters?). brightness down 2 steps from max, was quite impressed with that.

 

Right. I guess I should clarify what I did.

Light Browsing
----
Browsing forums (Steam forums, and several other community ones)
Reading sites like Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Engadget, Ars Technica
I watched two or three Youtube video, tops.
Ad-block enabled, so no pesky flash ads or anything.
I also had Trillian running as my chat client, so I'm sure that ate up some Watts.

 

*shrugs* how long were the youtube videos?

 

Yeah, my thoughts too. I've got hardly anything to do today, so I'll just take it easy and do some browsing, and run through a couple more cycles. It could be that my battery life is "acceptable" now.

 

I can't imagine more than 15 minutes spent on Youtube total.

 

HP just called. I told them I had gotten 3:15 on WiFi (lower brightness, Firefox only open) after they helped me fix a lot of things, but of course I was getting 2:30 before they fixed some stuff last night. The guy said try it out for another day, and if it still isn't good, they may be able to send me another battery. Better than I thought it would be!

 

(In light of past several posts)


3:15 with wifi turned on and moderate web-surfing is excellent in my book. I'm surprised people consider 4:30 hours with wifi turned on but not in use and simple document typing with brightness turned down 2 notches to be good. If anything, I'd say we've been lulled into accepting mediocrity.

We shouldn't accept mediocrity. Not in 2010.

When HP updates the Envy 14, I hope we'll see improvements in the battery life departent. I'm still waiting to see what improvements HP will introduce beyond expanding the battery size. I suspect the management will have to consider publicizing job offers for software engineers who can collaborate on writing code for a software application that manages battery life in a Windows environment more efficiently.


But then again, I don't have a personal stake in HP's moves. I'm just a nerd who likes reading trends.

 

You seem to be contradicting yourself. What exactly is your opinion?

Also, the HP reps are calling me again tonight. Should I be a hardliner and press for a replacement battery? Or just accept my fate? I'm back to 2:45 with light browsing and brightness down.

 

Allow me to add some context. When I said 3:15, I meant excellent considering the poor power management capabilities. But it's still not good enough in my book. If the Macbook Pro can get 10 hours, I would hope HP had some means of achieving at least 6 easily.


Unfortunately, PC OEMs with few exceptions rarely reach that benchmark without installing an ultra low-voltage and/or a bulky battery.

 

I was just hoping HP would have a more potent battery. 59Wh just seems miniscule for an 8 cell.

 

It's more on the OS level, from what I understand. When your OS is designed for your hardware, you can make it do a lot more than when it's the other way around. It's similar to the way Symantec touchpads are worse than Apple touchpads - when you're running your touchpad through a driver written on top of your OS, it's a lot harder to achieve the results that someone else achieves from writing the touchpad behavior into the OS itself.

 

Macbooks and Macbook Pros do not get 10 hour battery life. It's just the erroneous advertised battery life. Realistically, they get around 5-6 hours. I'm not surprised to see Mac OSX having better power management than Windows.

 

The Sony Vaio Z ads say it gets 6-7 hours of battery life, and it's got similar specs to the Envy 14, so there's probably something HP can do to improve on their current battery life.

 

My BatteryBar Battery Wear already says 3.7% and my computer is less than a week old and it's never been unplugged!

 

battery tends to get so and so wear from the factory. mine was at 3%

 

For one, the Vaio has a much smaller screen, so most likely much less power draw. Secondly, advertised battery life is inaccurate. If you head over to the Sony forums they get about 5 hours or so. The Envy 14 gets 4.5 on average it seems.

 

I'm not sure what to do now. So about a month and a half ago I ordered my HP Envy 14. Everything about the laptop is great, except for the battery life.

Everyone I've seen online on various discussion forums (including here) and in reviews is getting around 4:15 with wifi on, light internet browsing, integrated graphics, and brightness slightly down. I get 2:30 with similar conditions. I have done all of the standard checks and procedures to maximize battery life, and no improvement. My battery tests perfectly fine. So I called HP support.

First time I called, they said there would be a BIOS update out in 30 days to fix the issue. 45 days later, still no such update has appeared.

2nd time I called, they remotely accessed my computer, and after an 80 minute phone call, they did a ton of attempts at optimization and so forth. Killed services, ran tests, and so on. No better battery life.

3rd time they called me to check up, and when I reported no improvement, they said they'd call me again the next day.

4th time (yesterday), they accessed my computer remotely for another hour, and then basically said that my battery life was normal (after doing all these tests!), and that I should call again if it got worse.

I am not a very forceful person, but I am not satisfied. Everyone else is getting 4:15 under the same conditions, almost twice as long as me. I've seen reports of other people with an identical issue get their motherboards replaced, and then it was fine.

Basically (if you've read this far), what should I do? I want it fixed. Asking for a battery replacement is not gonna help as the battery condition is fine in all tests. It's a more serious issue with my computer. I hate dealing with support.

 

If you want it fixed, call them and tell them so, and make sure the rep realizes that the problem has been evaluated several times and nothing has fixed the problem, but your battery life is clearly deficient and a replacement 8-cell battery isn't going to change anything. You could also suggest that they send you a free slice battery instead of an in-shop repair if that's more acceptable to them (though you might have to explain what it is to some of the reps, as the term "slice battery" doesn't always register with them). However, don't try to take in-shop repair off the table, because it makes you look like you're trying to scam a free slice out of them, and it puts you in a tight spot if you ever wanted to get 8+ hours out of your laptop, since they wouldn't repair it for battery life issues if they had already sent you a free slice to make up for them.

The most important thing is that you don't take no for an answer. Your future business and recommendations are more valuable to them than the cost of repairs or sending you a free slice battery, and it's okay to remind them of that fact. If the rep you're talking to at first says no, ask to speak to a manager and work your way up the chain. You can also ask to take the customer service survey after the call - most reps are a bit more eager to please that way.

 

Thanks a lot man. You both gave me the words and the guts. +rep

 

Hope it goes/went well! Keep us updated - I'm interested to see what happens - if they would give a slice instead of repairing, if they will repair it and how, etc. My guess if it gets repaired is a short on the mobo, though I'm no expert.

 

Well, I'm moving into college right now, and my BCB clears in 2 or 3 more days, then I'll give it my best shot.