Envy 14 Battery Life Log

^ I hate you. I wish I had > 4 hours battery life.

 

I think they are doing something different. They now say battery life is up to 3.75 on their HP website when you try to order.

I am going to skip this laptop and probably wait another year or until the TG comes to USA.

 

is it real that HP is changing their claim about battery life?if so i had be disappointed,i always wanted win7 on macbook design with good battery life(5hrs+).

BTW what do you mean TG?

 

Whats your discharge rate? I can get mine 10,000-11,000 with very light browsing and lowest screen. Then it goes 12-13,000 with more usage and up to 20,000 with youtube and higher brightness and such.

The original claim of 7 hours was done in QuickWeb with everything disabled and idle. 3:45 is just their windows adjustment and actually pretty realistic.

 

total time of normal usage was about 5:30 hours.

the discharge while watching jtv with 40% brightness was 14k. when i wasn't watching videos with lowest brightness, it was about 8-9k

all drivers are up to date. except for the new bios that was released today.

 

Were you measuring this on a physical clock or are you just taking this from batterybar?

 

physical, stop watched

 

hey, does anyone knows whats about that link.

053 ID - Extra 8 Cell Lithium Battery for HP Envy 14 bei eBay.de: Other (endet 02.09.10 16:56:03 MESZ)

I guess the best way to get this machine running longer is simply getting a better battery ...

 

The battery life problem is likely due to QC. I've read that batteries are just one of those things that are not easy to manufacture to spec and the main thing keeping their performance to spec is close quality control to make sure they are delivering their estimated output (they have a high rejection rate). If that's the case, buying 3rd party batteries from unverified sources could be a real crap shoot just like Amazon reviews can show.

I bought direct knock off camera batteries from China and got lucky that they weren't useless within a week.

I could be totally off base though so someone correct me if that's the case.

 

what power plan are people on? HP recommended?

my battery bar is only showing 1 hour 42 minutes for battery life???

 

Fresh Windows install, Power Saver. Turn off keyboard backlight, turn brightness down to 30% or less, and run on Intel graphics under whatever power saving profile you have and you should be able to squeeze at least 3.5 with normal browsing with the power pull being ~10-13,0000mW

 

i'm still getting 15-160000 mW.... dunno why, keeps saying i have 2 and a half hours, any tips on getting battery life up?

 

Switching away from Firefox to IE or Chrome has helped people somehow

 

really??? 10char

 

Seriously...

I dont have Firefox though so I havent tried. I run Chrome and IE and my battery life is 3.5-4.5

 

Finally took the time to do a battery test.

HP Recommended profile modified accordingly below:
LCD Brightness 70%
WiFi Medium
BlueTooth Off
Keyboard backlight ON (didn't notice it till less than 30 minutes left so just left it)
Intel GPU
Screen blanks after ten minutes
Time: 4:42 before configured shutdown @ 5% (battery bar reported 4:49, but I was looking at the clock when I unplugged, so I'l trust real time here)

I have an i5-520m, 4GB RAM (2 sticks), 256GB Samsung SSD, and standard battery.

I used the machine with basic web browsing with IE8 for about an hour of that time, on and off with only one short YouTube clip. So machine would be used for 20 minutes, let idle, screen would blank for a while, I'd use it for 5-10 minutes checking email or whatever, let it idle, screen would blank, etc.

I think if I turned off keyboard lighting and reduced screen brightness a bit I might be able to eek out a little more time, but honestly I wouldn't want to go much lower than 70%. Just too dim.

 

From my own experiences, I believe that most of the problems with battery life are usage issues or misunderstandings of the way BatteryBar works.

I was getting horrible mWh draws for a couple days, and then I decided to go minimalist and drop my few desktop gadgets, close my IM clients, drop the screen brightness (I can deal with minimum most of the time, especially when it's something high-contrast like typing black words in a white box), and make sure I was in power saver all the time. Once I did that, even though I kept it from sleeping, I found my draw down to about 8k when idle, and 9ish when browsing the internet - wifi didn't seem to make it worse at all.

Now, that's not a very good power profile, since it precludes actually doing anything with your computer, so I've found a middle ground, keeping my chat clients open, keeping a couple desktop gadgets, and bumping up the brightness if I need to, but I'll say that I'm a lot happier with 11k mWh now that I know that I know that my computer is capable of limboing down to 8-9k like many others have posted here.

The other thing to note is BatteryBar - it seems to work like this:

- Full lifetime is a function of historical results and current draw. For example, yesterday, I ran for 7 1/2 hours (with the slice), finished the unplugged session with about 30k mWh left and ~10.5k draw, and BatteryBar quoted the full lifetime at about 6:55 when I went home, an increase of 35 minutes from when I started it in the morning, but still at least a few hours shy of the actual battery life I was getting.

- "Battery" (current lifetime) is similar to Full Lifetime, in that it's tied largely to historical results, but as your power usage changes, and as the charge level decreases, it adjusts itself much more quickly than Full Lifetime.

- Discharge Rate seems to be based on the discharge rate of the last several BatteryBar updates. For example, I've gone from a 12k usage scenario to an 8k usage scenario, and it typically takes 3-4 refreshes (15-20 minutes) before it reports that ~8k discharge rate. Likewise, if you bump up your usage from a low draw situation, it might not reflect the current discharge rate in its entirety for a few refreshes - it creeps up rather than shooting up, even though your usage scenario may have shot up itself.

Anyway, I hope this helps - good luck to everybody trying to get the most out of your Envies!

 

How does Opera run in contrast to Chrome/IE and Firefox? It's still a memory hog but I don't really like Chrome that much.

 

Well I am using Opera as well after two "runs" - battery was around 3 hours 30 mins, so I guess its worth checking out how chrome performs ...

From my own experience, Opera is quite heavy and needs much power ...

 

Anyone know where I can order the slice battery for the Envy 14? Not for sale on HP website (by itself).

 

I'm not sure where you can get one now, but I called hp a few days ago asking if I could get the slice separate if I needed too and the rep said it would take a few months for the slice to be available on their store.

 

Ok, for everyone freaking out over their Battery Bar results, I think HP is doing somthing a bit strange with the ENVY 14's energy profiles.

Okay, My Envy has a basic energy profile of about 4 Hours and 15 minutes on its standalone battery. Battery Bar has given it a range of 4:10 to 4:55depending on how much history I let it build up. It's never dipped bellow 4 but It's definitely in the low 4s, high 3 range if I was being realistic and not trying to keep the number at the same timestamp when I first cracked open the PC. Some will get slightly better, others will get slightly worse, but the basic ENVY is a high 3 hour battery life PC on average which isn't great but not bad either considering what's under the hood.

With the Slice battery added My profie is between 8:30 and 9:20. Now that's a pretty big range. In fact, it's a bit to large for my likeing. The interesting thing is that I can actually come close to both the top and bottom of those ranges depending on how aggressive I am trying to prove Battery Bar is somewhat accurate which leads me to believe Somthings up with HP and how they have these energy profiles and associated processes running on the ENVY 14.

My Battery ware is under 1% and my discharge profiles swing between 8K and 12K. I think if you've got an energy profile older than 2 weeks, reset it and test over another two week period of standard use in conjunction with you prior testing to get a true picture of what your batterly truly looks like. If your battery life is in the low 3's and bellow, somthings not right with your battery or you have some crapware going to town on your PC. If you're in the high 4s, your energy profile is probably a bit small.

 

I have only about 70 processes running, wifi off, bluetooth off...and just word document processing and the discharge rate is easily over 14k...
how are you getting such low discharge rates?

 

I just ran my first battery life test and I'm pretty happy with it. As follows:

I wanted to test my Envy under moderate use to determine if it is acceptable for my worst case scenario. That is 5 hours of work on a train or plane with no power outlet using wifi or 3G net connection.

Processor: i720QM
RAM: 8GB
Power profile: high performance (I usually work in power saver, but I wanted
to stress the system beyond my typical needs to build comfort.
Primary storage: Intel x25-g2 160G
Secondary storage: Toshiba 2.5" 7200RPM HDD (replaced optical drive)
Screen brightness: 70%
Slice battery: attached
hibernate set at 2% battery remaining.
Total time to hibernate: 4:47

I had over 70 processes running and never let the screen dim or turn off. I had all radios on high power with wifi connected and downloading a game from Steam the entire time. A bluetooth mouse was connected, but I used the touchpad the entire time.

I had several windows open, Diskeeper running, putty running connected to my UNIX machine at work.

For the duration of the run I was writing shell script programs on my work computer via Putty. I used Microsoft Word and Notepad a few times. I took occasional breaks, every half hour or so, to watch videos on various sites. I was IM'ing a colleague via a Java utility.
Oh, and I was running a timer that I had written in Microsoft Excel to keep track of the elapsed time since I unplugged.

I can live with that. I should get at least another hour or two under normal work use with power saver on.

 

Well, if you want that much then you'd have to go with a ULV CPU, or have a massive battery. Although it wouldn't hurt if HP released a higher capacity internal battery, seems it should be possible, and might be able to get an extra 40-60 minutes battery life. A solid 5 hours would be nice.

 

Would limiting the CPU on battery to something like 1.6 Ghz save battery life at all?

 

With all the things HP has been trying to best apple at you'd think they'd at least give serious consideration to battery life

 

Dude, your avatar ROCKS! I crack up every time I see it. +1 rep

Does anyone have Granola installed? I'm getting well over 4 hours on battery wifi on at all times, bluetooth disabled, power plan majorly tweaked to all battery saving functions. I have Granola set to lowest speed(don't really know which settings do which in Granola). One thing that puzzles me is why my battery wear jumps up and down. Sometimes it's getting higher and sometimes it's getting lower. CPUID and battery bar seem to match up on the wear levels so idk why it's jumping like that. Anyone got any ideas?

 

I just got off the phone with Envy support regarding the battery life of my E14. My Battery Bar has calculated my battery life at 2:04. I've read in previous posts that you need to leave it running off battery for a while for the calculation to calibrate correctly (I've only ran it on battery for 5-10 minutes at a time).

According to HP Support, a new BIOS is going to be released in the next couple of days for the Envy 14 (newer than the F.12 BIOS) that is supposed to reconfigure the power distribution. According to this rep, the power distribution isn't working correctly as of now, and the new BIOS is supposed to "fix" this.

 

Yeah, I made a similar call 3 weeks ago, and they said they'd release it in 4 weeks or so from then. So soon.

 

Sweet, I guess it's their Faulty? BIOS that is giving everyone fits about battery life. This is very good news....

 

It's possible. Alternatively, it could just be a bunch of defective batteries, or even Envy's. If the update doesn't fix my problems, I'll be asking for a new battery, for sure. If that isn't any better, it'll be a slice battery coming to me.

 

I read somewhere that batteries are very difficult to make to a certain standard/specification because of the manufacturing process. Kinda like how you can buy a package of batteries and they're all drained/don't work. It could just be the crappy manufacturing practices of China. I also read that most batteries use circular cells whereas the almighty Apple has developed some more efficient square type cells that use the energy more efficiently. Could be BS, but I believe it was a tech site where I read that...
Yeah, if I had known they wouldn't have the slice available for purchase until a couple months after release, I probably would've configured mine with it and bit the bullet for the extra$

 

A lot of posters have mentioned what their discharge rate is (in mw). Where are you all seeing this in BatteryBar? I'm not seeing it.

NM - I guess it takes a while to show up.

 

I know HP just updated max battery life on their website from 7 hrs to 3.75. I know 7 hrs was kinda an overestimate, but 3.75, really? I know all notebook retailers lie about their bat. statistics so I can't help but get nervous this means they changed the battery to something cheaper. So my fellow Envy Teamers, do any of you have reason to suspect the new batteries are somehow sub standard? (I certainly hope not... Mine ships aug 30th and when I ordered the website gave it a battery life of 7 hrs... No more..)

 

I wish I could get 3.75. Then I'd get a slice and be happy.

 

I am hoping that they actually do release the update to the BIOS soon. I am tired of my computer constantly changing the battery wear level up and then down, up and then down. It's not in large increments, but it's really annoying. I went to bed and when I woke up and turned it on, the wear level was a higher percentage than it was the day before. I get about 4 or more hours on a single charge, don't really remember what their website said when I ordered but I will be getting a slice when they are available for purchase later on.

 

Anyone have any ideas why the Slice battery never registers any battery wear in Battery bar? I've also noticed that on some occasions, if you attach the Slice Battery, the PC runs exclusively from it, but on some occasions the PC runs on both the internal battery and the slice at about a 20/80 ratio.

 

BatteryBar reports both of my batteries at 0.0% wear level. CPUID's Hardware Monitor, on the other hand, reports these numbers:

Battery 1:
Designed Capacity - 59200 mWh
Full Charge Capacity - 60858 mWh
Wear Level - 2%

Battery 2 (slice):
Designed Capacity - 62160 mWh
Full Charge Capacity - 63758 mWh
Wear Level - 2%

My guess is that BatteryBar sees that the maximum charge is greater than the rated charge so it calls it 0.0%, while Hardware Monitor somehow registers the actual wear level from the battery's actual 100% level.

However, I haven't seen my batteries drain in tandem, it's always the slice down to 7% and then the internal battery. I haven't run it down all the way, though, so I couldn't say if the slice reaches zero when you run down to critical or if it maintains a small charge.

 

To add to the battery life discussion, I'm running for 8 hours a day at work, with 2-3 IM clients running, occasional web browsing and regular MS Office work, minimum brightness (plenty of contrast for Office apps), power saver only modified to no lid close action, Intel GPU, wifi on at factory settings, rarely sleeping, and I usually have 25-35% of charge remaining when I go home.

My first few days at work were much worse than this, and I wondered why, but I didn't always remember to switch out of high-performance, I used higher brightness settings, and I did a ton of big file transfers to a powered external drive. I was averaging 15k+ draws, and at the time, I had no idea why the battery was draining so fast. Now, after adjusting to the usage profile above, it's probably more like 10-11k. My BatteryBar fulll lifetime estimate has increased by about 1:40 in that time, though it's still only hovering around the 8 hours that I get on 75% of the charge, so don't expect it to be accurate all the time, it's more an estimator than a reliable tool for gauging battery life unless you just go by the draw and charge levels and do the math yourself.

I guess the moral of the story is that it's easy to think you're getting poor battery life based on BatteryBar's readings when you're actually getting decent life (my estimated life right now is 2 hours less than it should be based on the charge level and discharge rate, for example), and it's also easy to blame the computer when a few tweaks on your end could improve things much more than any BIOS update or replacement battery.

 

Is HP going to offer the slice battery anytime soon? If so when?
And where can i get one?

 

When the raptors take over we'll all have a whole 7hrs worth of lappy flashlight. Nothing spices up an action thriller like shiny beams of light!

 

lol what he said WHEN I TAKE OVER MUAHHAHAHAHHAHA


anyway sooo can we buya slice battery after we have our envy's???

 

I agree completely. I get 4.5 hours of battery life on the internal battery and 8.5 to 9 with the slice added. I just stopped worrying about it. Adjusting the brightness on the Intel Power Saver Profile to the minimum you need is definitely the way to get as much use as possible. BatteryBar is really no better than the Windows battery % if you're trying to calculate exact run times. Battery bar does give you those other statistics though, which can prove useful. We all knew HP was drastically stretching with the 7-8 hour battery life claims in a non CULV laptop so why all the surprise when the ENVY runs in the High 3 to low 4 hour battery department. That's more than enough for most task and even though the slice was ridiculously priced, I couldn't be happier that I got it. It's a life saver even though it does weigh a ton.

 

If we're being totally fair, I've managed to idle at under 7k before, so I think the E14 could manage 7+ hours on the standard battery, it couldn't be used like that, but it could run that long...

 

So the BIOS update for battery life still isn't out. Anyone know what's up?

 

@Beric1
Maybe because HP is working on it?

 

Im not sure if anyone has noted this yet since the thread is pretty long. But I did an MIR flash and tested out batterybar. On the MIR win7 home premium I had an idle draw of 8/9mw. After I did a win 7 ultimate upgrade (windows anytime upgrade to keep all the drivers since I couldnt get them to work with the fresh) Im getting a draw rate of 12/13mw now. :\ I removed all the hp bloatware (unless some of the hp branded stuff was important, please tell me!)

 

maybe the HP assistant program. "HP Recommended" power savings.

Anyhoo, I get 9 hours while idling with no sleep, no slice, 8k discharge, stopwatched, tested last night, "Power saving" mode.

 

LOL. I'm happy when I get a draw of 20mw. When it goes up to 25-27 I start to get annoyed.