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    Envy 15 Battery Life

    Discussion in 'HP' started by alishamim, Jan 2, 2012.

  1. alishamim

    alishamim Notebook Geek

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    Hey all I figured i'd start a thread to see how everyone with the newest Envys are doing on battery life. I personally have gotten between 4-5 hours with videos and mostly internet use. I keep Aero on as well.
     
    alishamim, Jan 2, 2012
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  2. heathersil

    heathersil Notebook Enthusiast

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    I got about 1:40 doing continuous Netflix streaming over wifi, with three screen brightness bars. Is that low? Seems like it wouldn't be enough to stream a longish movie. Maybe 4-5 hours is only possible when doing mostly web browsing.
     
    heathersil, Jan 3, 2012
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  3. alishamim

    alishamim Notebook Geek

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    Well video streaming never Gives good results I think if expect around 2 hrs of continuous video.
     
    alishamim, Jan 3, 2012
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  4. Luxferro

    Luxferro Notebook Consultant

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    Well unless you are controlling the GPU switching (changing it via the bios to fixed mode) and changing power states under various conditions, you really don't even know what conditions your laptop was in when you ran your test.

    Auto GPU switching is crap. And everyone who has an envy should be glad we don't have nvidia optimus crap. Just change it to manual, and from that point on, you can set it so when it is on AC power it automatically switches to the AMD card, and when it's on battery it goes to the integrated Intel GPU, low power state (if you manually change the power profile for the intel GPU while on battery). You shouldn't need high power state from the intel while watching videos - you're not trying to game on it.

    You could even take it multiple steps further and change a lot of power profiles while on battery to extend battery life. You could limit your CPU speeds, wireless cards power states, ect. All stuff you don't need at maximum levels when just browsing or playing movies.

    You can also for example, lets say you set the screen to 30-40% while on battery. You can set it to dim the display to 10-15% after 1 minute of idle.
     
    Luxferro, Jan 4, 2012
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  5. rigmaster

    rigmaster Notebook Geek

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    I get 4-5 hours regularly with web surfing all over my home and never dropped below 15%. Surfing includes research, shopping, about 30 mins of YouTube, but no streaming. That includes several 30-60 min hour-long pauses where the Envy went into and woke up from Sleep mode. Bottomline - no problem getting through a normal day and I could easily anticipate.

    I did try Sleep mode for 15 hours and was able even then to get in a full 3 hour session the next night.

    I don't do games and am not a big stream on the laptop fan since I can stream on all my TVs with bigger screens.

    I'm very comfortable I'd be able to conduct most mobile business sessions without plugging in. Of course, the battery will degrade over time...
     
    rigmaster, Jan 4, 2012
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  6. YodaGoneMad

    YodaGoneMad Notebook Deity

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    Speaking of battery degradation, what possible reason could HP have for not allowing users to replace their batteries?
     
    YodaGoneMad, Jan 4, 2012
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  7. rigmaster

    rigmaster Notebook Geek

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    No good reason. Apple envy. The only reason I got extended care. Hope it includes battery swapping. No HP stores really makes this questionable.
     
    rigmaster, Jan 4, 2012
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  8. rigmaster

    rigmaster Notebook Geek

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    No good reason. Apple envy. The only reason I got extended care. Hope it includes battery swapping. No HP stores really makes this questionable.
     
    rigmaster, Jan 5, 2012
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  9. FightGravity

    FightGravity Newbie

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    Did a battery test today. I have the i5 processor and 160GB SSD. Went into the BIOS and changed graphics setting to fixed. Here's how I did the test:
    -Downloaded Battery Eater Pro and turned on "reader mode". It just automatically scrolls through a bunch of text every 5 seconds.
    -3 tabs of Firefox (CNN, TheVerge, ESPN) set to auto-reload every 30 seconds
    -50% brightness. No sleep, no dim
    Results: 4:17 until the battery was at 6%
     
    FightGravity, Jan 5, 2012
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