Battery Life Question on Razer Blade 14 (2014)

Hi guys, I am looking to purchase a Razer Blade 14 (2014). I am in college right now and currently I have a very large and bulky Alienware M17X R2 that mainly sits on my desk and I had a smaller netbook I use to bring to and from class.

I was hoping that purchasing the Razer Blade would replace both my bulky M17x and my cheap little netbook. But, I am concerned about how long the battery will last. Occasionally I have 5 hour blocks of classes. I have read conflicting reports on the battery life of the Blade. Does the blade have an integrated GPU in addition to the Geforce 870m? And on integrated graphics, with the brightness turned down, how long could the Razer blade last? (with and without wifi?)

Just to give you an idea of what i would be doing it, I would be taking notes in Word or OneNote, and maybe occasionally browsing the internet for Journal articles or legal briefs.

Thanks guys -- The blade looks awesome but for such a premium price I dont want to get burned on the battery life.

 

I have heard that the battery life is down vs the previous gen but I have no experience with the 2013 blade. The 2014 blade has integrated Intel graphics (4600) in addition to the dedicated gpu. The battery life feels very similar to my 2010 MacBook pro

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Hi! I had the 2013 blade and now the 2014. On the intel GPU, they are about the same; I don't think you'll have issues with 5 hours of classes. If gaming on battery like I do, there is a major difference on the Nvidia GPU. 2013 I could get 2 hours on my game before battery is critical, I get one hour now on the same game,but a lot of the extra processing is keeping up with native 1800p resolution vs. 900p on the 2013.

 

Yea i dont think I will be doing any gaming on the battery, I was just looking to do the school work I need to do on the battery. Does anyone have any real world experience where they had to try and make the laptop last a while or anything like that. I assume that a Haswell CPU/GPU should be able to stretch the battery life pretty far when the screen brightness is turned down and wifi use is at a miniumum

 

Mine seems to easily last 4-6 hours and I keep the brightness at max most of the time. Just today I watched a video for about 2 hours, put it to sleep and came to work then used it until around 11:30 before charging. There was some off and on when I would lock it and the screen would go off but I was not trying to preserve the battery and it lasted well over 6 hours with 10 percent left. I would say if you used it constantly 5 hours would be a safe bet and with effort 6 hours should be possible.

 

Interesting fact and I wonder if anyone else has similar experience:

When putting my 2014 Blade to sleep it loses about 5% of battery power in sleep mode every 12 hours. Can anyone else reference their % loss while in sleep mode to compare?

Thanks

 

I'm pretty sure that is due ot the Windows 8 hybrid shutdown which doesn't truly shutdown your PC all the way. Here is the solution I chose. I like it because I can choose to use the faster shutdown and startup or do a full shutdown easily without having to mess with settings each time.

How to Do a Full Shutdown in Windows 8 Without Disabling Hybrid Boot

 

are you guys all happy with your blades? i.e, would you recommend it for me to buy? Does the heat get to be too much or bothersome (i will be playing games at my desk and no where else) but i will be using the intel GPU for most other work both at home and at college

 

If you use it in bed or in your lap you need a pad or something to elevate it. Otherwise it's a non issue in my experience

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I am extremely happy with my purchase. Wonderful laptop for work and play. Just pay respect to it while playing by ensuring it's in a thermally sound environment (on a table with room to breathe)

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cool. I might pull the trigger on getting this laptop then, the MS store offers a nice discount to college students and offer a really good protection plan. When you guys use it on your desks, do you elevate it or put it on a cooling pad at all?

 

When I¨m charging my battery says "99%, not charging". Is this normal? It charges after I've unplugged and the battery is below 95%.

 

Matt, it does not seem to need any elevated surface but it wouldn't hurt as the unit does run hot when gaming, nothing id feel required a pad but if your gonna get one for using in bed etc... Then it'll help other places too

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That is totally normal, its actually preferred that way for these batteries. The worst thing you can do is constantly trickle charge it at 100%. I think from about 95-100 it may be not charging at certain times. I'm not exactly sure how the charging circuit decides this but I've seen it on many laptops and never had an issue.

 

Ah, ok Now it's at 100% and the battery icon is green. Should I unplugg? Is performace better with the AC plugged in? (been reading when unplugged is 2D mode or something)

 

I would not game unplugged under normal conditions, even if you do it will generally be a very short session. From my experiments it does work very well on battery and gave me the same performance as plugged in, if I set it up for that. The issue it is will reduce your battery run time and realistically I will never NEED to game that 1 hour on battery anyway. Battery time for me is more like surfing and office tasks so I purposefully set mine up to save energy and extend run time, I do this on every laptop since that is what is important to me when on battery.

Everyone will have their own battery usage and recommendations. Personally, what I do is plug everything (laptop, LCD, speakers etc) into a switched power strip and turn it off at the end of the day so it's not sitting there plugged in all night long and through the day while I am at work. Then I try to run down the battery partially about once a month if I hadn't already done it recently in normal use. If I am thinking the battery needs it I will do a more complete run down but I don't do that often.

 

I bought a cooler master cooling pad to go with mine and find that it makes about 5-7c difference in temperature. Nothing to write home about to I usually just game without the pad now. Its a inconvenience really to have to hook it up, listen to its loud fans and makes the computer feel a lot more delicate. I prefer to just game away with it flat on a table. It does just fine.

 

Just another quick question. So I saw here that some people reported roughly 6 hours battery life (obviously with the brightness turned down and on the power saver power mode. did that time involve using wifi at all? Like, if i turned the brightness down and put the pc in power saver mode, AND turned off the wifi, would it last longer?

 

I only got my Razer Blade 14 (2014) less than a week ago, and I love it. I am only just starting portable use of it.

In terms of "ultrabook" use and hauling it around to and from classes, consider this to be the size and weight of a MacBook Pro. I don't know if that qualifies as Ultrabook or not, but it's not MacBook Air size/weight.

While I love this thing, and have no issues with the high rez touchscreen, which is EXCELLENT, I don't know that the battery life is what you are looking for.

Based on my limited experience, it may be possible to stretch to 5 hours using the HD4600 graphics, running in Power Saver profile, etc., I am not sure you'd be comfortable with it. I am one of those people who hates being away from AC for too long. Not that I run out of battery, but I spend a lot of time worrying about how quickly I am chewing up the battery.

You might be able to have it last the 5 hours you need for the days of long classes, but you might have to be constantly managing the battery, and you might not always make it.

Personally, if I needed 5 actual hours of battery life, I'd be looking for something with 7-9 hours of rated battery life..

Having said that, I love this machine....

 

The 2013 model was rated 6 but I could get up to 7 and a half frugal, 6.5 to 7 normal, 2014 model same settings gets 5hours, rarely 6.

 

Hello,

I have received my 2014 14" Blade and am really disappointed in the battery life.

I have the power plan set to power saver, set the Intel graphics settings to max battery life and even go into the Nvidia settings and set Intel Preferred.

While browsing and emailing, with the display set to minimum, I am lucky to see two hours of life. Not only that, the system remains rather toasty.

So, what am I overlooking?

I admit that I am not the best with windows 8.1 as I was an Apple head for a long period of time. However, I am proficient with Windows 7.

Can a user create a ultimate power setting for office use that will yield cold and long battery life?

Yes, I know.. I bought a powerhouse. What did I expect? However, with that said, i'm sure any input would be valuable to those double duty users like myself.

Thanks everyone!

 

There is something wrong with your laptop imho. I have the same laptop and while on battery the laptop stays very cool and the battery life approaches 6 hours. I would get it replaced asap.

 

I truly hope not.

The laptop was purchased for $1499 on eBay. It was delivered in perfect condition, but they do not offer exchanges. (Just refunds)

 

Go to nvidia control panel and set it to indicate if the gpu is running in the status bar. If the icon is coloured the gpu is running even if it displays no applications. Minimum 4 hours batterylife without dgpu running, heat is the biggest indicator it's active, the laptop should not heat up at all in idle

 

Thank you. I will keep my eye on that.

I also read that the Modern UI interface forces the dGPU when accessed and does not switch off until reboot. However, that was a Win 8 post, not 8.1. Is this truly a problem in 8.1?

Thanks again!