The official VAIO Z battery drain thread

I am using a new Z570.

With the battery charged to 100% and then shutdown and disconnected from the a/c adapter, it loses 16% of its charge when checked in exactly 2 days.

Wouldn't you consider this to be excessive battery drain?

I did not test by removing the battery from the laptop, since I shouldn't have to do that.

 

are u sure its battery drain? couldn't it be power required to "turn on" the laptop?

 

The Z was turned on ONCE, to check the battery at 2 days, no other time.
It does not take 16 percent, or 4 percent of the total battery life to turn on any notebook one time.

 

There is another long thread regarding this topic. People have tried all kinds of things, and still loose power. They experimented different shutdown procedures, and there is no conclusive evidence of what is causing it. If you remove the battery at night, and plug it in again in the morning, it will be 100%less the startup usage. Really strange. Maybe the instant start, maybe the wireless radios are still on even the computer is shut down.

 

Same issue here with the Z590. I hope this thread gets more attention this time around. To pay such a higher premium for the Z's portability (which implies battery life), it's a shame more people don't notice this problem.

 

Good thoughts, but the wireless radios are not on with the unit shut down.

I have an RMA for a refund for mine as defective due to this and another issue. I have the low-res version, and find the backlighting to be uneven, and putting up a pure white screen gives nothing close to white, more of a mottled grey.

But, I would keep it with the screen defect, but 16% battery loss in 2 days is just too much IMHO.

 

I hate the light leakage. I had a bit on the TZ, but I do not have any on my desktop monitor (Dell 2405), and very little on my 6 year old Dell laptop. I'll look at the screen first the next time I buy a vaio (either z or the new tz).

 

same problem on the SR
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=282258

 

same problem here !! I shut down my laptop at 50 % and after 9 hours it was 29 % ?????????

 

wow, 21% in 9 hours... and I thought I had it bad.

I'm losing about 10% in 8 hours here.

 

yep I have like you 10 % when the laptop full charged , but try to drain the battery for 50 % and then shutdown the laptop !! wait 9 hours you will see the same as mine :S:S I don't know what to do , this problem make me crazy !! sony sent me new battery and same problem !!

 

I will try it tonight. If it loses 20% charge overnight, it's going back to Sony.

10% I can live with; 20% is unacceptable.

 

****, this is so stupid, i didnt think it was a big problem at first, but now you guys are scaring the **** out of me

 

Sorry to spoil it for you, but that's the advantage of having a discussion board like this. Isn't it better than NOT knowing?

 

weird, i just checked my battery, (i charged it up to 100% and removed it on thursday around 8 pm and now, i inserted into my laptop, and remove the AC and it showed 99% remaining..

does it need more time to measure the "actual" battery level?

 

The battery drain issue is as follows:

(1) charge up the battery to X%

(2) shut down and remove AC adaptor

(3) leave the laptop for a few hours

(4) power up and see battery is now X-Y% where Y is the battery drain and the problem is Y% can be a lot like 10% within 30 minutes.

If you remove the battery from the laptop, the drain is only a few % and that is normal.

I am still not sure what to do, when I called Sony the service person claimed that there have not been reports of such battery drain.

 

guys, could it be, that the "battery reporting" is showing 90% or some other figure but the battery still lasts 4-5 hours? What I mean is, perhaps the indicator is showing different but the battery still lasts the same amount of time then it should?

Just an idea, but I experiencing the same problem charging it to 100%, turning it off with ac adaptor, unplugging ac adaptor, turning it on and having 90/89% battery indication left.

 

try doing that repeatedly and see if it drains down to 0%. i haven't done that test

 

For Step (4), is everyone plugging the AC adaptor back in before powering on? If not, some of the loss may be attributed to the starting up process, which could be up to 4%.

 

no, for step 4 do not insert AC because it will be inaccurate to test battery drain. the reported losses are about 10%, not 4%.

 

I am aware of the problem you speak of. In fact, I was one of the first to post about the ~10% loss. I just wanted to clarify the procedure for testing so everyone is consistent.

Following the above procedure, I lose 4% when turning on the notebook right after it shuts down. This tells us 4% can be attributed to the startup, and any additional loss on top of that is the battery drain, no?

When leaving the battery in for 8 hours, the loss is close to 10% (but minus the 4% for bootup really means 6% loss),

 

If the Z loses 6% in 8 hours, then a fully charged unit would be dead as a doornail in just over 5 days!! That is, if the battery doesn't drain faster when it gets down to the 50% range, which I think it does. 6% drain in 8 hours is HUGE, far more than unacceptable, and definitely a defect. Again, my T60 sat charged in a closet for a month or more and never had less than 1/3 charge left. Ever.

SONY phone support does not have a clue. You can tell them that this has been an issue until recently with the SZ series, or file an online support claim like I did. You won't get a reasonable answer, but you will be on record with it.

I am finding a huge difference in drain based on time period:
From the 10% in 8 hours reported here (which is more than totally unacceptable) down to 18-20% in 2 days which is also unacceptable. I have other computers, so I have had no true need to use the Z, so I started checking and....wow!! No way is this going to work for me.

It is far better to know. I started this thread because this has been a known issue on other SONY laptops in the past, including the SZ. This is not a normal percentage for a notebook's battery to lose. I have put a Thinkpad in a closet for a month or more, and it still had 1/3 or more of its charge!

That is far more than I have seen or what is considered "normal" for this defect.
Your battery could be bad, or may not have ever been fully charged. Drain your battery down to where it can't power the notebook, then plug it in and fully charge, then try again.

Start with a full battery at 100% charge.

For testing the drain, be sure to keep the a/c adapter plugged into the wall and the Z until the unit totally shuts down. Make sure it is not hibernating or doing any other form of sleep!

It is possible that batteries reporting partial charges (around 50% range) may lose more charge percentage more quickly, that could be what you saw.

 

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, if you are going by the % charge that Vista reports, I don't think you can conclude much. It seems that Vista (and XP) has some sort of algorithm that projects the amount of battery life you have left based on current usage patterns. Without knowing exactly how this works, those percentages may not reflect the actual amount of charge used/left for a battery. I notice on my current laptop, the % battery left can change by more the 20% in a short time (probably partly due to old battery, though).

If you are reporting X% battery loss after N hours, please say how you are measuring battery charge. Also, as was pointed out, it makes a difference whether your shutdown and/or startup was done on battery (which would consume some non-trivial amount of charge) or on AC power (which presumably charges the battery a bit).

Some folks in the forum were using a utility to show the actual charge, but I can't find what that was at the moment. Anyone know?

 

Good point.

I don't think Sony has designed any hw to monitor battery charge levels. That's the only reliable way to measure the battery charge level. A sw algorithm can only be used as an indicator.
Besides, any SW algorithms should be battery type dependent since every battery type performs differently.

Don't trust Vista or any other sw, unless it's provided by sony.

If you test your battery life and it lasts less than 4-5 hours, then Sony is to blame for that. Don't blame Sony on what Vista or other sw are reporting since there are an unlimited number of batteries and all these applications try to report a statiscal mean.

 

Sorry, I disagree, you can conclude plenty from what VISTA reports. It is a VISTA utility on the taskbar, but it is tied to VAIO Power Management, so it is as accurate as it can be for any notebook, and is what SONY designed for use with this notebook. The percentage will not vary as long as you keep the same power plan in effect, in my case VAIO optimized. SONY also ties their utility to a battery optimizer setting to keep the battery from dropping below a certain charge level. VISTA is not that inaccurate, it works fine for gaging any other laptops I have used in the past 2 years, and my desktop UPS batteries, no issues. I followed the testing template posted in this thread: charge to 100%, shutdown, unplug, then power on after x number of hours/days without plugging into a/c until reading is taken. No changes in power plan. Again, if you change the power plan along the way, then, yes, the software may be less accurate. I have used a variety of other makes and models under VISTA, and this is the highest drain BY FAR that I have experienced.

You have to go by SOMETHING to gauge battery percentage, and this is what SONY has given you to do so with.

How many hours/minutes you get of use from a full charge is relevant, but NOT to this issue of drain. The notebook may have a perfectly fine total battery life with a full charge, but that is not the issue. The issue is having a fully, or partially charged battery sitting in a briefcase, or whatever, draining before it can be used.

If a fully charged notebook sits in a case for 2 days, and then has 48 minutes left of use (which it does) then it has drained far too quickly.

 

I have been reading these forums for a while and i cannot remember this battery drain issue being a real issue for SZ6/SZ7 owners. Maybe screen banding issues was a problem at a time for the more recent SZ6 but the battery drain issue i don't believe has been a real issue in the SZ later models.

I own an SZ7 and don't have any battery drain issues.

This is not an acceptable problem i hope that Sony look into this very soon.

 

My understanding was that SONY worked out the SZ battery drain by the time the later SZ's were shipped. There were other battery drain issues (not related to this one) where USB devices drained battery too quickly under VISTA, again, those were worked out much earlier.

 

I hope they fix it before I buy a Z16GN/B.

 

The utility that can give you battery charge info is RMClock, as mentioned in the SR battery drain thread. Looks like people are seeing the battery drain even when measured this way.

Another important point is was the laptop powered off, or set to hibernate or sleep when the drain was seen.

 

hibernate should not drain power - that is the idea behind hibernation, it saves the state to hard disk and then power off.

sleep should drain only a negligible amount of battery, according to vista description anyway.

while i agree that the vista indicator may not be accurate, it must nevertheless be an estimate otherwise it is useless. the problem is if you power on/off a few times on battery with 30 minutes lapse in between, it quickly goes down by 10% each time and eventually it will power down automatically when you power up due to power settings.

 

Hibernate and off are different ACPI power states (S4 vs G2/G3). Some devices might be receiving power in S4 that don't receive power in G2/G3. In fact in G2 (soft off), some devices (keyboard, NIC) may still receive power in order to wake the system. In G3 (mechanical off), only real-time clock gets power. Also, some drivers don't put devices into the right power states, which can cause problems when trying to sleep or hibernate.

 

regardless of the technicalities, if hibernate sucks 10% off per 30 minutes of off-time, it is a problem as well.

technically, sleep mode should go into the G2 mode, while hibernate should go into G3.

 

No, sleep (suspend to RAM) is G1, substate S3. Hibernate is G1, S4.

Agreed.

 

As I and most others have previously stated, our Z's were totally powered off.
This thread was not directed to drain while hibernating or sleeping.

 

Hibernating should be identical to switching off. Neither is supposed to drain the battery.

Sleeping is supposed to drain the battery.

 

I understand that, I simply specified a full shutdown, so that no one would accidentally mistake sleep for hibernate.

 

did anyone try taking the batter out after a full charge?

 

It is going to hold the charge much better if removed.

Again, that is not the issue of this thread.

If you would be happy to transport your Z, battery and power supply all separately, then do so. I am not happy to do that.

The battery should be able to be transported in the notebook, powered off, as with any other notebook computer, without substantial drain. There WILL BE some drain with any battery in any notebook PC, but we are discussing percentages of drain here which would be considered excessive.

 

has anyone heard any info released officially by sony on this issue? are there any plans to fix it sumhow?

 

No, SONY won't do that.

They wouldn't want to admit anything officially, unless they were prepared to either recall (which would never happen for something like this) or fix it with firmware upgrade (possible, but unlikely).

Here is the reply I got from their web-support "team" at SONY, which was a totally garbage reply:

"Thank you for contacting Sony Support.

I'm sorry that the battery of your Sony VAIO Notebook computer drains when it is shut down. It is normal for any lithium-ion based Notebook battery to lose a small portion of it's charge when the notebook is powered off or if the battery is removed from the notebook and stored. Lithium-ion batteries do not develop a "memory" and can be recharged at any time. Charging a partially discharged lithium-ion battery does not affect battery life.

Thank you for your time.

The Sony Email Response Team
C6DA
Ryan"


This was in response to my quoting high percentages of battery drain to them. They sent me pretty much an automated reply, saying for me to charge my battery as often as I like!! Ridiculous.

Also, you can't reply to the email that they send you, so that ends the discussion, unless you send another support request in!!

 

I think this problem needs attention from Sony. On these forums it would be easy to gather a lot of people and alert Sony of these issues.

I don't own a Vaio myself and frankly I don't care enough, but otherwise I might coordinate such action.

 

I just bought my new Vaio Z and have the same problem with draining. According to my rough tests my unit is loosing around 7-8% in 8 hours. I hope this can be fixed somehow.

 

Well the only fix at the moment is removing the battery. Which is better for battery health anyway.

 

thnx! i'll test my Z with battery removed tonight!

 

Let's call call call and email email email!

If enough people complain, threaten to return, or actually do return the laptop, I'm sure it will get Sony's attention.

 

Not according to the ACPI specs:

Note: Hibernate is one of the sleeping states (S4). D3 is device powered off state. Other power states (D1, D2) have intermediate power consumption levels. D0 is fully on.

I would guess that when powered off most laptops go into Soft Off (G2/S5) state and not Mechanical Off (G3).

Sleep, hibernate and soft off can all draw power. Any device which is enabled to wake the computer can draw some power. If any such device is enabled, power is also supplied to the bus it's on and any other buses needed to connect to the ACPI core chip set that will actually wake the machine up.

Examples of devices that might be able to wake the computer: network card (wired/wireless/WWAN), modem, keyboard. I would try to disable all such devices (not kbd) before shutting down and see if that makes any difference. It's possible one of these devices is not going into a low enough power state as it should. It is the OS's responsibility to put the device into the correct power state. The OS uses the driver to do so. Perhaps a driver update will fix this issue at some point.

 

This is the reason that I am not checking the notebook with anything other than a full, regular shutdown for purposes of this testing for this defect.

Just forget about hibernation or sleep modes for now, just shutdown.

 

Even after shutdown, some power will be supplied to any device that can wake the computer up. Most likely, one of these device is drawing too much power. Disabling all of them (with BIOS if possible, or even physically removing them) and seeing if the problem goes away would be a good way to track this down. Then add one by one back in to see who the cuplrit is. Obviously this is a pain, and Sony should be tracking it down, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

As far as I know: Hibernate is not a sleep state. It powers off completely.

The fact that I can remove the battery without any problem proves it.

Edit: but for the simplicity of this test let's focus on switching off.

 

I was just trying to simplify the testing of this issue, so that nobody was confused and so that we are all on the same page.