Surface Go 3 Terrible Battery Life

Question

Hi. I'm using a Surface Go 3 (core i3 CPU) and I'm struggling to work out how to preserve battery life. It's not so bad when the device isn't connected to the internet but when it is the battery is absolutely terrible. For example, when streaming my battery went down from 67% to 22% in 54 minutes. How can this be? This is the worst device I've ever owned in this respect.

I ensure the screen brightness isn't too high and I also changed the update settings as recommended on one website I read but I still get no more than 3 hours when connected to the internet.

Is there any hope for decent performance or should I just be ready to throw it in the bin?

Answer 1

Hi SunWon11,

Thank you for reaching Microsoft Community. We're sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you.

Battery life varies significantly based on usage, network and feature configuration, signal strength, settings and other factors. Testing consisted of full battery discharge with a mixture of active use and modern standby. The active use portion consists of (1) a web browsing test accessing 8 popular websites over multiple open tabs, (2) a productivity test utilizing Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook, and (3) a portion of time with the device in use with idle applications. All settings where default except screen brightness was set to 150nits with Auto-Brightness disabled. Wi-Fi was connected to a network. Tested with Windows Version 11.0.22000.9 (21H2). Battery life varies significantly with settings, usage and other factors.

You may use the detailed Battery information to see which apps are affecting the battery life.

Go to Windows Settings > System > Power & Battery. Select View detailed info. Under Battery usage per app. There are several sort options including "background" to help identify. Validate if there are any installed applications that may be using a lot of power.

You may try running these steps below to troubleshoot your device:

Run Surface Diagnostic Toolkit and check Windows updates including optional updates if available.

See: Fix common Surface problems using the Surface Diagnostic Toolkit (microsoft.com)

Update Battery driver.

From Device Manager, expand the Batteries category. Double-tap or double-click the battery driver, select the Driver tab, and select Update device > Search automatically for driver. Then follow the on-screen instructions.

Run the system file checker to check if there are corrupted system files that are just looping around causing this kind of issue to exist.  See Using System File Checker in Windows - Microsoft Support.

More information about battery life and advice on extending battery life can be found in the articles below:

• Maximize your Surface battery life
• Battery saving tips

Kind regards,

Lavenia

Answer 2

Hi SunWon11,

We haven't heard from you, so we assume that your issue has already been addressed. We will not be monitoring this thread moving forward so, if you need further assistance, please create a new thread to discuss these concerns by clicking this link: Create a new question or start a discussion (microsoft.com)

Thank you for understanding. 

Kind regards,

Lavenia