I've had my Surface Pro 4 for about four years, and its battery life has steadily gotten worse over the past year. It now loses roughly 20% per hour during normal work even with battery saver enabled, and it drains faster when I use Canva or Obsidian. The device also gets noticeably hot after about an hour of light, continuous use.
According to the battery report, its full-charge capacity is about 40,670 mWh, down from the original 45,800 mWh. I usually keep the screen at 50% brightness or lower. I do use Chrome, so I know that may contribute, but a 20% hourly drain still seems excessive. Is this level of battery use normal for a four-year-old device, and is there anything I can do to diagnose or improve it?
2 Answers
A battery retaining about 40,670 mWh out of 45,800 mWh is still in decent condition, so replacing it may not make much difference right now. Check Chrome tabs and extensions, Obsidian plugins, and Windows processes while the system is warm. If one of those applications is constantly using the CPU, reducing its workload should improve both the heat and battery life. If the usage remains around 20% per hour during genuinely light work, the aging processor, cooling system, or a misbehaving application is probably the main issue rather than the battery's rated capacity.
Check actual power usage with a hardware monitoring tool such as HWiNFO64, and use Resource Monitor to see whether a background process is keeping the CPU busy. Screen-recording software or another hidden process can cause both extra heat and rapid drain. The thermal compound may also have degraded, although replacing it on this type of device may be difficult. The battery itself has only lost around 12% of its original capacity, which is fairly good after four years and 200-plus cycles, so the drain is more likely related to current power consumption than battery wear.
I checked the battery usage and Chrome and Obsidian are each responsible for roughly 30%. I don't see anything else unusual running in the background, so it may be a combination of those apps and the device's age.