I've had my Surface 4 for about four years, and its battery life has gradually gotten worse over the past year. It currently loses roughly 20% per hour during ordinary work, even with battery saver enabled, and drains faster when I use Canva or Obsidian. It also becomes noticeably warm after about an hour of light, continuous use. Brightness is usually below 50%, and I mainly use Chrome. The battery report lists a full-charge capacity of 40,670 mWh compared with the original 45,800 mWh. Is this level of drain normal, or could a background process, browser, heat, or aging hardware be responsible? Is there anything I can do to improve it, and should I expect it to keep getting worse?
2 Answers
Check Windows' battery-usage page to see which applications are consuming the most power. Chrome and Obsidian can both use a surprising amount, especially with many tabs, extensions, plugins, or synced files open. Try closing unnecessary tabs and extensions, checking Obsidian's plugins, and comparing battery life with those apps closed. If the device still loses around 20% per hour while nearly idle, then a hardware or thermal issue becomes more likely.
The reported capacity has only dropped by about 12%, which is actually pretty good for a four-year-old device. That means the battery may not be the main problem. Check actual power usage with a tool such as HWiNFO64 and Windows Resource Monitor, and look for apps or processes keeping the CPU active. Browser tabs, extensions, screen capture software, and heavier web apps can all increase drain and heat. If the system is running hotter than it used to, aging thermal compound could also contribute, although servicing a Surface can be difficult.
I checked the usage report, and Chrome and Obsidian are each responsible for roughly 30% of the reported consumption. I don't see any other obvious background processes, so I wasn't sure whether this was simply due to the device's age or an optimization problem.