Why is my HP OMEN 16 using 18–21W during light battery use?
Asked by
MellowCedar47
I recently bought an HP OMEN 16 (model AP0183AX) with a Ryzen AI 7 350, Radeon 860M integrated graphics, RTX 5060, and an 83Wh battery. With light browsing or even mostly idle use, I'm only getting about 3–3.5 hours. Battery drain is consistently around 10% every 15–20 minutes, although I expected closer to 5 hours and have seen reports of 7–10 hours from the same model.
HWiNFO typically shows 18–21W total battery discharge, while CPU package power is around 5–6W. The RTX 5060 usually reports 0W and 0% utilization, while the Radeon 860M shows light activity. Temperatures stay around 35–40°C.
In one idle test, I disabled Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, set the display to 50% brightness, selected Best Power Efficiency, and left only HWiNFO open. The battery dropped from about 64% to 60% in 10 minutes, with HWiNFO reporting roughly 18–20W discharge. The RTX 5060 occasionally wakes briefly and reports voltage and power before returning to 0W, although I realize HWiNFO polling might be causing some of those wakeups.
The battery appears healthy: its design and full-charge capacities are both about 83,514mWh, with only three cycles. Windows power diagnostics reported a USB device that does not enter selective suspend, average CPU usage of 7.37%, and PCI Express ASPM being disabled because of a reported hardware incompatibility. Disconnecting my Lenovo mouse did not remove the USB warning.
HP remotely checked the system and said the hardware and software were up to date, suggesting battery calibration. I have also tested at 60Hz and low brightness. What could be causing such high 18–21W consumption when the RTX 5060 appears inactive and CPU usage is low?
Answers
The RTX 5060 periodically waking is worth investigating, even if Task Manager shows zero utilization. A connected display, hardware-accelerated application, overlay, browser tab, monitoring tool, or driver issue can prevent the dGPU from staying fully asleep. Try repeating the test without HWiNFO, overlays, browsers, and external USB devices, then compare battery discharge in Windows Task Manager or another monitor. Also check whether OMEN Gaming Hub is truly in hybrid or integrated-graphics mode.
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The integrated Radeon 860M is the GPU handling normal desktop output, so it will use some power even when the RTX 5060 is off. However, an 18–21W system drain is still high for light browsing on an 83Wh battery, especially with only about 5W reported for the CPU package. The PCIe ASPM warning, display mode, firmware, chipset graphics drivers, and background processes are more useful leads than battery health, which appears normal.
CobaltRidge18: The USB selective-suspend warning may contribute if a device is constantly preventing low-power states, but it is not necessarily the main cause. I would test with every peripheral removed and compare the result after updating or reinstalling the AMD chipset and graphics drivers.
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A gaming laptop’s display and integrated graphics still consume power even when the RTX 5060 is not actively rendering. Lowering the refresh rate to 60Hz, reducing brightness, using a dark background, and selecting the most aggressive power-saving mode may improve runtime, but those changes probably will not explain the entire difference by themselves.
MellowCedar47: I have already tested at 60Hz and around 21% brightness. The reason I’m investigating is that other owners of this exact configuration report roughly 5–10 hours, so 3–3.5 hours seems unusually low.
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Some reports of 7–10 hours are likely measured under unusually favorable conditions: low brightness, 60Hz, very light usage, aggressive power saving, and a sleeping or disabled dGPU. Still, because another owner of the same model reportedly gets around 5 hours, your result should not automatically be dismissed as normal. A controlled test with no HWiNFO, no peripherals, 60Hz, integrated-only graphics, and a clean background session should establish whether the laptop itself is drawing too much power.
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LunarKite53: HWiNFO polling can sometimes wake a discrete GPU, so the brief RTX readings may not represent normal use. A clean idle test without monitoring software would help separate a measurement artifact from a real power problem.