Solved! HP Envy 13 Poor Battery Life

[lakimens]

Hello,

I purchased this laptop a few days ago and I have been disappointed with it's battery life.
It is advertised as "up to 14 hours", I didn't expect that, but I expected at least 6 hours of light use.
Looking at reviews, people are getting at least 6 hours of light-medium use.

I've been getting 4 hours of light use on BATTERY SAVER and brightness at 25%...
I've run all the necessary tests, HP tests say that the battery has 100% of the original capacity, after all I bought it a few days ago. All of the HP tests passed. Not sure what is wrong..

Specs:
i7-8550U , 8GB DDR3, 512 SSD, 1080p display, apparently 120hz(this is not advertised).
Model name: HP Envy 13-Ah0024nn
OS: Windows 10

Doing some more taxing tasks, that use the battery drains the battery much faster, which is expected. about 70% drop in one hour playing Dota 2, capped at 40FPS and CPU and GPU weren't too loaded, because the throttle limit is at 62C.

Has anyone had experience with this laptop? I'm pretty dissapointed in the battery life, I was expecting over 6 hours of at least light use...

Also, I wanted to try lowering the refresh rate to 60hz to see if that changes something, but there's no option to do that..

Thanks!

 

[webworkings]

That is well below the battery life it should be getting. Per the HP site... https/support.hp.com/sg-en/document/c06063490

I suggest you return the laptop and have them either replace the battery for you with a new one, or give you a different laptop.

 

[Solandri]

Notebookcheck (who does very thorough, reproducible tests) tested this laptop with that processor. They got 6.3 hours of video playback, 8 hours light web browsing. So if you're only getting 4 hours something is definitely wrong.

Make sure Windows is completely updated. Do a reboot - update - reboot sequence several times. For some reason when Windows Update is waiting for a reboot, it burns CPU cycles and thrashes your drive. And starting with Windows 8, Microsoft changed it so doing a Windows shutdown doesn't actually shut down your computer. It puts it into a pseudo-hibernate state. To do a real shutdown and restart (to allow updates to complete), you have to select the Restart option from the shutdown menu. You have to do it several times because some updates won't download and install until previous updates have installed and you've rebooted.

Make sure the Intel and Nvidia GPU drivers are correct for your laptop and up to date. In the Nvidia control panel, make sure the Intel GPU is set as the default GPU. The Nvidia GPU burns more power so should only be used for games.

Other than that, I'd suggest using Task Manager to see which processes are using the CPU the most. CPU use should be between 0%-5% when the laptop is sitting idle. It's not uncommon for a program to be malfunctioning and burning up CPU cycles.

 

[lakimens]

Notebookcheck (who does very thorough, reproducible tests) tested this laptop with that processor. They got 6.3 hours of video playback, 8 hours light web browsing. So if you're only getting 4 hours something is definitely wrong.

Make sure Windows is completely updated. Do a reboot - update - reboot sequence several times. For some reason when Windows Update is waiting for a reboot, it burns CPU cycles and thrashes your drive. And starting with Windows 8, Microsoft changed it so doing a Windows shutdown doesn't actually shut down your computer. It puts it into a pseudo-hibernate state. To do a real shutdown and restart (to allow updates to complete), you have to select the Restart option from the shutdown menu. You have to do it several times because some updates won't download and install until previous updates have installed and you've rebooted.

Make sure the Intel and Nvidia GPU drivers are correct for your laptop and up to date. In the Nvidia control panel, make sure the Intel GPU is set as the default GPU. The Nvidia GPU burns more power so should only be used for games.

Other than that, I'd suggest using Task Manager to see which processes are using the CPU the most. CPU use should be between 0%-5% when the laptop is sitting idle. It's not uncommon for a program to be malfunctioning and burning up CPU cycles.

I'm updating it right now, I'll write here again afterwards. Nothing is using the Nvidia GPU, I've set it to only be used on DOTA 2 and all others use the iGPU.

 

[lakimens]

That is well below the battery life it should be getting. Per the HP site... https/support.hp.com/sg-en/document/c06063490

I suggest you return the laptop and have them either replace the battery for you with a new one, or give you a different laptop.

I'm not sure what else I would take, there's only the Lenovo 720 I also like at this price, but I like this one much more, though the Lenovo gets better battery I guess, well, it would be double the battery life at this point..

 

[lllz]

I'm having exactly the same problem with my Envy. Even though I have been using it for over a year, from day 1 it was giving me a maximum of 4 hours of battery life. It's too late for me to return it but I was wondering if it's possible to run some sort of a third party battery check app to see if it corresponds to the one declared on the box.

 

[lakimens]

Thanks for reminding me to post here again. After I updated it, I was getting 5-6 hours using battery saver.
I have now moved to Linux(Manjaro) - I just liked the platform. I installed TLP, it's a battery management app.
I tested today, and after about 4 hours, I was left with 51% battery, here's the situation:
-10 chrome tabs
-Music player on speakers
-Libreoffice Writer
-Backgroun apps(Upwork, Telegram, Mailspring, Insync, Flameshot and a few more)

If you're considering moving to Linux, keep in mind, you won't have any of the Adobe Apps, I've managed to get Photoshop to work using Wine, but it's buggy and slow.

 

[webworkings]

Again, if the problem isn't resolving, I would consider a return/exchange before that time runs out.