Battery life sucks

[JakeShower]

Hi,

I bought an HP Zbook and it came in about a week ago. This laptop was advertised as a gaming computer expected to last, everything works great, it's got a lot of storage, it's got an i7 core, whatever. My only issue is that the battery life is awful.

It has, give or take, an hour before it dies which isn't great at all and today, after it had been charging for a week, I was going to bring it to my grandparents after running errands, it had died before I ever even opened it. I was only gone 3~ hours.

I guess my question is how do I either fix this or get a new one. I am a complete novice at computers and would like some help.

I purchased it through a website called Tigerdirect which I've heard is a reputable website but I haven't had the best luck with it. Maybe they just checked to see if it would turn on rather than hold it's charge, I don't know.

 

[RealBeast]

Two suggestions. Never leave it sleep, use it and turn it off when you are done.

And look to see which battery you have, OEMs almost always put the battery with the minimum of cells (so lowest Watt-hours) rather than the more expensive battery with the most possible, which will give you far more use time. Also turn off anything that uses power in the OS/junk apps that you don't need.

And yeah, most gaming computers have high end parts that need to stay plugged in as much as possible.

 

[LordVile]

Hi,

I bought an HP Zbook and it came in about a week ago. This laptop was advertised as a gaming computer expected to last, everything works great, it's got a lot of storage, it's got an i7 core, whatever. My only issue is that the battery life is awful.

It has, give or take, an hour before it dies which isn't great at all and today, after it had been charging for a week, I was going to bring it to my grandparents after running errands, it had died before I ever even opened it. I was only gone 3~ hours.

I guess my question is how do I either fix this or get a new one. I am a complete novice at computers and would like some help.

I purchased it through a website called Tigerdirect which I've heard is a reputable website but I haven't had the best luck with it. Maybe they just checked to see if it would turn on rather than hold it's charge, I don't know.

It’s a gaming laptop what did you expect?

 

[JakeShower]

It’s a gaming laptop what did you expect?

A more useful answer

 

[JakeShower]

Two suggestions. Never leave it sleep, use it and turn it off when you are done.

And look to see which battery you have, OEMs almost always put the battery with the minimum of cells (so lowest Watt-hours) rather than the more expensive battery with the most possible, which will give you far more use time. Also turn off anything that uses power in the OS/junk apps that you don't need.

And yeah, most gaming computers have high end parts that need to stay plugged in as much as possible.

Ah, thank you. I guess I just thought since it was a laptop, it was meant to be more portable

 

[USAFRet]

Ah, thank you. I guess I just thought since it was a laptop, it was meant to be more portable

Power vs performance.

High performance "gaming" laptops suffer from short life on battery.
Physics.

 

[hotaru.hino]

HP Zbook's are portable workstations. They're tailored towards performance than endurance.

 

[LordVile]

A more useful answer

I’m serious. Gaming laptops are known to have dreadful battery life. They’re full of high wattage components and windows is generally poor at battery management. Just running video at 50% brightness you’re taking about 50% the battery life of a MBP 16 and that’s not amazing on battery just above average as it also has a high end CPU and dedicated graphics. Also which ZBook did you buy? They’re mainly overpriced workstation orientated builds with quadros not meant for gaming but to be plugged into the wall to run renders and sims for hours on end.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I’m serious. Gaming laptops are known to have dreadful battery life. They’re full of high wattage components and windows is generally poor at battery management. Just running video at 50% brightness you’re taking about 50% the battery life of a MBP 16 and that’s not amazing on battery just above average as it also has a high end CPU and dedicated graphics.

Gaming laptops with AMD's processors have really upset this notion. ASUS's Zepyhrus G14 for example is competitive with Intel MacBooks on battery life. I don't know about video playback, but for web browsing the laptop can easily get 10+ hours. I did see one video rundown test on the G14 where it lasted 7 hours running a 720p video at 150 nits and 100% volume.

However I would also argue that plenty of other laptops since proper hybrid graphics has been implemented have achieved really good with battery life. My previous two laptops were gaming oriented and could still get 6 hours easily with internet browsing. So you can now have your cake and eat it too. I don't think it's the OS that largely matters, it's just how much effort the system builder is willing to spend on tweaking the laptop for endurance.

 

[LordVile]

Gaming laptops with AMD's processors have really upset this notion. ASUS's Zepyhrus G14 for example is competitive with Intel MacBooks on battery life. I don't know about video playback, but for web browsing the laptop can easily get 10+ hours. I did see one video rundown test on the G14 where it lasted 7 hours running a 720p video at 150 nits and 100% volume.

However I would also argue that plenty of other laptops since proper hybrid graphics has been implemented have achieved really good with battery life. My previous two laptops were gaming oriented and could still get 6 hours easily with internet browsing. So you can now have your cake and eat it too. I don't think it's the OS that largely matters, it's just how much effort the system builder is willing to spend on tweaking the laptop for endurance.

Well the OS does matter look at the difference in battery life with Macs on MacOS vs Bootcamp.

7 hours running video isn’t good.

AMD battery life isn’t much better than Intels and to get good performance from Zen you have to set it to max performance anyway.

Good Battery and gaming laptops just aren’t compatible.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Well the OS does matter look at the difference in battery life with Macs on MacOS vs Bootcamp.

I don't expect Apple to put much effort in tweaking Windows to get as much endurance out of it.

7 hours running video isn’t good.

I mean, I guess when one of the last Intel Macbooks is rated for 10 hours, 7 hours feels kind of meh. But I'd hardly call that "isn't good"

AMD battery life isn’t much better than Intels and to get good performance from Zen you have to set it to max performance anyway.

No you don't.

Good Battery and gaming laptops just aren’t compatible.

Then what defines "good battery life"? If you're coming from Apple and all you know is Apple, I mean, I guess. But Apple has the advantage of tight control over their hardware and software. I expect Apple to be perfect in their execution because their number of variables are limited. I don't expect perfect execution in Windows because Windows has to work on a number of combinations that make Apple's officially supported configuration list look tiny.

In any case, the fact remains, the ASUS Zephyrus G14 is both a gaming oriented laptop and has a battery life that puts it up there in most other categories. So I don't see how "Good battery life and gaming laptops" are mutually exclusive anymore.