Question Low Battery Life On ASUS Zephyrus G14 2024?

[MangoSync]

TL;DR, my new 2024 G14 battery seems to last 9 hours in cases where it seems like it should be lasting 10+ going by online reviews. Only difference is my ambient temperature is a bit higher. Trying to figure out if this is expected or abnormal.

Hello everyone,

I recently picked up an Open Box ASUS Zephyrus G14 2024 GA403UV. Have had it for less than 2 weeks. Ran some benchmarks and tests and everything seems to be good, except that the battery life I'm getting seems to be a bit under what I expected from reading and watching reviews. Not a huge amount mind you, but enough to be noticeable.

Specs: Nvidia Geforce RTX 4060, AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 2880 x 1800 3K OLED 120Hz display


Test 1: Silent Mode, "Best power efficiency" power mode, keyboard backlight off (on the lowest brightness setting which seems to turn it off), Brightness ~55%, Panel Power Saver On, Eco Mode in Armoury Crate GPU mode, Battery Saver auto-on at 20%, volume muted, only 3 startup apps enabled (Radeon Software Startup Task, ASUSSmartDisplayControl, SecurityHealthSystray), YouTube video playlist at 1080p

The first test I ran was the first time that I let the battery drain below 80%. I closed all apps and ensured there were no other apps running background processes (except for the standard stuff; processes that seem to be associated with ASUS, AMD, Armoury Crate, Microsoft, Realtek, Windows, etc.). Then I opened a single tab in Firefox to a playlist of YouTube videos (lectures 1-2hr long each), and set the YouTube resolution to 1080p. The battery drained from 96% to almost dead in about 6 hours, draining about 15% per hour. This seemed a bit off as most reviews seemed to claim about 7-9h under similar-ish conditions.

Test 2: Silent Mode, "Best power efficiency" power mode, keyboard backlight off (on the lowest brightness setting which seems to turn it off), Brightness 50%, Panel Power Saver On, Eco Mode in Armoury Crate GPU mode, Battery Saver on, volume muted, only 3 startup apps enabled (Radeon Software Startup Task, ASUSSmartDisplayControl, SecurityHealthSystray), completed all updates available on Armoury Crate & Windows settings & BIOS update from ASUS website, 1 long YouTube video at 720p

I came across a ShortCircuit video that gave very specific settings for their battery test (see 11:36), so I decided to run another test using similar settings. For those too lazy to click, their test specifies 20C, 72% brightness, silent mode, 60Hz, 2880x1800 resolution, 720p YouTube playback, and Windows Battery Saver Mode. To make my test more similar to the ShortCircuit test, this time, I turned battery saver on from the jump unlike last time, and put a single 10hr long YouTube video at 720p (the ShortCircuit video doesn't specify what videos they used, so I just used a 10hr marine life footage compilation in a tab on Firefox). I also went through and completed a bunch of updates listed in windows settings and Armoury Crate and also downloaded the latest BIOS from the ASUS website. I set the brightness to 50% exactly so that I should expect to get a result that would clearly beat the one in the video rather than relying on a result that would potentially be similar but where I would be second-guessing myself based on margin-of-error. Closed all apps except for 1 YouTube tab (the one I was using for the test) on Firefox like in Test 1. I expected a better result than last time not only because of the changes in tin caseshe test but also because I know that batteries typically perform a bit better once you have already discharged and recharged them a couple times (although this test was only the second time I had let the battery drop below 80%).

The laptop discharged from 100% to dead in about 9h10m. This is quite a bit less than the 9h56m tested in the video, even though my test was less strenuous due to lower screen brightness. The only differences in between the video test and my Test 2 that I can think of (aside from the ones I mentioned) are:

1. The place I tested the laptop at sat at a temperature of about 24C instead of the video test's 20C.
2. The laptop spent about 60% of the test sitting on carpet (although not very heat absorbent carpet, still probably more heat absorbent than a flat material), and the last 40% of the test sitting on a wooden desk. I assume the video test was probably done entirely on a table to avoid any heat-absorbing material.

Are these results to be expected? Do they seem low? A big part of the reason I chose this laptop was for its great battery life, so if there are any issues I definitely want to get them sorted out within the return window. Both of my tests were conducted within the first week of receiving the laptop. Sorry for the long post, any advice or input would be appreciated.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

The power draw is what's draining your laptop battery and the heat dumped by your laptop. You might want to try and see if you can undervolt the laptop.

One other thing to keep in mind is if it was open box, how long was it used by the prior user before it was returned? You might want to also open the laptop up and see if the venting in the laptop needs cleaning.

 

[MangoSync]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

The power draw is what's draining your laptop battery and the heat dumped by your laptop. You might want to try and see if you can undervolt the laptop.

One other thing to keep in mind is if it was open box, how long was it used by the prior user before it was returned? You might want to also open the laptop up and see if the venting in the laptop needs cleaning.

Thanks for the welcome!

I'm aware of the option of undervolting - was likely going to try that soon but my primary concern was that if there are potential battery problems out-of-the-box, that does not bode well generally for my future use of the device.

I purchased it Open Box from a major retailer and was told that the laptop had been bought new and then returned by the previous owner within a couple days because that owner decided they wanted the larger G16 instead.

Also - and this could be entirely unrelated - I've noticed that the laptop appears to be consuming a significant amount of battery (7-11% per hour) even while asleep? I double-checked in control panel that the laptop is set to go to sleep when the lid is shut. When opening up the laptop from sleep (if I've left it for a few hours) I often get a notification from Armoury Crate saying something like the laptop "did not go to sleep within the specified time so the system was placed into hibernate mode." When I look at my battery usage history if left to sleep for several hours, it shows that it stopped draining a couple hours in which is, I assume, when the laptop when into hibernation. Is this normal? When I close the laptop or press the sleep button, it does outwardly seem to put the laptop to sleep; for instance, if I wake the laptop up quickly afterwards, it opens on the lock screen and the screen appears to have been turned off before, which indicates to me that the laptop was, in fact, sleeping. I'm currently running G Helper so the power modes are currently being affected by a few different things that I was playing around with, including the power mode in the windows settings, power mode in control panel, power mode via G Helper, power mode in Armoury Crate, and the GPU mode in Armoury crate, each of which seem to be independently altering settings.