14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s recently-released Surface Book 2 is a hardware monster, coming with powerful specs that make it one of the best choices for working and gaming, especially given that it now features a new 15-inch form factor.
But as it turns out, more demanding tasks like gaming are leading to battery drain on the device even when it’s plugged in to a charger, with Microsoft itself admitting in a statement that it’s aware of this and it provided several tweaks to tune performance.
Basically, when playing games with the highest settings to squeeze every little performance drop from the laptop, the battery percentage keeps decreasing even when a charger is connected. The Verge says that Windows 10’s “better performance” and “best battery” power settings were specifically implemented to deal with this issue, as they throttle the Nvidia graphics card to the point where the battery drain is no longer experienced.
The standard Surface Book 2 charger provides 95 watts of power when connected to the laptop, but when used at maximum performance, the parts under the hood need some 105 watts, with the NVIDIA GTX 1060 alone requiring up to 80 watts to run at full power.
Full drain will never occur
Microsoft says that even though some battery drain is expected when using the laptop at its full capabilities, “a full battery drain” will never occur thanks to software optimizations.
“Surface Book 2 was designed to deliver unmatched power and performance for anyone who needs a powerful machine to work and create, making it a great option for STEM professionals (designers, developers, engineers),” a company spokesperson was quoted as saying.
“The Surface Book 2 Power Mode Slider is provided as a means to give the user control over the range of performance and battery life. In some intense, prolonged gaming scenarios with Power Mode Slider set to ‘best performance’ the battery may discharge while connected to the power supply provided in-box with Surface Book 2. However, through power management design, the battery will never drain entirely, ensuring that users are able to keep working, creating or gaming.”
As you can see, Microsoft doesn’t say anything about a potential fix or firmware update that could deal with this problem, and the power settings are likely the only ways to prevent battery drain when using max performance. On the other hand, it means that graphics could be impacted in some games, and this can only make the Surface Book 2 less ideal for such demanding tasks.