New Laptop - Short Battery Life

Dr.Winston O'Boogie

Hi all, bought a Lenovo Ideapad 310 the other day. The battery was advertised as up to 5 hours, now obviously there is a bit of give and take on that figure but I get max 2 hours out of a full charge, and that's on power saver.

Does this seem very short to you? Its a non removable battery also so I can't replace it.

Alanstrainor

Manufacturer figures of battery life can be very optimistic. And it will depend on what you are doing on the laptop really. Was the screen brightness on max? Were you running an intensive application?

There is also a possibility that there was bloatware installed (which are just applications installed by the manufacturer that you typically don't want or need). These applications could be using system resources which could impact on battery life.

Dr.Winston O'Boogie

Brightness set to 40% so not too bad, I also have power saver on pretty much the whole time. All I am using it for is surfing the net by and large so not sure what I could be doing that uses so much battery.

drunkmonkey

Hasn't that laptop Optimus? You should be able to use Optimus to switch graphics cards to improve battery.

Dr.Winston O'Boogie

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Hasn't that laptop Optimus? You should be able to use Optimus to switch graphics cards to improve battery.

As far as I know it doesn't.

drunkmonkey

Dr.Winston O'Boogie wrote: »

As far as I know it doesn't.

Does it have an Nvidia graphics card? It should do. You should be able to switch cards through the nvidia control panel. There also could be a physical switch somewhere round the rim to use optimus.

If you find it could double or more your battery, if you've an Nvidia card you should have it.

Dr.Winston O'Boogie

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Does it have an Nvidia graphics card? It should do. You should be able to switch cards through the nvidia control panel. There also could be a physical switch somewhere round the rim to use optimus.

If you find it could double or more your battery, if you've an Nvidia card you should have it.

Cheers, where would you find the control panel? Did a search and no luck.

drunkmonkey

Does it have an Nvidia card?

ED E

30 WHr or 39 WHr;

Which did you opt for? Rather significant difference.

TerrorFirmer

Also optimus is automatic, there are no switches or settings, it automatically switches between the two depending on the task or you can assign specific programs to use either Intel or Nvidia. For casual desktop use, browsing, movies etc it will use Intel. For games and other 3D accelerated things it will use Nvidia.

Two hours on a full charge at low brightness and power saver mode does sound on the poor side though. Looking at a few reviews people do indeed seem to get around 5 hours surfing the web.

beauf

This reviews suggests the battery life should be about 5hrs. Maybe yours has been running updates or doing something thats consuming the battery.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-IdeaPad-310-15ISK-Notebook-Review.173924.0.html

Atlantic Dawn

What did you use it for that it lasted 2 hours? If your watching a DVD/Bluray, listening to a CD that may cause that level of drain. Make sure you have Bluetooth turned off. If manufacturer figure is 5 hours you should easily get 3.5 plus on moderate use.