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max2

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 31, 2015
6,421
2,044
I been thinking about this for a while. Is there anyway to get a Surface Pro to have the same battery life as a iPad when doing the same tasks?

Like Surface Pro but can't stand the battery life.
 

mi7chy

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2014
10,625
11,296
For current options look at Surface Pro 7+, Surface Laptop 4 with AMD CPU or Surface Pro X. Hopefully Surface Pro 8 comes with AMD CPU option.
 

sracer

macrumors G4
Apr 9, 2010
10,405
13,290
where hip is spoken
I been thinking about this for a while. Is there anyway to get a Surface Pro to have the same battery life as a iPad when doing the same tasks?

Like Surface Pro but can't stand the battery life.
Short answer: You can't because the Surface Pro is a desktop computer in tablet form, the iPad is running a mobile smartphone OS.

Out-of-the-box there is very little tweaking that you can do to improve battery life on the Surface Pro, however...

If you are comfortable tweaking Windows, it is possible to significantly improve the battery life on the Surface Pro (though it won't match the iPad's battery life).

In a nutshell, it involves selectively de-bloating Windows 10 and going into Services and selectively disable unneeded services. I've managed to get a 20-25% improvement in battery life as a result. The improvements to battery life (and performance) were enough to allow me to begin migrating from MacOS devices to Windows 10.
 

max2

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 31, 2015
6,421
2,044
Short answer: You can't because the Surface Pro is a desktop computer in tablet form, the iPad is running a mobile smartphone OS.

Out-of-the-box there is very little tweaking that you can do to improve battery life on the Surface Pro, however...

If you are comfortable tweaking Windows, it is possible to significantly improve the battery life on the Surface Pro (though it won't match the iPad's battery life).

In a nutshell, it involves selectively de-bloating Windows 10 and going into Services and selectively disable unneeded services. I've managed to get a 20-25% improvement in battery life as a result. The improvements to battery life (and performance) were enough to allow me to begin migrating from MacOS devices to Windows 10.

I know exactly what your talking about.

Though not sure if it is worth it.

Thanks.
 
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DaveOZ

macrumors 6502
May 13, 2008
398
317
Like Surface Pro but can't stand the battery life.

I can deal with the battery life, it's the cost of being able to run ANY program while mobile. I can even run complex CAD programs on the Surface Pro. I rarely need yo do this but it's nice to be able to. Since they added USB C charging ability to the Surface line it became less of an issue to me.

I constantly, almost daily, switch between Surface life and iPad life. Both have advantages and neither is perfect.
 

SigEp265

macrumors 6502a
Dec 15, 2011
953
881
Southern California
had anyone used Affinity design on a surface device, mainly a surface go?
I've used both Affinity Designer / Photo and Adobe Photoshop CC on a Surface 6 with 8GB RAM (I think that's what I have). The experience was basically identical to my Mac. I did however remap Ctrl to the Alt key :)

I used to have the Surface Go but found the screen too small for Photoshop CC. I traded up for a Surface 6 and its been great -- minus the usb c.
 

ian87w

macrumors G3
Feb 22, 2020
8,704
12,638
Indonesia
I been thinking about this for a while. Is there anyway to get a Surface Pro to have the same battery life as a iPad when doing the same tasks?

Like Surface Pro but can't stand the battery life.
That will never happen. Just look at any Windows laptops. None of them can achieve their own claimed battery life unless you don't use it for anything. Even then, the stand-by battery life is abysmal. Imo it's Windows. Windows 10 is great, but there are so many crap running in the background of the modern Windows OS (on its own, not even user's apps), that I believe the computer is having a hard time reaching very low power state for a continuous long time. And every single component in the laptop is drawing power from the battery.
 

Steve Adams

Suspended
Dec 16, 2020
954
684
must be something you are doing because my cheap dell 2 in 1 inspiron gets 8hrs of battery life when using it. In sleep mode I don't know how long I get as I never tried. But I get good battery life while actually using it.
 

sracer

macrumors G4
Apr 9, 2010
10,405
13,290
where hip is spoken
Is it possible and/or advisable to do a clean install of Windows 10 on a Surface?
If you're talking about wiping the drive clean and installing Windows 10 from a generic image... it's possible but not recommended. Windows on the Surface (tablets/hybrids) is "tuned" for the hardware. This goes beyond just making sure the correct device drivers are installed. Without knowing what settings are tweaked to optimized for the Surface, the result of a re-install could be worse.

If you're talking about using Windows' reset and reinstall, yes, that's possible and is recommended if the system is unstable or performing poorly. That method uses a recovery image on a system partition to get the device back to "factory fresh".

That reset should only be a last-resort type of thing. Depending upon how old the device is, you could end up with a long process of updates to bring that version of Windows up to the latest.
 

GSWForever8

macrumors 6502a
Apr 10, 2021
530
498
I had a surface before and I understand your frustration. The reasons is Windows. Windows sucks up a lot of battery.
 

mi7chy

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2014
10,625
11,296
Imo it's not about the hardware. Intel Macs with macOS can achieve decent stand-by time. Imo it's Windows. Intel Macs running Windows get bad battery life as well.

This is false. Windows is fine on AMD mobile with great combination of performance, battery life and standby.
 

SteveJUAE

macrumors 601
Aug 14, 2015
4,513
4,750
Land of Smiles
Imo it's not about the hardware. Intel Macs with macOS can achieve decent stand-by time. Imo it's Windows. Intel Macs running Windows get bad battery life as well.
Then how do you explain the Samsung Book S Arm W10 Home laptop has endurance well in the teens

My wifes Book S gets great endurance better than most other devices available

 
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