Note This guide is updated on November 19, 2017, to make sure that this tutorial is still valid for the latest Windows 10 Fall Creators Updates.

There are two main factors that reflect battery life on every computer: “Battery Capacity” and “Power Efficiency”. There is nothing we can do here with the device’s battery capacity as it is already built into your device already. Check out here to see your Surface’s battery capacity.

In this article, we will guide you how to tune power settings and system settings to maximize your Surface’s power efficiency.

1 Real-time battery discharging monitoring Before we deep dive into how to max out the battery life on Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, we need to know how to track battery discharging in your current configuration. By monitoring the battery discharging we are able to know about: How much power is used in the whole system in real-time?

What activities that will use much power to process.

Compare power usage when you customize your system configuration. As my experience, BatteryBar is the best battery monitoring tool out there. It has all features that we need to monitor battery discharging in real-time. Below is all the basic real-time battery information that available: As you can see my current Discharge Rate is 3,539 mW or 3.5W and with 82.9% of battery capacity, so it means that with current system configuration and activities my battery life still remains 6 hours and 16 minutes. Click here to download BatteryBar For Windows Now you got the idea, to get more battery life you will need to minimize discharge rate as possible. Now it’s time to max out your Surface Pro 4 battery life, please check out the following tips:

2 Surface Pro Optimization power plan Note I have tested this section on my Surface Book with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update along with Power Slider feature enabled. I can confirm that every power settings you set here are still working normally. Every Microsoft Surface devices shipped with a predefined power plan called Balanced with very few advanced configurations as below: Step 1: Turning off Connected Standby feature The limited power configuration in Advanced Settings because of Connected Standby feature that enabled by default on every Surface devices. In order to create a new power plan with optimized advanced settings, we need to disable connected standby via Registry Editor. To turn off connected standby: On your type cover, press + R Type regedit to open Register Editor. Now you need to go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power Double click on CsEnabled and change Value data from 1 to 0, and click OK. Restart your computer to apply these changes to your system. After restarting your computer, now you can access the full list of power plans and individual advanced settings. Step 2: Notice your default properties of Balanced power plan Before we move on to create the Surface Pro Optimization power plan, here are all the settings of the Balanced power plan that we will copy for creating our new power plan: Options On battery Plugged in Require a password on wake-up Yes Yes Hard disk

Turn off hard disk after 1 Minute 1 Minute Internet Explorer

JavaScript Timer Frequency Maximum Power Savings Maximum Performance Desktop background settings

Slideshow Paused Available Wireless Adapter Settings

Power Saving Mode Medium Power Saving Maximum Performance Sleep

Hibernate after 180 Minutes 180 Minutes Allow wake times Disable Important Wake Timers Only USB settings

USB selective suspend setting Enabled Enabled Intel(R) Graphics Settings

Intel(R) Graphic Power Plan Balanced Balanced Power buttons and lid

Lid close action Sleep Sleep Power button action Sleep Sleep PCI Express

Link State Power Management Maximum power savings Moderate power savings Processor power management

Minimum processor state 5% 5% System cooling policy Passive Active Maximum processor state 100% 100% Display

Turn off display after 4 Minutes 10 Minutes Display brightness 40% 100% Dimmed display brightness 50% 50% Enable adaptive brightness On On Multimedia settings

When sharing media Allow the computer to sleep Prevent idling to sleep When playing video Balanced Optimise video quality Battery

Critical battery action

Hibernate Hibernate Low battery level 6% 6% Critical battery level 2% 2% Low battery notification On On Low battery action Do nothing Do nothing Reserve battery level 4% 4% Step 3: Creating a new Surface Pro Optimization power plan To create the Surface Pro Optimization power plan based on Balanced power plan: Right-click on Start > Control Panel Navigate to Hardware and Sound > Power Options On the left navigation pane, click Create a power plan Type “Surface Pro Optimization” in the Plan name textbox. You can also use whatever name you want here: After creating the power plan, click on Change advanced power settings: Here are all the settings that you will need to change in the new power plan.

Options On battery Plugged in Internet Explorer

JavaScript Timer Frequency Maximum Power Savings Maximum Performance Wireless Adapter Settings

Power Saving Mode Maximum Power Saving Maximum Performance Sleep

Hibernate after 30 Minutes 180 Minutes Intel(R) Graphics Settings

Intel(R) Graphic Power Plan Maximum Battery Life Balanced or

Maximum Performance PCI Express

Link State Power Management Maximum power savings Moderate power savings Processor power management

Minimum processor state 5% 5% System cooling policy Passive Active Maximum processor state 30% – Maximum Underclocking

50% – Medium Underclocking

99% – Full Speed (without Turbo Boost) 100% – Full Speed (with Turbo Boost) Display

Turn off display after 4 Minutes 10 Minutes Display brightness 25% 100% Dimmed display brightness 50% 50% Enable adaptive brightness Off On Multimedia settings

When sharing media Allow the computer to sleep Prevent idling to sleep When playing video Optimise power savings Optimise video quality After finish changing, click OK to accept all changes. Important You need to reset the value of CsEnabled back to “1“ to bring back the Connected Standby feature that allows you to instantly turn on/off your Surface. You will not see all advanced settings but everything you made changes to all power plants will still remain there. For more information about the “modern standby” feature check out here. Step 4: How to verify the new power plan settings via Command Prompt After you turned on back the Connected Standby feature, you will no longer access most advanced power settings from Power Options in control panel you set before. Here is how you can verify those advanced power settings: Open Command Prompt or PowerShell Type “powercfg -list”

Copy the GUID of the power plan you previously created, and type “powercfg -query {GUID}“.

Note To copy text in Command Prompt, first select the text you want to copy then press Ctrl + C. To paste, move the cursor to where you want to paste the text then Right-Click anywhere on the command prompt window.

Here is an example of the maximum processor state that I set to 100% on AC power and 70% on DC Power.



3 Optimizing Cortana Settings Cortana is a Windows 10 voice assistant, she runs in the background at all time to track your activities including speaking, inking, and typing personalization. She uses your internet connection to send those data to the Cortana server, and also synchronize suggestions, reminders, alerts and personalization information for you. As you can see, those activities will definitely eat up your battery life. If you want to max out your battery life, you need to optimize the Cortana settings to do little things as possible. To do so: Click on Cortana icon Click the Settings icon And turn off all options there

Since Windows 10 anniversary, you can’t disable Cortana completely via the Settings anymore. To disable Cortana you need to change the Computer Configuration via Local Group Policy Editor. To do that: Click Start and type “gpedit.msc” and press Enter. Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search. Double-click on Allow Cortana to change the policy. Select Disabled. Click Apply and OK



4 Turn off Wi-Fi while asleep While connected standby is turned on Surface devices, when you hit the power button on your device, It will go into a sleep mode instead of being turned off your device or put your device into hibernation. It works just like your phone and other tablets, your Surface will remain connected to the WiFi to receive emails and notifications. You can save more battery by turning the WiFi off while your device in sleep mode. To do so: Go to Settings > System > Power & sleep Under the Network connection section, change the value to “Always”.



5 Reducing display brightness Display brightness can use more power than other parts of your computer. For Surface, Microsoft has recommended 25% of brightness for getting longer battery life. You might also need to turn off screen brightness auto adjustment to make sure that the brightness you set is good enough for watching. To turn off automatic brightness adjustment: Go to Settings > System > Display Turn off the “Change brightness automatically when lighting changes” option.



6 Disable startup programs You can benefit from a faster boot time, reduce your system loads, and save more power juices by disabling unimportant startup programs. To disable startup programs: Go to Task Manager Click on Start-up. Select all programs that you want to disable and click on Disable button.



7 Surf with Microsoft Edge Microsoft Edge is an optimized Web Browser for Windows 10 and also Microsoft Surface. According to a discussion on Reddit, while you viewing videos on the youtube, Microsoft Edge using H.264 codec which allows Intel Skylake processor to natively decode with much less CPU power consumption. Similarly, for Netflix streaming test that Microsoft conducted on identical Microsoft Surface Books, Microsoft Edge is the best battery efficiency.

Google Chrome Tweaks However, if you are using Google Chrome you can disable Flash Player plugin and install H264IFY to solve this problem. To disable the flash player plugin: Go to Chrome address bar Type: “chrome://plugins“ And click on Disable under the Adobe Flash Player section

To install h264ify extension, you can go to this URL:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/h264ify/aleakchihdccplidncghkekgioiakgal

8 Turn on Battery Saver Battery Saver is a new feature in Windows 10, by turning on the Battery Saver option, you can extend your battery life by limiting background system activity and push notifications. You can find the apps that run in the background even you don’t use them by going to Settings > System > Battery Saver > Battery use > Change background app settings. When you turn on Battery Saver option, all those apps will not run in the background. To turn on Battery Saver, you can click on Battery icon on the taskbar and click on Battery saver to turn on. Note while your Surface is charging, this option will be disabled. On Surface PC with Power Slider enabled, you just move the slider all the way to the left to activate the battery saver.

9 Turn off Bluetooth radio Bluetooth on Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book is a key feature when you are using Surface Pen for OneNote activation, Screenshot, and Cortana activation. However, if you think you don’t need these features, you can turn Bluetooth radio off by: Go to Settings > Devices > Bluetooth And switch off the Bluetooth option

