Battery life

[59LesPaul]

Hi All

This is my first post here. 

Im about to purchase either the HP pro X2 G2 or x360 with i5 256 SSD 8gb ram. I would like to ask if the advertised battery life of 10 hours is realistic. With my laptops, i keep the brightness at around 30% and turn everything thats not being used off like wifi, live tiles, bluetooth. For general web browsing what is a realistic battery life expectation? I would also like to use the 2 in 1 for music production, im sure this will use more battery than just browsing. 

How are you using your device? what are your settings? How long does your battery last?

thanks for your input

[Joel_R]

It is hard to say exactly how the battery in the 612 x2 G2 will perform.  Many factors can impact battery useage.  Here is a link that explains Lithium-Ion batteries.

https://support.hp.com/sk-en/document/c00596784

However, the 612 x2 G2 suports HP's Fast Charge which will allow you to recharge your battery to 50% in 30 minutes when the system is off or in standby mode while using the 65W adapter.

http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/business-solutions/pro-x2-612-12-243545--1

Joel

[59LesPaul]

Thanks for your response. I did see the fast charging which this device has, in a way even if the battery does drain more than expected then at least it wont take hours to charge.

thanks

for your input.

[Joel_R]

Correct.  It is some pretty neat technology.  Just remember to use the AC adapter from HP.  Using it will allow it to give you the fast charge.  

I hope you enjoy you computer.

Joel

[jimcrack68]

HP Pro X2 612 G2 gets about 4-5 hours of battery life with Windows 10 running and nothing else.

[David_J_W]

I'm a bit concerned by your choice of devices for music production, especially a device with a 'Y' class processor (dual core, 6W TDP) like the HP Pro x2 612 G2. This is likely to be a great device for typical web browsing, also for many business and study tasks (though not, perhaps, vast Excel spreadsheets). I have my doubts as to its suitability for digital audio use.

Digital audio use is latency sensitive - you get an audible glitch any time the computer can't keep up with the audio device's buffers - and typically puts processor cores under sustained high load (especially as the number of tracks and plugins increases). Taken together, these factors typically mean you can only rely on the 'base' speed of the processor cores and not any 'turbo' speeds. Indeed, you can often get better performance before audible glitching in a Digital Audio Workstation if you use settings that preclude the use of turbo speeds and lock the processor to its base speed. Dual core 1.2GHz, with a possibility that the thermal compromises inherent in the tablet form factor will prevent running both cores at the base processor speed indefinitely, is going to make for a very weak device for music production use.

I am not sure which of the x360 devices you are looking at, but they typically make for a somewhat stronger platform for digital audio. Most have a 'U' class processor (quad core on the latest Core i5 / i7 / i9 devices, 15W TDP) and better cooling giving rise to less throttling for thermal reasons. Typically you're looking at a base processor speed of 1.6 to 2GHz with four cores, though you may well not have sufficient cooling to stick to the base processor speed on all cores at 100% load indefinitely.

If you ask on a pro audio forum like Gearslutz, the usual advice will be stay away from 'U' processors for digital audio use - but they're most likely thinking about professional workloads or live performance with more demanding virtual instruments. If your track counts and plugin counts are modest, especially if you do not need to run with a low audio interface buffer size for latency reasons, a 'U' processor might be sufficient.

The ultimate x360 for more demanding digital audio use is likely to be the HP ZBook Studio x360 G5. This uses quad and hex core processors with 45W TDP, a base clock speed of a minimum of 2.2GHz and support for up to 32GB RAM (which is DDR4-2667 memory; faster but likely hotter running and more power hungry than the memory in other x360 devices). It also has support for dual SSDs, which can be useful for digital audio and digital video work. However, this is a larger, thicker and heavier device than most HP x360s and similar 2-in-1 devices from competing manufacturers, also it is very expensive in high end configurations. The highest processor available in the ZBook Studio x360 G5 is the Xeon version of the Core i9 in the latest top end Macbook Pro (Xeon E-2186M in the ZBook, Core i9-8950HK in the Macbook Pro; both are 2.9GHz base clock speed hex core processors with two threads per core and up to 4.8GHz turbo speed).

An allied concern is that DAWs can be RAM heavy, especially if using a lot of sample based virtual instruments. On many x2 and x360 devices (and similar devices from HP's competitors), the RAM is soldered to the system board and cannot be expanded after purchase. 8GB RAM is probably still the sweet spot for most Windows 10 users, but may not be enough for DAW use. There are 16GB configurations, but typically these are at the top end of each model range with a price tag to match. I know the ZBook Studio x360 G5 has socketed RAM, but am not sure which other x360 models do.

You may find Robin Vincent's surfaceproaudio.com site helpful to get an idea of what is possible with a 'U' processor. In the more recent videos, Robin is using a 2017 Surface Pro i5, which has a Core i5-7300U processor (dual core, 2.6GHz base speed, 15W TDP) and 8GB of RAM. This 7th generation processor has fewer processor cores but a higher base clock speed than the 8th generation Core i5 and i7 'U' processors used in most current HP x360 models.