Battery drain on new EliteBook x360

[NMGMarques_76]

Hi all.

I purchased the EliteBook x360 G3 i7 Ref. 3ZH10EA not two months ago, and I have consistently noted that the battery seems to discharg at a fast pace. I mean like some 30% per hour. This doing little more than light work on Citrix // SAP, so not even really utilizing the CPu at all. CPU idling at an average 8 to 10% and not much going on. Brightness is around the 50% mark.

This laptop is announced with "up to 18 hours", yet I am getting nothing close to this. At th e current clip, I'm out of battery well before 5 hours.

Can someone confirm or let me know if there might be something I need to do to fix the issue? This looks like a laptop version of Dieselgate, where the announced values are overly inflated at non-realistic usage cases to pump up the numbers. However, I am willing to concede there may be some underlying issue or that I might even have a defective laptop.

[Huffer]

Here's the usual homilies about optimizing battery run-time:

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01297640

Biggest single factor is screen brightness. Turn it down as far as you can stand; but 50% is already pretty low. The "Dieselgate" thing has been going on since there have been laptops with batteries. Technology will not yet allow 18 hours battery runtime if the computer is being used in any way. 5 hours is actually smack in the middle of normal. Some lower powered laptops can get maybe 8-10 hours; anything with a decent processor is going to max out at maybe 6. 

There is no underlying issue or defect and you have figured out "overly inflated" thing. 

[NMGMarques_76]

Man, it's one thing to say like 7.5 hours and actually get 5. But stating up to 18 and delivering 5 to 6?  That's really bad. My previous daily driver, the Surface Pro 3 started off with close to 10 hours. I went a day without plugging in. Near the end I was still able to pull 4, albeit I could hardly see the screen anymore. 

How is this even allowed?

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

The fine print. And HP is by no means the only one who does this. If you really read what it says about battery runtime in the ads nothing is actually promised. Its qualified and hedged in every way.