Battery life/estimate is dissapointing

[Amartyya_Das]

One day I was pretty disappointed with the battery life (or at least the estimate) of my Pavilion Aero running Windows 11. I did just about EVERYTHING; here's a list:

• Turning on power saver
• Creating a power plan which limits CPU power to 10% on battery power
• Installing new AMD drivers and Windows updates
• Calibrating the battery
• Reducing Windows animations
• Switching to different Linux distributions (Arch, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Manjaro)
• Switching refresh rate 40hz instead of 60hz
• Turning off all wireless connections
• Freeing up storage space
• Unplugging USB devices

Even after all of these steps, my estimate is STILL at about 4 hours (which is the same as before)! Creators on YouTube are saying that they have gotten about 8-9 hours on a single charge (shown in screenshot of transcript below) and the HP website claims up to 10 hours of battery life (shown in screenshots below). I'm quite disappointed ESPECIALLY considering how much this laptop costs.

Creator 1:

Creator 2:

HP Website:

 

[NonSequitur777]

@Amartyya_Das,

And then again, not all HP Pavilion Aero 13 Users experience the same battery longevity as you referenced. 

I looked up your battery specs (https://partsurfer.hp.com/partsurfer/?searchtext=406J8UA&searchby=product), and found out that this battery has a mere 43 Whr capacity.  In my opinion, the battery should have been more powerful.  For comparison, one of my laptops sports a 78 Whr capacity battery, and I only get about 5 hours of stand-alone battery life on a good day.

Consider this HP Pavilion Aero 13 review for example, where the same mediocre battery life is discussed, and I quote (emphasis added): "There’s only a 43 Wh battery inside this HP pavilion Aero 13, which is much smaller than what you’d normally get on a 13-inch notebook these days. The efficient display and AMD Ryzen hardware implementation help mitigate the smaller capacity to some point, but even so, this notebook is not going to break any battery life records for you."

And:

"In fact, the battery life might be the only real potential deal-breaker here, HP opting for a rather small battery that gives me 3-6 hours of realistic daily use on a charge. Personally, I would have preferred a slightly heavier chassis with a 50-60 Wh battery inside, but that’s not the case here. So at this point, I’m not sure if I’ll be keeping this. I still think this is a very good-value option in its class, but I’m not convinced this sort of battery life is enough for me, mainly because this laptop would only be used during my occasional travels, where long battery life would be crucial."

Link: https://www.ultrabookreview.com/49926-hp-pavilion-aero-13-review/.

Anyway, I am looking to see if there is a larger Whr capacity battery available for your laptop.  If I find it, I'll follow up.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[Amartyya_Das]

Wow. I guess there is another person on the Internet facing the same Issue! But how come HP is claiming >10 hours and battery tests of the laptop also show the same results?

[Amartyya_Das]

Also, many reviews and the oartsurfer link you posted shows that the laptop came with a 45w charger. This confuses me because mine came with a 65w charger!

[NonSequitur777]

@Amartyya_Das,

The 65 watt charger is actually a non-HP aftermarket/generic replacement charger, model: ZH-67-333 or ST-C-070-19500333CT.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[Amartyya_Das]

But, on the HP website of Indonesia (not my region, just the website I used for the specifications), the specifications show that it has a 65w charger and the charger that came in the box has an HP logo. Strange.

[NonSequitur777]

@Amartyya_Das,

I hear you.  There is a lot of conflicting information out there.  For all intents and purposes, I tend to stick to HP PartSurfer.  But I am very aware that this database is not always accurate or complete either...

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[viceaster]

Hi,  you are correct in Indonesia it came with 65w charger.

I bought this last month, mine has similar specs as in UltrabookReview (aside different LCD AU Optronics Panel).

I do have similar concerns with you, as my real life usage only around 4 hours mainly browsing, downloading stuffs and watching movies and turns out I'm not the only one.

My settings: bt off, lowest brightness, kb backlit off, screen off 3min, sleep never, latest AMD drivers, freesync on, 60hz ( I tried 40hz but it cause screen tearing while gaming).

I put battery saver by default (although I realized on my previous laptop it's no better than setting CPU max 60%)

Initially I tried disabling bitlocker and windows security, with no noticeable impact.

I'm quite aware a low power notebook is very volatile in its battery life depending on the usage, also this laptop come with small battery capacity to begin with, I even thought this was because of win11 as mine come with it while most reviews still use win10. But still my concerns is it is marketed with up to 10 hours battery life, so it has to somehow gets to that duration.

So I did a simple test last night.

Since I saw most of the reviews only try to play movies, I did the same locally with 720p x265 and 1080p x264 movies using built in media player, 24% audio, lowest brightness, screen sleep set to never, wifi on, bt off.

Below is what I got after playing from 17:15.

 

By 00:20 or 6 hours, I still got 58% and I decide to shut it down.

To summarize technically those 10 hours claim indeed achievable.

Of course going back to my actual usage, the battery life become the same as my initial statement, roughly only 4 hours.