Poor battery life on ENVY 13-ah0560nd

[flash9130]

Hi,

I've recently purchased an HP ENVY 13-ah0560nd, and have experienced low battery life pretty much from the moment I got past the first Windows 10 introduction screen. When the device is 100% fully charged, it will display that it will last only about 4 hours. Now at first I figured it's because I hadn't optimized my usage, so I have tried a few things:

• I've set the laptop to battery saving mode.
• I've changed the CPU's max TDP to 10w when not connected to a power source.
• I've set the power profile to Maximum Battery Life in the Intel Graphics Control Panel.
• I've lowered the brightness to around 50%.
• I've made sure that the BIOS, and all other components that HP Support Assistant showed me have been fully updated.
• I've made sure that Windows 10 is fully updated to the latest build of 1903.
• I also checked that there are no especially power hungry programs running in Task manager, as the OS is still fairly clean because I just got this laptop, I don't have anything running that could seriously impact the battery life to the point where it can only last 4 hours.
• I ran the battery test in the HP PC Hardware Diagnostics software, and it passed fully. There were no issues found and the battery operates as it should. HWMonitor also says the battery has 0% wear.
• Lastly I've also set the preferred GPU from the MX150 to Intel integrated graphics.

I'm not sure if Windows is just estimating the battery life incorrectly, or if I'm misjudging how long my battery should last, but it seems to be lower than what is expected of this device according to HP and also real tests (such as the ones done by Notebookcheck). Maybe I'm wrong, but those are my thoughts.

I would greatly appreciate any insight on the matter, as I don't really know what else I can try.

Thanks in advance

[Riddle_Decipher]

@flash9130 I have a few more steps you can do to understand what's changed since the last update and how to improve the battery performance:

Although, before we get there, have you reinstalled the battery drivers? (if not, please go into the device manager, right-click the battery under the battery section and uninstall, a restart will reinstall it automatically and the same should resolve battery driver issues).

While you respond to that, below I've listed a series of steps that should help your cause in improving battery performance: 

• Video about improving your notebook battery performance 

• How long does a notebook battery last? 

• Adjusting notebook battery power plans 

• Factors that contribute to loss of notebook battery capacity 

• Recommended notebook battery care practices 

• Original battery charges slowly, replacement battery charges normally 

• Special recommendations for embedded (not customer replaceable) notebook batteries 

• Tips for conserving notebook battery power 

FOR DETAILS & FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS, USE THIS LINK: CLICK HERE

(By the end of this article all the issues should be resolved)

P.S: Welcome to HP Community 😉

Keep us posted,

If you would like to thank us for our efforts to help you, 

Give us a virtual high-five by clicking the 'Thumbs Up' icon below, followed by clicking on the "Accept as solution" on this post, 

Have a great day!

[flash9130]

Thank you for taking the time out to respond, I really appreciate it.

I've checked out the link and read all the steps, most things I had already tried and/or made sure of. The only thing I hadn't tried, that I felt was significant to this particular issue, was running the battery check in HP Support Assistant. This check ended up giving me an OK on the battery.

I forgot to mention that I did actually reinstall the battery drivers as well. Just to be sure, I did so again. I uninstalled Microsoft ACPI-Compliant Control Method Battery in Device Manager, and performed a restart. This promptly reinstalled the driver, but unfortunately did not change the battery life.

I also went through a manual calibration of the device yesterday. Unfortunately the device's diagnostics menu on boot does not have an option to extend a memory test with loop until error, only a quick memory test, so I had to do manually discharge using Windows.

After the laptop's battery died I completely recharged it (for 3+ hours to be sure) and then checked the battery life in Windows, which said 4 hours and 15 minutes remaining (on battery saver mode) at 100% capacity. The discharge from 100% to 0% took 3:30 - 4 hours. This was while watching videos, and casually browsing in Firefox. I was also outputting to an external monitor.

HWInfo also states that the battery's discharge rate is at -12335 mW. This is on battery saver mode at 10w TDP with no heavy software open (CPU usage less than 5%).

I would also just like to be clear that I have had this battery life since I got the laptop, so even before all the updates it was showing  around 4 hours of battery life as a maximum. Windows 10 version 1903 didn't bring this issue with it, as far as I can tell.

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

This is an i7 processor 16 gigs of RAM and discrete video system. Despite whatever marketing claims are made it is going to be hard to get a 4-cell lithium ion battery to drive that hardware for a lot more than 4.25 hours. The problem is not the hardware its the expectation that has been created by the marketing. Keep the screen as dim as possible to work with when on battery is about all you can really do.