battery life barely 4 hours

[hagarap]

I have the Spectre x360 (2015 edition), and the battery life is just between 3 and 4 hours. Laptop is also unable to install BIOS update. Although it is an older version, I have bought it just 3 months ago. I am starting to be furious, the battery should survive 3x longer.

Nonetheless, I have bought the laptop in Europe, and now I am in Canada for a year.

[The_Fossette]

Hi @hagarap,

Welcome to the HP Forums!

Thank you for posting your query in this forum, it's a great place to find answers.

I reviewed your post and I understand that you are getting only 3-4 hours battery life.

Don’t worry, I assure you I will try my best to get this sorted J

In order that I may provide you with an accurate solution, I will need a few more details.

• When was the last time the computer was working fine?
• Have you made any software or hardware changes on the computer?
• Have you performed any troubleshooting steps before posting?

Meanwhile, I recommend you to follow the steps in the below article and check if it helps.

http://hp.care/2ruKGC8

Let me know how it goes and you have a great day!

To simply say thanks, please click the "Thumbs Up" button to give me a Kudos to appreciate my efforts to help. If this helps, please mark this as “Accepted Solution” as it will help several others with the same issue to get it resolved without hassles.

Take care.

Cheers!

[hagarap]

Hi @The_Fossette,

The problem was always there, as far as I remember - without AC the battery never lasted more than these 4 hours, although I dropped the brightness to minimum. The troubleshooting does not show any problems and I also have not made any HW nor SW changes.

Kind Regards,

Peter

[kflash08]

How long is the battery rated for according to the specifications?

Some suggestions for improving battery life...

• Lower the brightness of the display.
• Keep open programs to a minimum.
• Decrease the amount of programs running in the background.
• Disable unnecessary services.
• Adjust power plan settings.
• Turn off Bluetooth & WiFi broadcasts when not in use.
• Update outdated software & drivers.

Certain activities have an impact on how much power is consumed. Examples include...

• Games
• Watching videos
• Video editing
• Constant disk use (antivirus, disk defragmentation)
• Constant WiFi/Bluetooth usage (large downloads, streaming)

Check Task Manager often and monitor CPU, disk & wireless activity. Take note of any program/process that has high & excessive activity while idle.

[hagarap]

In benchmarks it had 9:30

Dont worry, I know how to manage a long battery life, I have already had two laptops before. To be honest with my previous Fujitsu I was able to last close to 7 hours (with minimum brightness), it is more that was declared. It have not had SSD and glossy display, however this laptop has declared over 9 hours of life, and it cannot get over half of the declared battery life no matter what I do.

[kflash08]

Try this...

Fully charge the notebook and open the HP Support Assistant.

Select your notebook model on the my devices list and click the troubleshooting tab.

In the diagnosis section, click on HP Battery Check.

When the test is done, click on show advanced information.

In the right column, you should see cell voltage 1, 2, etc. Make sure all cells display the same or close to the same values. If a cell displays a value far less than the others, then the battery is likely bad and would need to be replaced. If all the cells have the same (or close to the same) value, run the notebook off the battery and re-run the test once the battery level drops below 30%, again, making sure that all cell values are within the same range of each other.

[hagarap]

Hi,

thank you for advice,  it looks like the fourth cell is dead. When I try the test with low battery, it is same, only the voltage of cells is dropped to around 3600mV.

However I have also found out that when I do not use the internet, the life is much better. Extensive usage might be also because of firefox (it never goes under 800Mb of RAM). Nonetheless, I need to use internet most of the time.

[kflash08]

That's what recently happened to an older HP laptop that I have. The 4th cell failed (also 0mV) and battery lost about 60% of it's capacity.

[Huffer]

Or its a 3 cell battery

[kflash08]

Wouldn't a 3 cell battery only display 3 cells in the Support Assistant?