Alienware 15 Battery Life Question...

So i've had my laptop for about 2 weeks. Between having to have a tech support person come out to replace a faulty hard drive and waiting for a new Windows Key, I haven't been able to use the laptop very much. However, I installed BatteryCary and HWMonitor to keep an eye on the temps and about how much battery life i am getting. To do a test, I fully charged it to 100% and within the last 20mins on balanced settings, it has dropped from 100% to 84% (within the time it took me to type this out on the desktop, it has dropped down to 82%) with only 1h43mins remaining. This seems rather odd, the only things I have open are HWMonitor, BatteryCare and Chrome. Task Manager is showing 0% CPU, Disk and Network usage and 32% Memory Usage (I have 8gigs of Ram).

Is anyone else having the same results for their battery life?

 

I'M using mine on battery right now and it show 3 hr 49 min remaining with 90% remaining. I did a test the other day and the battery life last 3 hr 30 min, washing next flix videos and playing iTunes music at the same time!

 

It seems like the battery icon always shows way more use time (at least on mine) than it actually was capable of being used. Sometimes even showing that it had over 6 hours of battery life remaining which was never the case.

 

Yeah, notice that too it is annoying!

 

Install batterybar.
Look discharge rate. I would look at it for a few minutes to an hour to see if it is constant or not.
Do Capacity / discharge rate (use the computer's calculator if you don't have one). And you have your battery life duration, ignoring what batterybar and windows say as they can be inaccurate.

 

Hey game7a1, you still have the 13?
Well about the battery life, this is annoying. Becaus...

 

Battery life on my 13 is nice. 6.5 to 9 hours. Of course, there are times where it could be about 2.5 hours.
How the battery works in the 13 is confusing me. If you see a discharge rate way too high (say 20,000mW), then there's something wrong.

 

I am on balanced mode at 94% and it says that is 2 hrs 34 minutes remaining..

I am using the QHD with brightness halfway through

so it looks like the battery does not really hold up?

 

What's the discharge rate?

 

damn since my last post over 10 minutes ago, my battery has dropped from 94% to 84%

I installed battery bar and the discharge rate shows 34,050 mW
Is that normal?, should I try turning off stuff?

 

Geez is that bad. No wonder you're getting ~3 hours of battery life.
Question, what battery plan are you using?

 

battery plan is balanced

I turned off the LED lights and the discharge rate is the same
I also have a battery wear of 1.6% - is that normal?
Could temperatures be a factor? I am on the tropics hehe just right above the equator

 

Doubtful outside temperatures would play a big role in this.
That kind of wear level shouldn't be too much either. Maybe 15 minutes or something like that lost.
Okay, here is what I am going to ask you to do. Make sure the battery is full. Switch to power savers. Turn off laptop. Then reboot it. (I think restart would do just fine). Then do what you were doing before if it was something light or mild. Report discharge rate.

 

what is your battery wear? should I ask for replacement?

Okay will be back in 15-30 minutes =)

 

3.5%. Always has been.
I don't now if you should ask for a replacement. That wear level is very low.

 

oh you have a higher wear level
that is the % of your battery that cant be used anymore right?
isnt that quite high? might go to 50% in 6 months?

 

It shouldn't thanks to better battery technology. My m14xR2 was the same. Reached 10% wear almost 2 years of ownership.
Oh, and you don't have to restart.

 

okay followed your instructions and my discharge rate is now fluctuating (the earlier figure of 34k was just static)

I am now in power saver mode 99% battery remaining - 4hrs 40 minutes according to windows
99% - 2 hrs 55 minutes according to battery bar

initial discharge rate was at 13k mW and fluctuated up to 26k mW for the first two minutes
it has now settled to 20,145 mW - do you think that is now normal?

Went straight to this forum after unplugging my AW15 - from 100%, battery is now 98.2% before I can even post this haha

 

That would mean the best (13k) you can get is 7 hours. Right now, you could get 4.5 hours.
These are in the best case scenario (keeping that 20,145 mW).

 

Thanks a lot for your help! You are a blessing in this forum hehe

 

my aw15 behaves about the same. what i still find truely strange, is that on mine it's kinda like lotto as of what discharge rate will get stuck being shown in batterybar after the boot up. so after booting into windows, the discharge rate will fluctuate a bit, go up and down.. and then at some point (after around 30 secs post boot), it will stay at whatever rate it is at. like right now it shows 27'518. and this will not change, no matter what i do.
if i shutdown and boot again it's different (when i tested this like 30 mins ago it showed 16'xxx). and then, it will neither go up nor down, not even if i change power plans or game or whatever. i restored factory settings a few days ago to see if this changes anything but it didn't.
strange!

 

Has anyone ever considered updating their BIOs to rectify the issue? I ran into this issue with my AW15 last night where I used to be able to pull off 5-6 hours per charge. Now it's cut down to 2.5 to 3.5 hr. The discharge rate is abnormally high too @ 36188 for some reason.. A reboot got me back down to 19740. Maybe its background services or software? ( I have all Dell related software removed, for the record ).