Everyone with ANY model of Razer laptop, can you please check something for me?

I'm seeing some strange behaviour from my laptop, which I've already posted about here, perhaps not very clearly, but basically under medium-high load it endlessly cycles the battery between 95% and 100%. I've since discovered that my girlfriend's Blade 15 actually does the same thing, even though it has quite different specs and power characteristics.

So now I would really like to find out how widespread this behaviour is (regardless of whether it's intentional or not, but it would help to answer that question too). Perhaps especially on the Blade Stealth 2020 models, as that's what I would be most likely to get as a replacement for mine, but confirmation either way for any and all Razer laptops would be useful and very much appreciated.

Here is how to check:

Download HWiNFO if you haven't got it already. Run it in Sensors-only mode and look for Charge Rate in the Battery section (if it's not there, unplug your laptop for a moment to make it show up and then plug it back in). If you want to, right click on it and click "Add to tray" to make it easier to check (in your Windows system tray)

Download and install Unigine Sanctuary benchmark (it's free and only a 29mb download - please use this one as I know it consistently demonstrates the issue, other benchmark software may not)

Make sure your laptop is plugged in and already charged, not charging (i.e. Charge Rate in HWiNFO should be 0.0 at this point). Launch Unigine Sanctuary, untick Fullscreen so that you can see the Charge Rate while it is running, leave all the other options as default, and click Run Demo.

Now see if it starts showing a negative Charge Rate (which indicates the battery is discharging). If so, keep the benchmark running until the battery gets down to 95% and see what happens after that (i.e. whether it continues discharging below 95%, or starts charging back up to 100% even though it's still running)

Please let me know what happens, along with which particular model/spec of laptop you have, what charger you're using with it if not the original, and whether or not you've done any BIOS mods to increase power limits etc. Thanks

 

hahaha I wonder if this is why razerblades have been having a bloated battery problem since forever.

I've got to drive my wife to work in a few minutes but i will definitely check this on her Razer when i get back.

 

How long should it be discharging? 10 minutes run still same 95,5%. Blade stealth 13 late 2019, once moded the bios but currently i reverted to default. Same result with blade 15 2018, no bios moding. Still same battery value on 15 minutes btw. Sidenote the benchmark is new to me not bad fps but kind laggy though...

 

Are you saying your battery was already at 95.5% before you started running the benchmark and has just stayed the same? If so I'd say yours doesn't have the issue then, which is really useful to know (especially as yours is the exact same model as mine), thanks!

Edit: I've just looked closely at your screenshots (which are very useful to see, thanks). It looks from that like your GTX 1650 GPU power usage hasn't gone above 6w though, which seems very strange as I'd expect it to go a lot higher than that while running the benchmark (and the battery wouldn't discharge with such a low usage even on mine)

Do you know of anything that could be limiting the GPU at the moment? What kind of framerate did you get in the benchmark?

In fact there hasn't been any GPU usage there at all... so I guess either it ran on the Intel graphics for some reason, or do you have an external GPU connected at the moment that it ran on? (which I can't see in the HWiNFO screenshots, but perhaps that is normal if it HWiNFO was already running before that was connected)

 

No before was 100%, and after running that benchmarks and also just like played Medium around an hour it’s still 95,5%. Yes it’s not with dgpu 1650 but egpu 3070, does it matter? On blade 15 was on its dgpu though. Is it maybe because of different bios version, I forgot when I updated it maybe last intel security things update on stealth like a year ago and on 15 model forgot if within this two years even ever see Razer Bios updater Windows. I remember there was battery drain or not charging battery issue (not quite remember) on 2018 Blade15 at early launch, kind different things though and it was fixed by bios update.

 

Ok, yeah it definitely matters which GPU it runs on (sorry I didn't think of that because I don't have an eGPU), the benchmark needs to run on the built-in dedicated GPU as that is part of what causes the battery drain. Can you try it without the eGPU plugged into it?

I don't know as much about the Blade 15 but there was definitely a battery drain issue with the 2018 (or possibly early 2019) Blade Stealth, which was fixed with a BIOS update, so I was hoping the same would happen for this issue but there's been nothing about it at all

As for BIOS versions on the Blade Stealth late 2019, both versions behave exactly the same on mine (1.02 which it came with and 1.05 I updated to recently), it made no difference to it

 

Yes on stealth dgpu it was discharged until 95% and keep charging. I’ll double check using original 100 watt one since Razer Core v2 max power delivery isn’t 100 watt, maybe if you’re facing the same it’ll be also same though, but isn’t it the windows feature for keep overcharging on 100% on long run like gaming? I didn’t experience battery drain like early 2019 one while gaming on dgpu because of bigger 100 watt ac adapter compared to early 2019 I think same with my older stealth 65 watt that can’t properly supply power demand on 25 watt cpu and 35 watt gpu.

 

Ok, it sounds like yours does do it then... but yeah check using the original 100w charger as well. The overcharging protection thing is where it doesn't start charging until it gets down to 95%, yeah, but there's no reason for it to be discharging from 100% down to 95% at this sort of rate though, as there is enough power available from the charger

 

On 99% with 100 watt one it doesn’t show - (discharge) rate, running both unigine Heaven and sanctuary, stay on 99 like 5 minutes till now. Let it goes to 100% full charge if it has any changes. Was kind inpatient waiting to 100.

 

Ah that is interesting... if Charge Rate was 0.0 (or not showing at all) before starting Unigine Sanctuary, and stays the same while running it, that seems like yours doesn't have discharge issue at all with the original charger then... or are you saying it's still in the process of charging up (so should be showing a positive Charge Rate) and hasn't got to 100% yet?

 

Lol, it stay 99% like forever. Not sure why I saw 100% on core setting. Yes similar with blade 15, it’s plugged in 99% HWinfo64 say now only available 99 instead 2 minutes until full charge, maybe they stop it. I’ll try to use it without core and pull some game and report back if there’s any suspicious act on the battery department.

 

Ok, I'm still slightly confused whether you're saying the battery is still charging though... it needs to have finished charging (i.e. just saying plugged in, not charging) before you do the test with Unigine Sanctuary, as the battery draining thing only happens then, not while it's still charging up

 

Minus battery consumption is happening on 100% even not doing anything, but it stays on 100, only maybe when pulling something intensive it’ll be discharging to 95 and stay plus from there. Not sure if it’s normal or not, I’ll check on my MacBook bootcamp later to see if it’s only on Razer Laptops.
Edit: Wait no I forgot to close sanctuary , it’s now 0, but it stayed on 100 on 100 Watt ac Adapter. Let me run it again...

 

Yeah I was gonna say, something very wrong if it's plugged in and showing a negative charge rate even not doing anything at all lol. So yeah that sounds like yours does do the same thing as mine then, i.e. when running certain intensive-ish things, it will discharge to 95% and then charge back up again

 

Still running sanctury after 30 minutes, but it is still 100%, hmm weird. It is on 100 watt ac adapter. Ill update when it happens again like on core power, maybe doing some gaming later on.

 

That is weird, so it is discharging like mine does but maybe at a much slower rate, mine would be down to 99% charge within maybe a few minutes I think

(I'm going to sleep now so won't be able to reply here for a while)

 

Okay- Took longer to get back to it than I thought.

My 2018 Razerblade 15 base model does not do this.

The battery on it how ever is swollen and it drains like a siv even when the system is completely powered off. Battery life is no where near what it was when I got it, so something about it is messed up.

My battery never dipped below 100%

Also running the original BIOS it came with too, which I think is like 1.01 or 1.02

 

That is interesting. So, so far it seems like maybe all 2019 models do it but earlier models don't (my girlfriend's Blade 15 is a mid-2019 base model with 9th gen CPU and GTX 1660 Ti). I don't know which ones (if any) are more likely to get swollen batteries though.

In the time that you've had it, have you used it on the battery a lot or has it been plugged in for long periods of time (like more than a month) without discharging?

I think it's normal for the battery life of lithium-ion batteries to reduce quite a bit after 2 years, but obviously not for them to swell up, or drain a lot while powered off as far as I know. My old Sony VAIO had an option to only charge the battery to 50% or 80%, which I think was a really good idea. I never used the 50% option, but I had it set to 80% most of the time, and put it up to 100% usually the day before if I knew I needed to go somewhere with it the next day. It's still usable (although with greatly reduced battery life now), 10 years later, and the laptop itself was in constant use until a couple of years ago. So I am disappointed that there's no such thing on Razer laptops, especially if it's going to do this charging/discharging thing all the time, because I'm sure it would be far easier on the battery to do that from 45% to 50% than from 95% to 100%. And I've hardly been anywhere with it in the last year (for obvious reasons), so having it at 50% charge that whole time would have been no problem at all.

 

Up until December 2020 it was never plugged in for a month or more straight and has always had the chance to discharge, early when i owned it I used it on battery life a lot and got quite good at squeezing life out of it. I got 7 hours once at an extended D&D-hang out session. On avg i was able to squeeze 5-6 though.

Can agree that laptop batteries in general are worse than they were but thinnerlighter has a cost. lol

pretty sure most manufacturers assume the user or the system will die/be replaced before the battery does and use ****tier batteries on purpose. its gotta be a cost cutting thing w/ razers in order to maximize profits, which i would imagine are already on the thin side.

 

I tested it on my RBS with GTX1650ti with BIOS 1.04 and I couldn't confirm any of the symptoms. Whether with the 100w charger or my Razer Core Chroma. But I know that my "old" RBS 2019 GTX1650 did that, and I always wondered.

 

Oh wow really?! That is *very* useful to know, thanks so much!

Have you ever tried any other USB-C chargers with either of them? Another issue with my 2019 model is that it won't work properly with any other charger I've tried (I really wanted a smaller one to put in my laptop bag). It always draws much less power than each charger is capable of providing, so I strongly suspect it's all part of the same issue really. With a 60w charger the CPU was still power-limited as if it was running on the battery, and with anything more than very light use it started draining the battery (and making a horrible electrical noise from the laptop itself) - even though it only goes above 60w on the original charger with very heavy use, and I confirmed the charger had no problem providing the full 60w to a friend's Dell laptop.

So I'm guessing (and hoping) your 2020 one won't have any of that problem either?

 

Yes, I tried other chargers, but it never charged as well as with the original power supply. Although I haven't found any other smaller 100 watt power supply either. I have a 60 and 80 watt power supply here, and it never charges more than it consumes while playing. In normal use, it works and charges. But it didn't make any strange noises or limit the processor. or I did not notice whether it is limiting. Tomorrow I'll test the 2020 model to see if it does anything strange.

 

That would be great, thanks Would be particularly useful to know how much load it takes for it to start draining the battery on the 60w charger (perhaps measured by "CPU Package Power" and "GPU Power" in HWiNFO if possible - and then you'd also know whether it's power-limiting the CPU or not)

 

Well... ugh. I ended up sending the laptop to Amazon's (third-party) repair people, as Razer started messing me about contradicting everything they'd already said (about timescales etc) and not answering my questions before I'd even sent the laptop off to them, and I found that Amazon were offering to repair it within 14 business days or give me a brand new replacement/refund if they couldn't. Their repair people ended up having it for well over a month with absolutely no updates despite me constantly contacting Amazon to ask what was going on, and I eventually (after a lot of effort) got a refund as an Amazon gift card a few days ago. I immediately used that to buy the equivalent late 2020 model (as that's still the latest one)

And it turns out... as well as some new problems/things they seem to have made worse compared to the late 2019 one, it still does the same thing! It's still draining the battery under load, then taking more power and charging back up when it gets down to 95%. It's perhaps not draining as much as the old one, but I think that's mostly because the CPU in this is capable of doing more with less power, so it's not being pushed as much in the tests I was doing like Unigine Sanctuary - it seems like it can still drain more in other situations. And it's still only taking a maximum of 62w from my third-party 90w charger (although it does seem to reach that 62w more consistently than my old laptop, so I'm not completely sure that it isn't the charger's fault that it's not going beyond that now, as I don't know anyone else with a USB-C laptop that can use more than 60w to test it with)

So I feel like I'm losing my sanity at this point. Am I just really unlucky, or do they actually all do this and no one else is bothered? Should I just carry on setting up and using it, and try to ignore what it's doing? (which would be very difficult - it's the kind of thing that once you notice it, you can't unsee it or ignore what it's doing, or at least it is for me)

Or are Razer perhaps using different (inferior) charging components in the UK models? Mine (and my girlfriend's) have all been UK-specific models as they have a UK keyboard layout, but I don't know why anything else in it would need to be different. It still says "Assembled in China" on the box, which I guess is where they're all made. @Padron431 if you don't mind me asking, what country model were your 2019 and 2020 ones?

I also think it is likely that it contributes to the battery swelling issue, even if it's not the only cause of it (my girlfriend's Blade 15, which also does this but she carried on using it as normal, now has a bloated battery). I mean repeatedly charging from 95% to 100% when the laptop is at its hottest just cannot be good for a lithium-ion battery.

I really don't know what to do from here. I should be able to send it back to Amazon relatively easily within the first 30 days (if they don't decide to close my account for refunding two expensive laptops), but then I'll still be without a laptop (which has been very difficult for the last couple of months) and I still don't think there are any others that would meet my needs. The Blade Stealth late 2019 was almost perfect for me