Acer Swift 3 Sf314-57 Battery lasts only 1,5 hours after 1 year

my Acer Swift 3 is only 1 year old and battery is now only lasting 1,5 hours on surfing on internet, no video watching. Acer promises 12-13 hours which i never got from the beginning. At the beginning it was only 3-4 hours now dropped to 1,5 hours. I have even paid an extra insurance including covering battery damage. I have tried all resetting battery, reinstalling windows etc. but i believe it has nothing to do with the software issue. If i have to buy every year a new battery, this is crazy and it will cost me a lot of money. what could be the issue? anyone else experience this problem?

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christy1

Batmaci

Try a battery calibration. good you have extended warranty. as you said its not looking like software issue. Initially for a new battery we need to charge for certain hrs. check that in guide lines. i charge for 4-8hrs for my unit if its the 1st charge for the battery. send it for service or request for a new battery alone. sometimes they have options to send battery instead of service from store.
https://www.howtogeek.com/172271/how-to-calibrate-your-laptops-battery-for-accurate-battery-life-estimates/

billsey

Software makes a huge difference in battery life. The more tings run in the background, the shorter the time the battery can keep things running. Look for applications that use more power than normal, such as antivirus programs, Bluetooth devices, apps that do network activity, etc..

Athwart

Batmaci said:

my Acer Swift 3 is only 1 year old and battery is now only lasting 1,5 hours on surfing on internet, no video watching. Acer promises 12-13 hours which i never got from the beginning. At the beginning it was only 3-4 hours now dropped to 1,5 hours.

My Acer Swift SF314-57-539F is about 3 months old & I get about 6-7 hrs active use from it. Sounds like your battery is definitely suspect if you only got 3-4 hrs when new. And unless you are doing all the wrong things that damage a battery's life, degrading to half that in a year is unusual. See here for what to do & not do to care for a battery: Debunking Battery Life Myths for Mobile Phones, Tablets, and Laptops (howtogeek.com)

Try running the following in a Command prompt to get a report on the battery: powercfg /batteryreport

It will give you recent battery usage & historical usage information since new. For my fairly new Swift 3, it reports:
FULL CHARGE CAPACITY = 50,298 mWh
DESIGN CAPACITY = 48,003 mWh

with no degradation in the last 3 months.

If the battery report suggests that the battery capacity is OK, then look into @christy1's or (more likely) @billsey's suggestions.

Batmaci

@Athwart
nice suggestion thanks. Your full charge capacity is higher than deign capacity, my one looks other way around.

DESIGN CAPACITY	48.003 mWh
FULL CHARGE CAPACITY	36.405 mWh
CYCLE COUNT	401

I see that i was accurate with the numbers. Report shows me that in 1,5 hours it drops from 102% to 5%

2021-04-0216:34:46	Connected standby	Battery	102 %	36.855 mWh
16:34:46	Active	Battery	102 %	36.855 mWh
17:29:37	Connected standby	Battery	41 %	14.850 mWh
17:30:01	Active	Battery	41 %	14.726 mWh
18:00:54	Active	AC	5 %	1.912 mWh

When I bought in 13.01.2020

my battery seems to be drained drammatically in 1 year

PERIOD	FULL CHARGE CAPACITY	DESIGN CAPACITY
2020-01-13 - 2020-01-20	49.683 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-01-20 - 2020-01-27	49.246 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-01-27 - 2020-02-03	49.421 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-02-03 - 2020-02-10	49.543 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-02-10 - 2020-02-17	49.316 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-02-17 - 2020-02-24	50.157 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-02-24 - 2020-03-02	49.902 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-03-02 - 2020-03-09	49.309 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-03-09 - 2020-03-16	48.930 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-03-16 - 2020-03-23	48.667 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-03-23 - 2020-03-30	48.702 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-03-30 - 2020-04-06	48.754 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-04-06 - 2020-04-13	48.651 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-04-13 - 2020-04-20	48.428 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-04-20 - 2020-04-27	48.143 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-04-27 - 2020-05-04	48.183 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-05-04 - 2020-05-18	48.375 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-05-18 - 2020-05-25	47.782 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-05-25 - 2020-06-01	47.991 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-06-01 - 2020-06-08	47.979 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-06-08 - 2020-06-15	47.775 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-06-15 - 2020-06-22	47.777 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-06-22 - 2020-06-29	47.790 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-06-29 - 2020-07-06	47.790 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-07-06 - 2020-07-13	47.790 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-07-13 - 2020-07-20	47.533 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-07-20 - 2020-07-27	47.054 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-07-27 - 2020-08-03	47.098 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-08-03 - 2020-08-10	46.980 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-08-10 - 2020-08-17	46.859 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-08-17 - 2020-08-24	46.678 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-08-24 - 2020-08-31	46.563 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-08-31 - 2020-09-07	46.366 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-09-07 - 2020-09-21	45.565 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-09-21 - 2020-09-28	42.899 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-09-28 - 2020-10-05	41.169 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-10-05 - 2020-10-12	40.219 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-10-12 - 2020-10-19	37.845 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-10-19 - 2020-10-26	37.597 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-10-26 - 2020-11-02	37.597 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-11-02 - 2020-11-09	37.585 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-11-09 - 2020-11-16	37.057 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-11-16 - 2020-11-23	37.373 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-11-23 - 2020-11-30	37.662 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-11-30 - 2020-12-07	37.608 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-12-07 - 2020-12-14	37.683 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-12-14 - 2020-12-21	37.711 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-12-21 - 2020-12-28	36.973 mWh	48.003 mWh
2020-12-28 - 2021-01-04	37.350 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-01-04 - 2021-01-11	37.371 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-01-11 - 2021-01-18	37.341 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-01-18 - 2021-01-25	37.480 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-01-25 - 2021-02-01	37.512 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-02-01 - 2021-02-08	36.967 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-02-08 - 2021-02-15	36.967 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-02-15 - 2021-02-22	37.236 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-02-22 - 2021-03-01	36.869 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-03-01 - 2021-03-08	36.270 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-03-08 - 2021-03-15	36.270 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-03-15 - 2021-03-22	36.270 mWh	48.003 mWh
2021-03-22 - 2021-03-29	36.270 mWh	48.003 mWh

See in 2020 January it shows active estimated time 3-4 hours only on standby 13 hours. is that really how it supposed to be?

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/wk/94lxfpl8ieiw.png

Is that not fooling the consumer? I had my Acer TimelineX from 2010, it had good 8 hours active battery life and even after 10 years it was lasting 2-3 hours. Thats the only reason i trusted Acer and bought another acer laptop. How does the numbers look like for you? Is it a general thing or only mine?

Athwart

Is that not fooling the consumer? I had my Acer TimelineX from 2010, it had good 8 hours active battery life and even after 10 years it was lasting 2-3 hours. Thats the only reason i trusted Acer and bought another acer laptop. How does the numbers look like for you? Is it a general thing or only mine?

Well I'm no expert & can only speak to my own experience. I see that your battery started out with a Full Charge Capacity of 49.683 mWh i.e. higher than the design capacity but quite quickly became less. Down to 48.930 mWh after 3 months. My Full Charge Capacity when new was a little higher but similar however there has been no degradation after 3 months (100 cycles cf your 400 cycles in a year).

I also see that your active battery life estimates when new were in the range of 3.5-4.5 hrs. Mine were about 6-7 hrs. This seems to indicate that you're running significantly more power intensive applications/processes than mine.

As a side note, these battery life estimates are theoretical rather than actual since the battery should never be drained to empty. They also seem to be a bit optimistic. In practice, I get about 3-3.5 hrs from full charge down to 30-35% charge. I put it back on power when it drops to 30%.

Regarding the better performance you've had with a previous Acer, I did see a review that said the battery in the 2020 314-57 had been downgraded from the previous 2019 model. I guess that is a design/cost trade-off. In my case, I previously had a very old Acer Aspire. With a new battery it would start with about 3 hrs use but the batteries were stuffed after about 3 years and had to be replaced. For me, the 314-57 is a nice improvement.

To my inexpert eye, it looks like your battery started life OK but has degraded too quickly. Possible causes:
- bad battery
- improper usage i.e. regularly draining too low, too hot/cold environment, etc. See the article I previously quoted about battery care.
- high power demand applications/processes. Your power demand seems notably higher than mine. There's plenty of suggestions around about how to minimise battery consumption e.g. lower screen brightness, disable Bluetooth, disable unwanted programs & services, etc. You can get a quick but low info view of applications' power consumption in Task Manager or a much more detailed view by running "powercfg /srumutil" in a Command prompt. Open up the srumutil.csv report file & sort on thelast "TotalEnergyConsumption" field (highest to lowest). Look to see if there's an unexpected or un-needed power hog that may be draining the battery. In my case, the highest power usage is by the system and my anti-virus program.

Bottom line is that I think your current battery appears to be stuffed. Replace it when it gets unbearable or before the warranty expires. But there may be ways to lower the power drain and improve the longevity of your battery but you'll need to dig into possible causes.

billsey

What does Battery usage per app say in Battery Settings? I still lean toward it being apps and drivers pulling it down.

Batmaci

@billsey
list is always empty for me. any idea why?
I am using it on battery power for sure even right now while writing this reply.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/pw/mw95ffh3e238.png

billsey

Yeah, you'll have to run it longer on battery, so it can grab enough usage to give you the statistics...

2EZY

yo can u tell me how u fixed the balaced plan in power plan

Batmaci

2EZY said:

yo can u tell me how u fixed the balaced plan in power plan

I am not sure what you are asking or is it to me? but i couldnt fix anything. Acers laptop just full of false information. there is unfortunately nothing to fix. From the very beginning it was just a marketing lie with all those long hours as you can see in my test list

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