Gateway Creator Series - Extremely Poor Battery Life - model GWTN156-3BK

floating
floating Member Posts: 4 New User
Hi,
I'm only getting around 1.5 hours of battery on full charge. I put the laptop in office mode and turn on battery saver. I made sure that the dedicated GPU is turned off. I closed all unnecessary background processes. Even if I just leave the laptop turned on & unused (with the display on), it still only lasts 1.5 hours on full charge. From looking at a hardware monitor, it seems that the CPU's clock rate keeps fluctuating from 800mhz to 4.2ghz. This might have something to do with the poor battery, but I'm not sure.

I understand this sort of machine isn't meant to have great battery life, but 1.5 hours is impermissible on any mobile device from the past decade.

Does anyone know what I can do to improve this? Any tips or advice would be much appreciated. I like this laptop a lot, but the battery life is really letting me down.
thanks in advance

Answers

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,871 Trailblazer
    Go to the elevated command prompt.  Enter 'powercfg /batteryreport'. Then return to the desktop. Open file explorer. Then search for' battery-report.html' in the c:\windows\system32\ sub-folder. Double-click to open it in the browser. Post screenshot of the first part of the report if possible that compares design full charge capacity with its remaining full charge capacity. Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • floating
    floating Member Posts: 4 New User
    Thank you kindly for the quick response @JackE , here are a couple screenshots.



  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,871 Trailblazer
    Battery looks fine. With battery fully charged and unplugged, screen brightness set to about 50% and nothing running including any non-Microsoft virus scanners, open Task Manager performance tab and CPU option displayed. Just let it set this way doing nothing other than Task Manager performance tab displayed. How long does the battery last before the Windows low battery alarm displays? Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • floating
    floating Member Posts: 4 New User
    It actually lasted for about 6 hours doing that, but holy ***** the culprit turned out to be something I never would have expected. Turns out that anytime I had CPUID HWMonitor open the battery would drain VERY quickly. I'm still completely dumbfounded as to why that happened. HWMonitor was taking up little to no resources according to the task manager, so how was it draining the battery so intensely? Even the power usage & power trend are reading as "Low" & "Very Low." So strange..

    I really appreciate the help sir. Sorry it turned out to be a silly error.
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,871 Trailblazer
    Thanks for reporting back. If keywords hwmonitor drain battery are googled, seems like other folks have also been trying to track down short battery lifetimes  using hwmonitor as the diagnostic tool.  Perhaps the tool itself is a bit buggy, eh?  :) Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • Adxtyx
    Adxtyx Member Posts: 2 New User

    what should I do ?? 
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,871 Trailblazer
    Your battery has lost nearly 60% of its original capacity. So full charge battery life should be less than half of what it was when new. This is normal for a battery that is about 3-4 years old.

    Jack E/NJ

  • Adxtyx
    Adxtyx Member Posts: 2 New User
    @JackE

    What do you think, should I buy new and if you think so please :) send some link of batteries to buy 
  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,871 Trailblazer
    That's entirely up to you if you want more time on battery alone. Simply google search GWTN156-3 & battery for vendors who ship to your location. About $60usd.

    Jack E/NJ