Surface Pro 2 Gets Significant Battery Boost Thanks to Firmware Update
Microsoft has pushed out a firmware update for the Surface Pro 2 that has significantly boosted its battery life, according to some recent benchmarks
The original Surface Pro (which is now $200 less than the second generation) didn’t have quite a good battery life and that’s why Microsoft tried to fix this with the Surface Pro, increasing its battery life. However, according to some early reviews, Microsoft didn’t manage to impress with the battery life in the Surface Pro 2.
After the Surface Pro 2 has hit general availability, being available for consumers and not only journalists, Microsoft has silently pushed out a firmware update which, according to some new battery benchmarks run by Anandtech, made significant improvements to the battery life of the Surface Pro 2.
The purpose of the firmware update was to enable the WiFi to go into lower power states and utilize even less power. You wouldn’t normally think that a software improvement could do so much, but it seems that with the Surface Pro 2, it did manage to produce a significant battery boost.
After the new web browsing battery life test, it was discovered that the Surface Pro 2 now manages better battery life than the ARM Surface 2, which is pretty impressive. With the firmware update, Microsoft was targeting over 8 hours, and AnadTech’s benchmarks show Microsoft has succeeded, registering a 25% increase in battery life over the no-firmware version. The unpatched Surface Pro 2 lasted for 6.68 hours while with the firmware update installed, its battery life increased to 8.33 hours.
The video playback test involved playing a movie until the battery died, and here, albeit smaller, improvements with the battery life have also been noticed:7.73 hours compared to 6.65 hours. The firmware update comes in Windows Updates, so you should check for that in your Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 system. If you have a Surface Pro 2, can you confirm that its battery is now better with this update?
