Can I improve upon 10 hours of battery on 13 Pro (Limited Batch)?

Framework Laptop 13
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1

I’ve had my 13 pro for a few days now. I have the limited batch version. I’m using Artix linux and am running a power management daemon on KDE plasma. Doing basic web browsing, my estimates are around 9-10 hours of battery. Doing the same thing on my wife’s 13 inch m1 (the OG) macbook pro registers nearly 17 hours.

I wasn’t expecting a miracle but I was expecting more if I’m honest. I was hoping for 14 hours or more of moderate use. I describe moderate use as browsing the web, using text editors, things like that. Not rendering video or compiling massive code projects.

I’m curious if I’m doing something wrong? The sleep and idle times are incredible. So when doing literally nothing, it does have great battery life. It’s just that the second you do ANYTHING, no matter how small, that drops like a rock.

Any help would be appreciated.

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Could we see some uptime load average and powertop readings? Maybe there are some consumption savings to be made.

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Have you tested using one of the supported distros in a live environment? That and what @Squiggler said would be helpful. Since FW would point you towards a supported distro anyways…

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Also, just a thought—I want to do this as well—if you don’t use the touch-screen, it might save some power to disable it.

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Actually I don’t use it, that’s a good call. Also, I’ve been investigating and I think it fluctuates wildly because it depends when it takes the reading. If you catch it taking a power estimation at just the right time, opening Claude tab in a browser or something, it estimates pretty low. I think that’s why it’s showing so low for me.

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I have read about some issues under some distros, specifically ones running tuned-ppd causing it to drain faster than it should. Also there are some reports of USB-A ports causing odd power draw with nothing plugged in, though I believe that is linked to older framework USB-A ports and not the newer black modules that ship with the Pro.

I am using Ubuntu 26.04 and have been pretty satisfied with the batter life. Usually in the 14 or so hour range with my normal tasks.

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Another idea; consider changing the screen from a 120Hz refresh rate down to 60. I think that would save some power, and I should the lower rate would still be very good.

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My guess is always hardware acceleration issues:

  • Check browser’s hardware acceleration; is video hardware decoded?
  • The other apps you are using - are they electron based wrappers? If so, check if they are hardware decoding. Any animation these days is a video.
    • Containerized apps (e.g. Flatpak) tends more to have trouble utilizing hardware acceleration.

I don’t think you can get 17 but getting 12 hours should be quite easy. I regularly get 8+ hours of web browsing on the X7 board w/ old chassis & 51wh battery.

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Thank you for all the great suggestions! I really appreciate the responses :slight_smile:

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Let us know what kinds of battery performance you get - it will be interesting to see how much you can push it.

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After making some of the adjustments stated in here, I’m at 75% battery with an estimated 9-10 hours of reaming battery doing those same tasks I mentioned. Obviously, more aggressive tasks drop that, but that is expected. I am satisfied with the results. The changes I had to make are not noticeable to me based on what I’m doing with the laptop. I don’t even use the touchscreen, and I mostly do casual web browsing and open source software development, which is mainly typing in a text editor.

I think I can probably get the 14 hours I was expecting now, so I really do appreciate all the suggestions.

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