Loving my new laptop so far, except for one aspect: Battery life.
I started with Ubuntu 20.04 and was impressed with the smooth install and hardware support (finger print reader was a bit tricky).
However noticed battery life was pretty bad (4 hours), and high standby battery usage - read that this laptop is capable of 12 hours.
So bit the bullet and installed windows 11 enterprise, again very smooth experience with driver packs etc… but disappointed again that battery life was 4-5 hours, similar to ubuntu.
Lower screen brightness (I usually have it at 20-30% and I get 8-10 hours on my Ryzen 7 board)
If your SSD has a power saving mode, activate it in the manufacturer’s software
Update to latest drivers directly from AMD
Uninstall unneeded apps
Turnoff unneeded services in System Configuration
Power Plan Settings
Set minimum processor state to 1%
Set PCIE Link State Power Management to Maximum Power Savings
Turn on USB selective suspend setting
Set USB3 Link State Power Management to Maximum Power Savings
Turn off Network connectivity in standby
You can also use O and O Shutup 10 to disable hidden services. Do note that since the Ryzen 5 version has a 55 watthour battery instead of a 61 watthour battery, you may still not get the same battery life as some reviews suggest.
Personally on NixOs with xfce (for now – trying to find something else very small and lightweight but modern), only usb-c when not having a special need, been getting 7-8ish hours of active use spread over 5-6 days. Screen goes to lowest brightness a minute in, it’s only on second lowest usually. The idea is the less stuff there is on the system the less stuff runs, LOVING NixOs for that, being able to just temporarily install a thing I need has been great for that.
(Note I do stay in the terminal most of the time though so that also plays a factor since the screen is primarily very dark)
A data point - I’m getting 6-7 hours on Win11 with the 7840U mostly using Firefox, Brave, Slack & Jupyter. Original smaller battery with USB-C at the back ports, SSD and USB-A front ports.
Have you fiddled with the windows power plans at all, battery saver on?
I’ve been getting varying battery life results on Fedora 39. I’ve just recently installed auto-cpufreq to see if that will increase the battery life a bit, or at least limit excessive heat that my system usually creates. So far I’ve not noticed a big difference, other than that my fans spin less. (I’m thinking I should go in and tweak the settings to make it more intense). So I am still on the hunt for trying to increase my battery life for my current workflow.
It goes without saying, but it depends on what tasks you are doing. For example:
As I am tying this in Firefox, my system is on 92%, projecting another 8hrs of battery via Gnome settings.
I just watched a ~10m YT video, my battery dropped to 89%, and it is projecting 5 1/2 hrs of battery via Gnome settings.
System info: FW-13 AMD Ryzen 5 7640U, Fedora Linux 39 Kernel 6.5.6-300, 2xusb-c (rear), 1xusb-a, 1xdp.
I have also the 7640U, but with 8Gb RAM, 1x usb C (left back), 1x HDMI (right back), 2x usb A (front positions), and on Windows 11 with the BIOS 3.03. I also have the 55Wh battery.
My usage is light: spotify, netflix, browser, the classic…
My battery life is very good, I would say worst case 8 hours, best 14 hours.
Since you have had your bad battery experience on both Windows and Linux, I would say you have either a material or BIOS issue? Or maybe your usage? (64G of RAM: CFD or CAD?)
Well according to Windows, should we trust those guys?
More seriously, my usage is light as mentioned, I just meant that I did not have the very low battery like in the OP.
3% for 10’ video == 18% for one hour == ~5 hours on a full charge
Not even close to good enough in 2023, with what is supposedly a VERY efficient chip.
I have a 7840U BTW, and it’s a complete let down when it comes to battery.
I’m also on Linux, so maybe it’s Linux’s fault…we’ll see if some updates improve the situation, but at this point I’m 4 months into owning this, and I’m close to regretting my purchase.
Just for video decoding/firefox, or also for generic GUI rendering, for example?
Would you happen to have the link to the bug report, please?
I really hope it’s both, because I feel that idle consumption (even with no apps open, just staring at the desktop/powertop) is MUCH more inefficient than on an 11th gen Intel.
Thanks
P.S. the Windows screenshot by @Paul_Guenin gives me hope that once this platform is better supported on Linux, we can have great expectations, but I’d love for it to happen sooner rather than in two years from now
Do you happen to have your system config available anywhere? I’m looking into buying a framework to run nixos but am seeing dreadful reports of 2-4 hours of battery life running linux
Did you have to do any special tuning?
The only “special” thing I did is run XFCE since it’s one of the smallest footprint DEs and a GPU accelerated terminal (kitty) so that it can better balance the power draw between CPU and GPU (aka the gpu power draw isnt wasted doing nothing). But I’d imagine any DE with animations turned off would also be pretty good, I’m thinking of trying hyprland with all the bells and whistles turned off see how that goes.
I don’t have my config uploaded anywhere yet though it’s hastily thrown together haha
I think the people showing those horrendous battery lifetime are just running really unoptimized software cough electron apps cough is what it comes down to
Running Gnome on Ubuntu 23.10 (kernel 6.5) with updated amdgpu firmware and some kernel parameters, I get around average 8W playing a 1080p hevc video using mpv. Measured both with powerstat and with upower history (which report slightly less then 30% battery drop in 2h). So more or less 6.5h-7h for the full 55Wh battery. Regarding brightness and energy preferences: /sys/class/backlight/amdgpu_bl0/brightness is set to 48 and epp is set to balance-power.
Hyrpland with all the bells on is surprisingly resource efficient! I still get 8+ hours on my 11th gen mainboard with light browser/terminal work.
Would recommend you give it a try
