Razer 15 2020 Battery Life

[Guest]

Hey all, I have yet another question/concern with my most recent purchase, a Razer Blade 15 Base Model. All the tech reviewers on Youtube placed its battery life around 4-5 hours with regular use, which was perfectly adequate for me. It's got some decent hardware so I wasn't expecting much and I'm typically plugged it. But lately, I'm averaging about an hour on battery doing light tasks like Youtube, document editing and stuff like that. In fifteen minutes the charge went from 100% to about 75% and I wasn't even doing anything. I consider this to be pretty terrible even by gaming laptop standards. Anyone have any idea what could be going on? Or is this just the way it was designed?

 

For the record, I'm running as few processes as possible, brightness on both the panel and keyboard is cut in half, and I don't have many tabs open in Microsoft Edge. I've even run on 'power saver' mode with no improvement. Everything else is set to default in Razer Synapse and I've even dabbled in undervolting to try and squeeze some extra life out of my battery, but I haven't seen any improvement. Task manager isn't revealing anything that's taking up resources. Something somewhere appears to be draining it but I can't pinpoint it. Any experience with these laptops will be appreciated.

 

Thanks guys!

[5x5]

It's defective. Sadly normal for Razer, they have very poor quality control so many users get defective products. Return it and get something else.

[Lord Vile]

11 hours ago, Stylized_Violence said:

Hey all, I have yet another question/concern with my most recent purchase, a Razer Blade 15 Base Model. All the tech reviewers on Youtube placed its battery life around 4-5 hours with regular use, which was perfectly adequate for me. It's got some decent hardware so I wasn't expecting much and I'm typically plugged it. But lately, I'm averaging about an hour on battery doing light tasks like Youtube, document editing and stuff like that. In fifteen minutes the charge went from 100% to about 75% and I wasn't even doing anything. I consider this to be pretty terrible even by gaming laptop standards. Anyone have any idea what could be going on? Or is this just the way it was designed?

 

For the record, I'm running as few processes as possible, brightness on both the panel and keyboard is cut in half, and I don't have many tabs open in Microsoft Edge. I've even run on 'power saver' mode with no improvement. Everything else is set to default in Razer Synapse and I've even dabbled in undervolting to try and squeeze some extra life out of my battery, but I haven't seen any improvement. Task manager isn't revealing anything that's taking up resources. Something somewhere appears to be draining it but I can't pinpoint it. Any experience with these laptops will be appreciated.

 

Thanks guys!

What's task manager saying about utilization?

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

What's task manager saying about utilization?

17 hours ago, 5x5 said:

It's defective. Sadly normal for Razer, they have very poor quality control so many users get defective products. Return it and get something else.

I'm using about 25% of my memory at idle, and the CPU and GPU don't even register a blip when at idle. When browsing and doing my normal tasks, CPU jumps around a lot but hangs around the teens and GPU is in the single digits.

 

What I did notice after awhile is ThrottleStop's temperature monitoring software keeps reporting my 2060 temps while doing regular tasks not related to gaming (40s and 50s). But then will drop to 0 as well seemingly at random, as if it's trying to read the UHD graphics but can't. Could it be that my GPU is kicking on during tasks that don't require it and draining my battery? Because gaming on a battery would yield closer to what I'm experiencing. Maybe it's not defective and just software related? IDK.

 

Thoughts?

 

[pilot35]

A few things you can do which will help prolong battery life:

• Enable battery saver
• Set to power saver in power options
• 99% max processor state when on battery
• Set speedshift to 128 on throttlestop
• Undervolt as low as possible, igpu can sometimes also be undervolted
• Disable dgpu when on battery
• Lower screen brightness

Also above all don't expect much battery life from a gaming laptop. That's what ultrabooks/business laptops are for.

[Roswell]

20 hours ago, Stylized_Violence said:

Hey all, I have yet another question/concern with my most recent purchase, a Razer Blade 15 Base Model. All the tech reviewers on Youtube placed its battery life around 4-5 hours with regular use, which was perfectly adequate for me. It's got some decent hardware so I wasn't expecting much and I'm typically plugged it. But lately, I'm averaging about an hour on battery doing light tasks like Youtube, document editing and stuff like that. In fifteen minutes the charge went from 100% to about 75% and I wasn't even doing anything. I consider this to be pretty terrible even by gaming laptop standards. Anyone have any idea what could be going on? Or is this just the way it was designed?

 

For the record, I'm running as few processes as possible, brightness on both the panel and keyboard is cut in half, and I don't have many tabs open in Microsoft Edge. I've even run on 'power saver' mode with no improvement. Everything else is set to default in Razer Synapse and I've even dabbled in undervolting to try and squeeze some extra life out of my battery, but I haven't seen any improvement. Task manager isn't revealing anything that's taking up resources. Something somewhere appears to be draining it but I can't pinpoint it. Any experience with these laptops will be appreciated.

 

Thanks guys!

 

If memory serves, I’m pretty sure that you can check battery health and wear in HWiNFO. That’s probably the best place to start. 
 

20 hours ago, 5x5 said:

It's defective. Sadly normal for Razer, they have very poor quality control so many users get defective products. Return it and get something else.

 

That’s a wild assumption. It could be any number of things.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, pilot35 said:

A few things you can do which will help prolong battery life:

• Enable battery saver
• Set to power saver in power options
• 99% max processor state when on battery
• Set speedshift to 128 on throttlestop
• Undervolt as low as possible, igpu can sometimes also be undervolted
• Disable dgpu when on battery
• Lower screen brightness

Also above all don't expect much battery life from a gaming laptop. That's what ultrabooks/business laptops are for.

Just about all of those have been done to some capacity or another, although I don't know what you mean by 99% max processor state. How does that work?

 

My undervolting has yielded -125mv on both CPU core and CPU cache...the slider actually won't go any farther so I think I maxed it out.

 

And I don't expect much on battery life when it comes to gaming laptops, I knew that going in...but when everyone and their brother is telling me to expect about four hours and I'm getting ONE if I'm lucky, well I think that's cause for concern. Especially on a laptop that's basically brand new out of the box. And my second one to boot that had the exact same issue. Thanks for the tips though!

1 hour ago, Vitamanic said:

 

If memory serves, I’m pretty sure that you can check battery health and wear in HWiNFO. That’s probably the best place to start. 

I did a battery check through Windows 10, apparently it has a utility built into it to check battery health and the like, similar to HWiNFO. It tells me that the battery was designed for 65Wh but at a full charge I get 66Wh and based on its very young history, a handful of weeks, I can expect about 1.5 hours on a full charge. I find that to be patently absurd honestly, since other 'gaming' laptops are pushing four and five hours easy. And as I replied to the other person, this is the SECOND identical laptop that I've gotten with this same issue...I find it hard to believe that I've gotten two defective units in a row.

 

It's just a little frustrating, that's all.

[5x5]

1 hour ago, Stylized_Violence said:

Just about all of those have been done to some capacity or another, although I don't know what you mean by 99% max processor state. How does that work?

 

My undervolting has yielded -125mv on both CPU core and CPU cache...the slider actually won't go any farther so I think I maxed it out.

 

And I don't expect much on battery life when it comes to gaming laptops, I knew that going in...but when everyone and their brother is telling me to expect about four hours and I'm getting ONE if I'm lucky, well I think that's cause for concern. Especially on a laptop that's basically brand new out of the box. And my second one to boot that had the exact same issue. Thanks for the tips though!

I did a battery check through Windows 10, apparently it has a utility built into it to check battery health and the like, similar to HWiNFO. It tells me that the battery was designed for 65Wh but at a full charge I get 66Wh and based on its very young history, a handful of weeks, I can expect about 1.5 hours on a full charge. I find that to be patently absurd honestly, since other 'gaming' laptops are pushing four and five hours easy. And as I replied to the other person, this is the SECOND identical laptop that I've gotten with this same issue...I find it hard to believe that I've gotten two defective units in a row.

 

It's just a little frustrating, that's all.

Razer source extremely cheap and shit batteries to keep production costs down. It's no secret their batteries fail very quickly and frequently arrive in a defective state because razer's QA and QC is extremely lackluster. Could it be software, maybe. But because of their track record and hundreds od reports online, the more likely scenario is a defective battery. I imagine it will start bulging it just die after a year.

[pilot35]

2 hours ago, Stylized_Violence said:

Just about all of those have been done to some capacity or another, although I don't know what you mean by 99% max processor state. How does that work?

Power options > Power saver >  Change advanced power settings > Max processor state to 99% on battery

 

One hour of battery life (light usage) is quite low. Have you tried checking the health of your battery? It may be defective. Ask razer if you can swap it out with a new one

 

1 hour ago, 5x5 said:

Razer source extremely cheap and shit batteries to keep production costs down. It's no secret their batteries fail very quickly and frequently arrive in a defective state because razer's QA and QC is extremely lackluster. Could it be software, maybe. But because of their track record and hundreds od reports online, the more likely scenario is a defective battery. I imagine it will start bulging it just die after a year.

Not to mention their customer service is one of the worst in the industry. That is why literally nobody here will recommend razer laptops

[Guest]

So after several days of testing and researching, I've pinpointed the issue (I think). This is for people who may come across this issue in the future.

 

Firstly, for whatever reason, my computer was wanting to use the Nvidia GPU while it was on battery and doing light tasks (document editing, Youtube, etc). Even after setting the global settings in the control panel to only use integrated graphics, it still did not work correctly. I found this out by using ThrottleStop's temperature monitoring software, which kept randomly giving me my GPU temps and then also giving me a 0 degrees reading, meaning it was trying to read the UHD graphics and was failing since apparently there is no sensor to give data. This constant state of switching between integrated and discrete graphics was pulling on my battery unnecessarily and was the apparent main cause of my poor battery life.

 

There was a Windows update to 2004 which I downloaded and installed. First thing I noticed was that now my global settings were being adhered too, and now my GPU reading remains steady at 0 doing normal everyday tasks. Somewhat perplexed, as I figured this wouldn't solve it and all of this was due to Razer's shitty battery/hardware, I ran some tests. I actually managed about 3.5 hours on battery, so of course while not stellar by any means, it is lightyears ahead of what I was getting before.

 

Within my first ten or fifteen minutes prior to the update, I'd usually see the battery around 85%. Now, within that timeframe I'm still around 96% so I'm glad to have this more or less rectified. A big thanks to those that tried to assist me in this matter, I'll @ you guys just so you can see what my solution was.

 

@pilot35 @5x5 @Vitamanic @Lord Vile

[5x5]

56 minutes ago, Stylized_Violence said:

So after several days of testing and researching, I've pinpointed the issue (I think). This is for people who may come across this issue in the future.

 

Firstly, for whatever reason, my computer was wanting to use the Nvidia GPU while it was on battery and doing light tasks (document editing, Youtube, etc). Even after setting the global settings in the control panel to only use integrated graphics, it still did not work correctly. I found this out by using ThrottleStop's temperature monitoring software, which kept randomly giving me my GPU temps and then also giving me a 0 degrees reading, meaning it was trying to read the UHD graphics and was failing since apparently there is no sensor to give data. This constant state of switching between integrated and discrete graphics was pulling on my battery unnecessarily and was the apparent main cause of my poor battery life.

 

There was a Windows update to 2004 which I downloaded and installed. First thing I noticed was that now my global settings were being adhered too, and now my GPU reading remains steady at 0 doing normal everyday tasks. Somewhat perplexed, as I figured this wouldn't solve it and all of this was due to Razer's shitty battery/hardware, I ran some tests. I actually managed about 3.5 hours on battery, so of course while not stellar by any means, it is lightyears ahead of what I was getting before.

 

Within my first ten or fifteen minutes prior to the update, I'd usually see the battery around 85%. Now, within that timeframe I'm still around 96% so I'm glad to have this more or less rectified. A big thanks to those that tried to assist me in this matter, I'll @ you guys just so you can see what my solution was.

 

@pilot35 @5x5 @Vitamanic @Lord Vile

You should be getting 5-6 hours easily. 3.5 hours is still extremely low and I still believe there is a defect somewhere

[Guest]

16 hours ago, 5x5 said:

You should be getting 5-6 hours easily. 3.5 hours is still extremely low and I still believe there is a defect somewhere

I'll continue researching. I still have about a week left to return it, so I may still end up doing so.

[5x5]

7 hours ago, Stylized_Violence said:

I'll continue researching. I still have about a week left to return it, so I may still end up doing so.

That would be my recommendation. The Blades have horrible reliability track records so I would return it for a better laptop while you still can. If you have to rely on Razer support, you'll never get anything fixed because they just ship the laptop back more broken than they receive it. There are countless tales or nightmare user experiences with Razer.

[Arnav Gupta]

On 8/1/2020 at 12:07 PM, Stylized_Violence said:

So after several days of testing and researching, I've pinpointed the issue (I think). This is for people who may come across this issue in the future.

 

Firstly, for whatever reason, my computer was wanting to use the Nvidia GPU while it was on battery and doing light tasks (document editing, Youtube, etc). Even after setting the global settings in the control panel to only use integrated graphics, it still did not work correctly. I found this out by using ThrottleStop's temperature monitoring software, which kept randomly giving me my GPU temps and then also giving me a 0 degrees reading, meaning it was trying to read the UHD graphics and was failing since apparently there is no sensor to give data. This constant state of switching between integrated and discrete graphics was pulling on my battery unnecessarily and was the apparent main cause of my poor battery life.

 

There was a Windows update to 2004 which I downloaded and installed. First thing I noticed was that now my global settings were being adhered too, and now my GPU reading remains steady at 0 doing normal everyday tasks. Somewhat perplexed, as I figured this wouldn't solve it and all of this was due to Razer's shitty battery/hardware, I ran some tests. I actually managed about 3.5 hours on battery, so of course while not stellar by any means, it is lightyears ahead of what I was getting before.

 

Within my first ten or fifteen minutes prior to the update, I'd usually see the battery around 85%. Now, within that timeframe I'm still around 96% so I'm glad to have this more or less rectified. A big thanks to those that tried to assist me in this matter, I'll @ you guys just so you can see what my solution was.

 

@pilot35 @5x5 @Vitamanic @Lord Vile

I just bought a Razer Blade 15 2020 and have been getting the same issues. Can you walk me through the solution that you found because I am finding what you wrote a bit tough to understand. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Arnav Gupta said:

I just bought a Razer Blade 15 2020 and have been getting the same issues. Can you walk me through the solution that you found because I am finding what you wrote a bit tough to understand. 

Sure, I actually didn't do anything really except update Windows to the latest version. Somewhere in there was a fix that helped tremendously. I also ended up updating my BIOS to the latest version, as there was one published this past October. Keep in mind it's still not very good, about 4 hours is probably the max I've ever gotten. What kind of results are you getting?