Are there Battery Problems with Surface Book 2 and Pro 5/6?

[German]It seems that owners of Microsoft's Surface Tablet PCs are still plagued by battery problems. Especially the latest firmware update for battery optimization seems to have side effects.

I've blogged yesterday about that topic within my German blog. In my opinion, surface users need a lot of tolerance in order to bear the troubles caused by these devices. And users have been reporting battery problems through the whole model range.

Battery issues with Surface Pro 4

With the Surface Pro 4, there are complaints that the battery is simply discharging too quickly. A search in Microsoft's forum apparently there are several hits from 2018. To my knowledge the problem was never solved. The fact that the type cover of the Surface Pro 4 causes trouble, I had already discussed in the blog once. From MVP colleague Barb Bowman I have the following information:

also, batteries are beginning to swell and cause the screens to separate in original Surface Books and now SP4's. their policy (unstated officially) is to replace free of charge if within 3 years of initial purchase. Most of the SP4's are more than 3 years.. about half the SB's are more than 3 years. these reports are growing. *I* will never buy another Surface.

Well, Barb Bowman is for me 'Miss Surface', who helped many Surface users in Microsoft's Surface forum. If they state '*I* will never buy another Surface', it means 'she might be pretty pissed'. Not that good for Microsoft. I, for myself, never bought such a device – to expensive, not repairable and not really handy.

Is there a new battery issue after firmware update?

I'll just post it here in the blog – maybe there are other people affected. On Twitter I got the following message from Jason Falter.

I wonder if @maryjofoley or @thurrott have seen any movement from @Microsoft to fix the battery issues plaguing Surface devices since the creative update? SP5 & SP6 are talked about but my SP4 only gets 2 hours of web surfing before having to be plugged in now.

— Jason Falter ⚔️ (@JasonFalter) August 27, 2019

He asks Mary Foley and Paul Thurrott if there is any progress on the surface battery problem. Since the 'Creative Update' was rolled out, users of Surface Pro 5 and Pro 6 models have been plagued with rapidly depleting batteries. But he mentions a Surface Pro 4 that only lasts 2 hours while surfing.

I will ask, but the SP5/6 – SL2 issues are new since a firmware update for "battery performance". Microsoft has been ignoring "SP4 drains overnight" or has sudden reduced capacity" forever https://t.co/Adv2ESYPAE

— Barb Bowman (@barbbowman) August 27, 2019

Barb Bowman notes in the above tweet that Microsoft has so far successfully ignored the battery drain issue with Surface Pro 4. The users of a Surface Book 2 are also struggling with issue, as you can see from this MS Answers forum post. Also Surface Laptops 2 are affected.

also Surface Laptop 2

— Barb Bowman ???? (@barbbowman) August 29, 2019

Meanwhile, Windows Latest has taken up the topic in a post, so it seems not an isolated problem. That brought Microsoft at least to to investigate that issue. Are you affected?

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