22 TECH ADVISOR • JANUARY 2020MICROSOFT SURFACE EVENT
No matter how you slice it, about 8 hours and 20 minutes of battery
life is disappointing for a Surface. Microsoft has switched from
measuring battery life via video rundown to a mixture of apps and
idle time, however, and claims 10.5 hours using this metricto consume more power, and pushing performance
can negatively affect battery life, too. So can screen
brightness – we test using a comfortable 250- to 260
nits of luminosity, but Microsoft tests theirs at 150 nits.
This all can be offset with a larger battery. The 45Wh
battery inside the Surface Laptop 3 is on the low side
compared with other laptops we’ve tested, however.
We loop a 4K video over and over to measure
battery life, and that’s the traditional way Microsoft has
measured it, too. With the Surface Laptop 3, however,
Microsoft moved to a mix of scripted Web browsing
and Office applications. While we can’t replicate this
exactly, we can measure using a similar battery test in22 TECH ADVISOR • JANUARY 2020MICROSOFT SURFACE EVENT
No matter how you slice it, about 8 hours and 20 minutes of battery
life is disappointing for a Surface. Microsoft has switched from
measuring battery life via video rundown to a mixture of apps and
idle time, however, and claims 10.5 hours using this metricto consume more power, and pushing performance
can negatively affect battery life, too. So can screen
brightness – we test using a comfortable 250- to 260
nits of luminosity, but Microsoft tests theirs at 150 nits.
This all can be offset with a larger battery. The 45Wh
battery inside the Surface Laptop 3 is on the low side
compared with other laptops we’ve tested, however.
We loop a 4K video over and over to measure
battery life, and that’s the traditional way Microsoft has
measured it, too. With the Surface Laptop 3, however,
Microsoft moved to a mix of scripted Web browsing
and Office applications. While we can’t replicate this
exactly, we can measure using a similar battery test in