Dell XPS 14 Battery Life

Same laptop (Dell XPS 14 Ultrabook) also running Linux and Windows 8 dual boot. Same problem. I also noticed this first via Linux, but checked Dell Diagnostics software in the BIOS/UEFI which confirmed that the capacity reported in Linux is correct. I am now down to 86% or 59.6Wh having had the laptop for just shy of 15 weeks.

This means the battery is deteriorating at an alarming rate, especially as it was purchased as an Ultrabook with a battery 7-8 hours but I am already down to 5-6 hours.

Sharath, I am guessing that your battery capacity will now be below the 80% mark (about 50Wh), did you ever receive a reply from Dell? Or any further information?

Hi pablo180,

All rechargeable batteries wear out with time and usage. As time and cumulative use increase, the performance will degrade. The battery operating time is largely determined by the number of times it is charged. After hundreds of charge and discharge cycles, batteries lose some charge capacity (battery health). This means that a battery can show a charged status, but maintain a reduced charge capacity. For more information regarding the batteries, you may refer to the link: http://dell.to/10LCIL6.

You may check the battery health in BIOS. Please follow the steps below:

• Restart / Power on your computer.
• At the Dell logo appears, tap until the message Entering Setup appears.
• Scroll to the ‘Advanced’ tab.
• Look under battery health, it should say ‘This battery is performing normally’. If there is any other message, it could mean that the battery is faulty and needs replacement.

You may update the system BIOS. Please refer to the link: http://dell.to/10TrdSV.

Keep me posted with the results. I will be glad to assist further.

Thanks for the reply. I have checked in the BIOS and it does say that the battery is operating normally, but I am not sure that that is a reliable indicator.

I appreciate that batteries will degrade over time, and to quote the official Dell answer:

“For the typical user, noticeable reduction in run time generally will be observed after 18 to 24 months.”

Except I am noticing serious degradation in less than 18 weeks! Typically Lithium Ion batteries will lose around 20% capacity after the first year. I have lost 14% already in as many weeks. Meaning a predicted loss of capacity of 52% in the first year. That isn’t typical or normal. It usually takes a couple of months before capacity starts to drop, and I’ve never seen it at this rate.  

You also mentioned that the battery loses capacity due to hundreds of charge and discharge cycles, but I have only had my laptop for around 100 days, and so have charged it less than 100 times, therefore I shouldn’t be seeing this much degradation in capacity.

According to the Dell Software that came with the laptop, constantly charging it to 100% damages the battery, and so I enabled the Battery Longevity Setting as instructed which was meant to only charge the battery between 88-100% but this didn’t seem to work. The capacity kept dropping a lot, assuming it was the software I disabled it, it did regain some capacity again but the capacity has still continued to drop. Could this software be part of the problem?

I will try updating the BIOS as requested and update you. My fingers are crossed that either the BIOS is misreporting battery capacity, or that the Battery Longevity software is somehow stuck on (which would explain the almost uniform capacity drop), and that is the cause.

Hi Amogh,

I tried your suggestions. I installed the BIOS and then updated all the Dell software that I could. But this hasn't made any difference to the battery capacity. I still have only 86.3% capacity. It does seem to have made a difference to the Battery Longevity settings as now I can select the option to charge up to 100% one time, which was greyed out previously. I've done so, and also disabled once again the Battery Longevity option but this hasn't made any difference to the capacity so clearly it wasn't being misreported.

I will keep my eye on the capacity and see if it continues to deteriorate as before, and if it goes below 85% in the next few weeks then I will have to consider the battery as faulty as it is not normal to lose this much capacity in so little time and with such little use.

Thanks anyway for the help.

Hi pablo180,

As the battery is showing the battery is working normally, you may try calibrating the battery. Please follow the steps below:

• Press ‘Windows’ + X
• Click ‘Power Options’
• Click ‘Change plan setting’
• Click ‘Change advanced power settings’
• Expand ‘Battery’
• Set correct values for ‘Low battery level’ (10%) and ‘Critical battery level’ (5%)

Hope this helps. Keep me posted with the results. 

Hi Amogh,

Thanks for the reply, I would have got back to you sooner but I missed your reply.

Whilst I appreciate your suggestion I think you may have misunderstood what my problem is. It isn’t that my battery isn’t lasting as long as it should because of the battery settings, it is that it is losing capacity, permanently and at a staggering rate (1% or 0.7Wh per week). Your suggestion may allow me to eke out that little bit more from the battery. However, the capacity is still in terminal decline and will leave me and my Ultrabook with just 3 hour battery life (at best, i.e. using just 10 watts an hour, but realistically 1-2 hours) at the end of the first year (down from 7 hours).

It is coming up to 20 weeks that I have had this laptop and I have already seen a loss of capacity that one would expect to see in more than a year down to just 58.5Wh when full (or 84.7%).

This isn’t down to wear and tear or use, so I have to assume that either the battery or the laptop itself is faulty.

Hi Fabe56,

Three hours of battery backup for this system is normal. However battery life depends on the application usage, load and power settings. To improve the battery life you can refer to the link below.

http://dell.to/WxMQag

Let us know about the progress.

Hi Fabe56,

It depends what you mean by battery life, I had this problem when complaining to Dell. It’s assumed you just mean how long your battery is lasting, when in reality you may be complaining about the ever shortening life of the battery itself?

You need two pieces of information, the battery capacity and its energy when full, none of which Windows gives you. The easiest way of getting this information is to install something like BatteryBar

This will give you the capacity, how much energy the battery can now hold, which should have started at 69,000 mWh (mine did) and also under Battery Wear the capacity lost. Mine was 58,500 mWh or 15.3% of 69,000 mWh lost at my last comment.

You should make a note of this information, keep a track of it and see how much you are losing per week or month and then complain to Dell making sure they know you’re talking about overall capacity of the battery. In my case, when they understood what the problem was they replaced the battery. The engineer said to me that in normal circumstances it should lose about 0.05% per day, which seems about right (almost 20% per year); I was losing 1% per week (52% a year), almost treble what it should have been so something was definitely going on. If you’re down to just three hours, then yours could be worse than mine, so I would definitely complain.

To be honest the replacement battery isn’t great either, after two months I have lost 3.7% down to 66,400 mWh but apparently that is roughly about right (I had lost 13% with my old battery by this time so this is doing much better). However I have a Sony Vaio that I have had two and a half years, that has lost just 3.2% if its capacity, so I guess it is just Dell’s batteries. The engineer showed me how to replace the battery, it’s not too difficult so I think I will just buy a new battery in future (although unlikely from Dell).

Some tips that might be useful from what I have learned from obsessively monitoring the battery:

• Don’t let it charge up to 100% (i.e. till the orange light turns white), this seems to damage the battery as I always lose capacity if I do that. Dell has software to prevent this in Windows 8 (Dell Longevity or something) but I have found that it doesn’t make any difference for me.

• Don’t let it discharge fully, or get too low. I set mine to warn me at 20%, if I let it goes too low without plugging it in it also sometimes loses capacity.

Hi All!

I am totally disappointed with this product. Never Dell again! That too, XPS is known to be their Premier line!

After reporting the issue to Dell within a month of purchase, they said the degradation is normal. I continued using my Laptop and now the Battery life has reduced to 2 Hrs, 39 WH  or 55% of the Original Capacity. This is within 8 Months of average usage (May be 1 Charge-discharge cycle every 2 days)

When I contacted Dell again today about the issue, they are not ready to replace the battery. They updated the Bios, and ran a bunch of diagnostics and they claim that reporting battery status by watt-hr is not "industry standard" and they have their own way to checking for defective batteries!

They are not ready to share this however.

pablo180,

Did the Dell diagnostic tests detect any defect with your battery? In my case Dell is simply not ready to send a replacement battery until their diagnostics detect an error!

Sharath,

The only diagnostic I carried out was the one in the BIOS, but as far as I know that only checks to see if the battery is present and accepting a charge, or discharging normally. I could be wrong but I don't think that it can check for deterioration. The problem isn't that the battery is faulty per se, but that it is deteriorating more than 3x faster than it should. This is obviously a serious problem in an expensive Ultrabook that has an internal battery that even Dell don't sell replacements for. I am not sure what we are meant to do when the battery reaches the end of its life, buy another XPS?

Not sure what they mean about Watt hours not being the industry standard, that is precisely what it is! It is the only way to measure the power the battery will hold and therefore its capacity. At best I use only about 10Wh giving me about 6-7 hours battery life at best. If you're down to 39Wh capacity that means you'll only ever get 3-4 hours at best. If you're using Linux, and not already using it, I'd recommend using TLP, this allows me to get the most of the battery (sub 10Wh sometimes) Obviously it isn't going to solve your problem, but it may help you get more from your current battery.

To be fair to Dell though, they may not be trying to fob you off, or being purposely stubborn, I had a hell of a time trying to get them to understand what the problem was, and what I was talking about. As soon as they understood they replaced the battery, but even then the engineer that came to replace it tried telling me it was normal, and I had to explain all over again but when he understood he agreed that it was deteriorating far too rapidly. The problem is that I expect many of the support calls are from people who buy a laptop that is meant to last 11 hours but can only get half that, so support are just used to saying that battery life can vary etc whenever somebody complains. It is probably just a case of them not understanding what the problem is. If I were you I would certainly persevere with getting a replacement battery, you've lost almost half its capacity in just 8 months, that is far from normal and means the laptop will be next to useless in a few months. 

The replacement battery isn't much better, I am down to 65.3Wh after 3 months. I think that there is some problem, either with the laptop, or the battery as even this one is going to need replacing after about 12-18 months.

Hi pablo180,

Thanks a lot for your reply. I will explore if TLP helps me. I spoke to the Dell Engineer today and they responded positively as the BIOS update has not (obviously) helped me. I will try my best to persuade them for a replacement. If not, I will have to look at buying a new battery or a new laptop! One of the reasons I have taken this laptop is it's battery life!

Sad to know even the replacement battery is not up to the mark in your case! And are you saying that Dell does not sell replacement batteries for this model at all?!!

Sharath,

Have you had any luck getting the battery replaced? I haven't been able to find anywhere that sells these batteries at all. Dell only seem to sell the power adapters for this laptop, not the batteries, so it doesn't look good for getting the battery replaced at a later date! I was hoping to pick up a replacement battery fairly cheap to give me another few years with this laptop, as it wasn't cheap, but looks like that may not be an option.

Hi pablo,

Yes. I spoke to the Dell tech team and after a long chat and outburst, they agreed to replace the batteries and I am glad they did. Has been just 3 days and have not seen any problems. But may be after a month I can tell if this battery is any better than the previous on. At least I am back to where I was 8 months back and I am getting 4-5 Hrs with Wifi.

Regards,

Sharath

Hi,

I just wanted to update everyone on my case and ask if people were still having the same problem? Is your replacement battery working any better Sharath? I had my battery replaced exactly one year ago today, and the new battery made very little, if any difference.

Since last year I have lost on average 2.5% per month of capacity (or about 2Wh per month) every month and my battery capacity is now just 66.8% or 46.1Wh. Meaning my maximum battery life (i.e. just on and idle) has gone from 7 hours to just 4.5 hours in one year. Typically it should be around 80-85% 5.5-6 hours by this point. Meaning I have just another year of this battery at most.

I have been extra careful with the battery, but all that has meant is that I have lost double the usual amount of battery capacity each month, rather than the triple that the last battery did.

I am not an expert, but the problem seems to me to be overcharging. When a battery is fully charged or almost fully charged it ceases charging, as continuing to do so permanently damages the battery. This doesn’t seem to happen with this laptop, each and every time it is charged up it permanently loses capacity, and quite a bit to the point where I can never leave it charging unattended. Either the BIOS isn’t switching the charging off when it reaches 100%, or the charger is faulty and continues charging, or the laptop cannot tell when it is charged.

Whatever the cause it means that the fault was there at the time of purchase and therefore inherent. Once this battery’s capacity dips below 50%, which it should do after two and half years normally, but it is going to be less than 18 months in my case, I shall be contacting Dell again about replacement.