Battery life less than 1 hour

Question

Hi,

I have an XPS 15 (top line specs) and usually run it plugged in and on charge all day. However, I have just taken it off charge (after it was plugged in over night) and the battery life indicator says 85% battery life and 1hour 25min of life. 5 minutes later it has gone to 84% and 1 hour.

How can I fix this?

LSUFAN51 · Answer

I suspect your battery is failing or failed. Just to be sure, run Dell Diagnostic tool on computer to check status of Battey Health by following steps below:

1. Power off computer

2. Power on computer, quickly start tapping F12 key continuously until you see Preparing One Time Boot Menu in top corner of screen. In Dell Pre-boot menu, select Diagnostic. Report back any error code.

How to Check Battery Health Status on Dell Laptops | Dell US

If there's no error code, generate a battery report in windows by following steps in link below.

1. Press and hold Windows logo and press R key.

2. In the Run dialog box, type cmd and press Enter key.

3. In the Command Prompt window, type powercfg /batteryreport and press Enter.

4. Open File Explorer and browse to C:\Users\Your_Username\.

5. Double-click battery-report.html to open the report in the browser.

How to Improve the Performance of a Dell Laptop Battery | Dell US

Please check Design Capacity and Full Charge Capacity in the Battery report:

Example:

LSUFAN51 · Answer

Any updates mnmn99? You ran Dell Diagnostic to check battery health? You purchased a new battery?

mnmn99 · Answer

Thanks very much for your suggestion and apologies for the delayed reponse. I have just checked and it says the design capacity is 97 mWh and the full charge capacity is 62 mWh. Why is there such a difference between the two?

ejn63 · Answer

Battery capacity declines as the cells age -- the useful life of a battery is between 2-3 years. How old is your system/battery? It sounds like you will need to budget for a replacement battery in the near future.

LSUFAN51 · Answer

mnmn99 Battery capacity (97mWh) is the actual capacity of the battery it was designed for Full Charge Capacity (62nWh) is the consumption of the battery's capacity. Over the period of time or usage, Full Charge Capacity get reduced as the battery ages which results in lesser hours of usage between charges. Windows 10 Battery Report: What It Is And How to Use It (lifewire.com) Please view the information that might be helpful to you in links below: The Battery drains quicker than expected on a Dell notebook with Modern Standby mode enabled | Dell US How to Improve the Performance of a Dell Laptop Battery | Dell US And watch video below, hopefully this will be of help to you as well:

mnmn99 · Answer

This is a very disappointing revelation. The device is an XPS 15 9570 - a laptop that costs over $5,000 and the useful life of the battery is only 2 years?? That is bordering on not being fit for purpose in my opinion. I appreciate your help though

XPS

Battery life less than 1 hour

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