Surface Book 2 Battery Could Drain, Even When It's Plugged In

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Just because your new Microsoft Surface Book 2 has a beefy Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU that doesn't mean you can game on it with no worries. The laptop / tablet, aimed at graphic creatives, sees the battery drain faster than usual while gaming, and, as The Verge first reported, the battery in the device's base may drain even while plugged in. This happens in a particular instance: while playing some games with power settings configured to maximize performance.

“Surface Book 2 was designed to deliver unmatched power and performance for anyone who needs a powerful machine to work and create, making it a great option for STEM professionals (designers, developers, engineers),” a Microsoft spokesperson told The Verge. “The Surface Book 2 Power Mode Slider is provided as a means to give the user control over the range of performance and battery life. In some intense, prolonged gaming scenarios with Power Mode Slider set to ‘best performance’ the battery may discharge while connected to the power supply provided in-box with Surface Book 2. However, through power management design, the battery will never drain entirely, ensuring that users are able to keep working, creating or gaming.”

The Surface Book 2 comes with a 102-watt charger, but only 95 watts ever get to the device. When you play some intense games with the GTX 1060, it can surpass that 95 watt threshold and cause the battery to drain. It wouldn't be surprising to see similar issues occur during long sessions of video exports.

We've reached out to Microsoft for more information, and will update if the company responds.

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Andrew E. Freedman