Thinkpads Forum

Okay folks - I've owned a T460s since the first week, and continue to have battery woes (3-4 hour max run time).

I have an i7-6600u CTO configuration, but nothing crazy (no discrete graphics), with 20GB RAM and 512GB SSD.

Before I get a full replacement or dump it for a MacBook Pro, Has anyone with a NEWER (April/May build) seen better battery run times?

Depending on your usage pattern it might be as designed, compare it with battery runtime in review. Check "wattage" value in Lenovo Settings (or whatever it is called in Windows 10) application.

You also want to check your power profile and whether its on 'performance', 'balanced', or 'battery saver' in the control panel power options. Additionally, if you are on battery and the percentage drops suddenly by %15 or some number without decreasing by 1%, the battery might have a bad cell.

I'd recommend to check official Lenovo forums for a threat describing poor battery life on newest thinkpad. The cause of your problem might be outdated/bugged driver that fairly increases power consumption even in idle state. No matter how funny it sounds its a fact - https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T ... -p/3292839
BTW. what kind of external battery do you use: 3-cell, 6-cell or 6-cell premium, and what do you mean by saying 3-4 hours max. - is it in idle or during normal work under medium load?

And a little off-topic in the end: does anyone noticed how hilarious T/L 450/460 looks like with an extended battery in it? I do own L450 with an 6-cell installed, and recently i did compared it to my frankenpad. I did found this comparison funny when i noticed that 2015 ultrabook is as thick as 2007 T60p shell... Did David Hill lost his sanity? Or shall we use recent ThinkPads for an new application - an wheel chock

Pokrzept wrote:I'd recommend to check official Lenovo forums for a threat describing poor battery life on newest thinkpad. The cause of your problem might be outdated/bugged driver that fairly increases power consumption even in idle state.

Yes, every new model is rather a prototype for at least 6 months now. Drivers and BIOS are just beta software

Pokrzept wrote:I did found this comparison funny when i noticed that 2015 ultrabook is as thick as 2007 T60p shell...

I don't think that L and T except "s" tagged models are considered as ultrabooks. This is result of the new stupid hinges design that doesn't allow the extended battery to stick out from the back side.

BTW "Location: Lodz, Poland" - I have missed opportunity to meet a forum member I went to Lodz two weeks ago.

I'd recommend to check official Lenovo forums for a threat describing poor battery life on newest thinkpad. The cause of your problem might be outdated/bugged driver that fairly increases power consumption even in idle state.

I religiously update drivers. I'm kind of sick of the Lenovo response that a single driver hosed the machine - I didn't see this.

BTW. what kind of external battery do you use: 3-cell, 6-cell or 6-cell premium, and what do you mean by saying 3-4 hours max. - is it in idle or during normal work under medium load?

Here's where things go sideways. The T460s does NOT have an "external" battery. Period. It is a sealed case with two 3-cell batteries. The T450s (and earlier) and T460 (non-s) have external/upgradeable batteries. Not the T460s.

And a little off-topic in the end: does anyone noticed how hilarious T/L 450/460 looks like with an extended battery in it?...

No, because it doesn't support an external battery option.

brchan wrote:You also want to check your power profile and whether its on 'performance', 'balanced', or 'battery saver' in the control panel power options. Additionally, if you are on battery and the percentage drops suddenly by %15 or some number without decreasing by 1%, the battery might have a bad cell.

I've literally had this darn thing on "battery saver" (Windows 10) and "power saver" (Lenovo Settings/Battery Gauge).

Puppy wrote:Depending on your usage pattern it might be as designed, compare it with battery runtime in review. Check "wattage" value in Lenovo Settings (or whatever it is called in Windows 10) application.

Your review was with the i5-6200u processor.

I noted i7-6600u since I haven't seen much comparing the i5 vs. i7.

Sorry, I don't understand why i cannot download Lenovo Settings from Window Store ?????

First you need a Microsoft account, then you need to pray that it doesn't throw a "try again later" error trying to download it.

I may not have a i7-6600U, but my battery life under Windows isn't great either (about 5-6 hours). Under Linux however, I get between 7-9 hours.

I have i7, 24GB ram, discrete graphics and i regularly get between 3 to 4 hours at best. However, i don't run the best battery savings profile on battery either. I run the "High Performance" profile and only changed the "Plugged in" / "Turn off the display" setting to 30 mins.

I have so much ram i setup a ram drive and run all my browsers (except IE) from the ram drive. Does anyone know which one kills more battery life, ram or ssd?

If you run Windows, get the PaleMoon browser, together with Firemin from Rizonesoft.
They use on average only between 4-10MB of RAM, regardless of tabs.

RealBlackStuff wrote:If you run Windows, get the PaleMoon browser, together with Firemin from Rizonesoft.
They use on average only between 4-10MB of RAM, regardless of tabs.

What does this have to do with the battery life? Are you say less ram usage consumes less battery life?

I don't have the same machine model that you do, but I have been fooling around
with a Dell m7510 for the last few weeks. Like yours, it is a Skylake, although
in my case it is a Xeon and I am running Linux.

After some research, I found that Dell has had an unusual number of teething
problems with this machine, which they have corrected with new versions of
their BIOS. So, you might try updating to the latest version of Lenovo's BIOS.

You didn't say what display you are using, but according to this review:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-Thi ... 028.0.html

you should be seeing about 5-6 hours of runtime with a WQHD display.

Skylake power management is very tricky, it took a lot of fooling around in
Linux to get it to behave properly. I don't have an NVME drive installed in
mine yet, as I am awaiting a new kernel with the appropriate patches included
by default. I'm assuming you have an NVME drive, but you can discard
this advice if you don't.

NVME power management is just now being gotten under control, you might
investigate whether W10 (or whatever you are running) handles it properly.

Another issue is that Skylake power management is dependent on 3 things:
CPU, GPU, and anything connected to the chipset. In my case, I had to
fiddle with the sata alpm settings to get the Skylake chipset to settle down
to a power-saving mode. I don't know what the equivalent terminology in
Windows is these days, but you might be running into this.

After all of this, my m7510 idles at about 9 watts with a 15.6" FHD display.

aau007 wrote:

RealBlackStuff wrote:If you run Windows, get the PaleMoon browser, together with Firemin from Rizonesoft.
They use on average only between 4-10MB of RAM, regardless of tabs.

What does this have to do with the battery life? Are you say less ram usage consumes less battery life?

Nothing, but you said "I run all my browsers (except IE) from the ram drive", but a RAM drive would not be needed with PaleMoon/Firemin...

RealBlackStuff wrote:

aau007 wrote:
What does this have to do with the battery life? Are you say less ram usage consumes less battery life?

Nothing, but you said "I run all my browsers (except IE) from the ram drive", but a RAM drive would not be needed with PaleMoon/Firemin...

Yes and no. I am not trying to save space. I have enough ram i setup a 6GB ram drive. I can afford to go larger if i want to.

Reasons.
1. Ram drive is a lot faster than my sata3 ssd. More than double some NVMe ssd speed.
According to CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2, Seq Q32T1 5403 read 6887 write, 4KQ32T1 1060 read 1003 write, Seq 8325 read 7793 write, 4K 1095 read 1008 write on 2 pass 500MiB. Try beat that speed with any NVMe ssd, needless to say for sata3 ssd.

2. I also set the cache directories of my browsers to the ram drive. It makes all the small random read/write to ram drive, thus a lot faster. Small 4k random read/write speed on ssd sucks comparing to ram when browsing internet. When i am browsing internet, i get little to no activities on my ssd.

3. It reduces wear on the ssd.

4. I run portable version of Firefox, Chrome and Opera. Does not mess with Windows registry.

5. My believe may be wrong on this one but i still have the benefits of the 4 above. Ram takes the same battery use it or not because it is constant refresh. SSD pulls more juice during read/write than when it is idle. Keep the activities on ram will reduce battery usage.

6. Since i run all my portable software on ram drive, when i need to increase the ram drive size, i just backup the ram drive, redefine the drive and do a restore and i am back in business. Basically i can resize the ram drive anytime i want without deal with installing/uninstalling and keep all the settings.

Put the machine on a meter and see how much energy it's drawing at: idle, download, under typical load.

Perhaps there's a windows equivelant to 'powertop' which'll show you which programs/processes are waking the cpu from sleep.

lindros2 wrote:Okay folks - I've owned a T460s since the first week, and continue to have battery woes (3-4 hour max run time).

I have an i7-6600u CTO configuration, but nothing crazy (no discrete graphics), with 20GB RAM and 512GB SSD.

Before I get a full replacement or dump it for a MacBook Pro, Has anyone with a NEWER (April/May build) seen better battery run times?

hi, the T460s i have now is the earlier build probably around same time as yours.
mine has the discrete graphics nvidia GT930m, but it has optimus technology and switches between that and intel HD 520, so it should not affect battery life much.
you should get 5-7 hours of use on the T460s total battery capacity of less than 50Wh for the two internal batteries.

regarding the battery maximum capacity, check the Lenovo settings under battery > custom charging threshold (scroll to near the bottom).
for some reason, the preset is 80% for one or both the internal batteries (don't remember now).
make it 90 or 95%, and you should at least see the battery being utilized to decent full charge levels, without reducing the lifespan significantly.

if that still doesn't help, check your performance settings for processor either in BIOS or Windows.
maybe for some odd reason it is set to maximum performance for both AC and battery modes.

otherwise, send it in or call up the onsite warranty support, utilize it while it lasts!