Dell XPS 15 9510 battery

I am in the process of testing the battery life with the offending program closed.  At this point I have used 17% of my battery and have logged 1 hour 37 minutes using email, the web browser, and various utilities.  Using a proportion:  17/1.6 = 100/x indicates solving for x that I could potentially get 9.4 hours of the same type of activity on my XPS 15 9510.  What an improvement that would be.  I do realize that this number is very variable depending what actions I perform on my pc, but there is definite, radical improvement.  I have not run any graphic intensive programs like games or Lightroom as those would certainly utilize the Nvidia graphics card increasing the battery discharge rate and shortening the runtime.  That, however, is to be expected.  Windows power remaining estimate agrees:

 suggests almost 9 hours remaining after 1.6 hours usage.  Definitely an improvement.  I'm very happy with this result.       

Hi,

For anyone interested in this topic: more info can be found at Extreme low battery life on XPS 15 (latest generation) - Dell Community

CU,

Pedro

Good analysis. I find your comment "I had purchased this machine precisely because it had a discrete GPU" significant.  The question is, why buy a feature-rich laptop if the trade-offs to achieve such ambitious battery claims, requires disabling said features. The bottom line, Dell misrepresents the claim of 7, 8, 9+ hours by omitting this key information. Activate Battery Saver, and Battery Extender which reduces CPU power, screen brightness to 20%, disables keyboard illumination, mutes your sound, and reduces thermal management to “quiet.” Back to your comment, I do not believe customers paid upward of $3,000 for a feature-rich laptop requiring those same features to be hindered. If opening a Word document, or Edge browser substantially impacts battery life, Dell must change its battery life claims. Does ‘reasonable use’ include reducing and or disabling all the features that make the XPS unique or warrant its price premium?   Reasonable use with the XPS is 2-3-hours.

In my case my 2.5 hours of use was caused by a utility that monitored GPU temp. When I unloaded the offending program i immediately was able to get 7 to 7.5 hours of use on battery power. This number has remained constant in the interim. I get that much time or close to it with usage that includes web surfing, video, email, and Lightroom photo manipulation and editing. When I play 3D games or other such graphic intensive use that requires the discrete GPU my time on battery power is about 2.5 hours. I am happy with my XPS 9510 battery times in these circumstances. I have to say that I never expected to get 7 to 8 hours with extensive use of the discrete GPU. I do, however, agree that Dell should be more transparent with these battery usage scenarios in their advertising.  I did purchase a backup external battery for use in gaming when I am unable to plug in. 

Hi! We may be comparing Dell’s 70N2F95 battery under different variables, i.e., system configuration, peripherals, etc. Mine (9500) came with the Intel Core i7-10875H just before Dell changed to the Intel Core i7-10750H. Dell started using the 10875H exclusively in the XPS 17. This should be a moot issue in that both are operating at 45W.  Mine (9500) came with the 4K touch display, which jumps from 4.41W (FHD) to 10.4W (UHD+). 80% appears to be the ‘sweet spot’ for illumination. I can’t imagine buying the 4K option and running it at 20%!  Have you tried running the battery report at the Command Prompt? Type: “powercfg.exe /batteryreport” and press return. Then, type: “start battery-report.html” (opens the report in your browser) and press return. Battery Bar as basic as it is, does corroborate the Command Prompt battery report output. The only reason why I started to investigate my battery health was due to the many inquiries regarding XPS “battery drain.” Unless Dell quietly changed the 70N2F95 from the 9500 to the 9510, I cannot see a battery run-time of 7-8 hours with extensive use of the discrete GPU.

PC Magazine did a review of the 9500 on June 19, 2020. “Battery Rundown Test: After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop in airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the same Tears of Steel short we use in our Handbrake test—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system quits.”

For the life of me, I cannot fathom why these people/websites perform a battery test under unlikely conditions.  PC Magazine’s artificial test leads to an expected response of “so what.” The base criteria should be out-of-box experience under normal conditions. No one buys the XPS with the intent of disabling/reducing system features that diminish the user experience. This is analogous to telling a customer that they should expect 39mpg if they drive straight, disable all controls, and stay under 40 miles per hour. PC Magazine should take each laptop, ensuring a full charge, and run their “Tears of Steel short.”  This should demonstrate the same out-of-box experience for the average customer.

I am not a battery expert, nor do I desire but there are a few proofs that I have with my battery. Design capacity is 84mWh and the charge capacity is 78mWh. Dell markets the 70N2F95 as 86mWh. At full charge, the 70N2F95 is shown at 3-hours 36 minutes set at Windows 11 “Best Power Efficiency” and Dell Power Manager set to “Optimized.” This is “real-world.”   Also, Played a few minutes of Street Fighter V and battery longevity dropped to under 1 hour 30 minutes. This is graphic intensive use. 

Yes, we have different system configurations.  My Dell 9510 came with the Intel Core i9-11900H.  I have the FHD display which is just fine for my use on such a small screen. I purchased the FHD with an eye toward battery savings when using the system as a laptop.  I also use my system as a desktop using a docking station with a much larger UHD monitor, external mouse and keyboard, bose speakers, printer, scanner, and multiple external hard drives. The 9510 seems to have plenty of power to run my desktop setup:  certainly faster than my old desktop pc. No power worries of course when using my 9510 as a desktop.  My system came with a 1 tb drive and I opened the case and added a Samsung 1 tb drive in my first few days of use.  In additon to Battery Bar I also use powercfg.exe/battery report which I find useful.  I automated it by writing a batch file that runs the powercfg program and then ports the output to Edge.  My 9510 battery is the DELL M59JH18 which as far as I can tell is nearly identical to your 70N2F95.  Its design capacity is 84,292 mWh.  When using my system as a laptop I run it at 50% illumination which in most lighting conditions works fine for me. (I do understand, however, that each user's situation and conditions will vary.)  I've set up my system to run most programs with the on-board intel GPU because I can see very little difference in those programs when using the Nvidia discrete GPU. (It doesn't seem to diminish MY experience.)   This, I believe, saves power without compromising function enough to affect my usage in any significant way.  Games  and editing video with Adobe Premiere require the Nvidia which I have configured to run in those circumstances.  I have consistently obtained 7 to 7.5 hours of battery usage when I use the 9510 as a laptop using the above regime except in the described circumstances where I must use the dicrete GPU extensively.  In those graphic intense settings I have been getting between 2.25 and 2.5 hours use.  I think FHD helps and, of course, in desktop mode I get the full UHD and Bose experience.  I also, as stated in my previous post, purchased an external battery for use when needed in laptop situations.  I agree completely with your characterization of PC Magazine's battery rundown test.  It would be helpful if tests were done in more "real world" situations.  The same criticism can be directed at Dell for their advertising.  I am happy, however, with my 9510 as it works very well for me in my situation. Any compromises I have made in my machine function don't affect my day to day computer activities, but I realize other folks needs are different.  From my perspective in my situation I am very close to having my cake and eating it too:  and I have one pc performing both desktop and laptop functions.    

What utility in particular? I am struggling with this same issue and the support can not really help me. They alreay changed the battery twice and now told me to do a complete clean install, which didn't help either. My battery dies after like 2 hours just. I have the i7 varient with the rtx 3050ti and fhd.

The utility that caused the issue for me was mentioned in my initial post:  Open Hardware Monitor. I installed this software when I first set up my system to monitor CPU and GPU temps in real time with the numbers in my system tray. I wished to keep close tabs on those temps so I could act to prolong system life if they were frequently excessive. However, as I described in my first post, it seems that the utility when reading the temps on the GPU somehow caused excessive battery usage. I don’t know the precise method of causation but I determined the solution by troubleshooting the problem as described in my first post. Every time real time monitoring by this utility was turned off my battery time went up by a lot. As I write this I am still getting approximately 7 to 7.5 hours on battery when using my system with non-graphic intensive programs. Note that I have the FHD screen and I prohibit my system from using the GPU for non-graphic intensive programs. Both of these I believe save power.  The utility involved did not come with my machine and was not supplied by Dell. I suggested previously that perhaps other utilities that perform this temp monitoring function could cause issues too, but I don’t know this to be the case. In any event, you or a prior owner would have had to install it:  it does not come with the system. I still periodically use Open Hardware Monitor to check system temps, but I close it down after use and do not allow it to run in the background. 

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@StZill wrote:

 

The utility that caused the issue for me was ... Open Hardware Monitor. I installed this software when I first set up my system to monitor CPU and GPU temps in real time with the numbers in my system tray.

Every time real time monitoring by this utility was turned off my battery time went up by a lot. As I write this I am still getting approximately 7 to 7.5 hours on battery when using my system with non-graphic intensive programs.

I still periodically use Open Hardware Monitor to check system temps, but I close it down after use and do not allow it to run in the background. 

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Good troubleshooting.

I've seen something similar over the years with various machines. Those utilities won't allow the GPU to power-down (when not really in use).

Not just laptops. On desktops, I've seen it where just having a second monitor attached prevents the GPU from powering-down to more "desktop idle" levels.

It seems to me a lot of the commonality to these battery problems is the GPU operating when not needed whether a software or hardware based issue.  This fact may help other users when troubleshooting battery issues. Is the GPU in some way at fault.?

I have brand new (12/2022) Latitude 5431 with dedicated MX550 video card.

I was struggling with quick battery drain issue for few days. I have test battery several times, checked discharge rate on many different circumstances... Then I realized that disabling my  nvidia MX550 card helps to drop discharge rate from 30kMW to 15-20kMW. But each restart of Windows returned discharge to 30kMW again, even card was disabled! Enabled card helps again... My battery was replaced by Dell but same issue again... Then I have found your post! I had Open Hardware Monitor installed and it was starting with Windows.

Disabling Open Hardware Monitor solved the problem! Now discharge rate is 5k-8k MW at idle.

Dell support said that 2hrs of battery in idle is fine and they won't do anything. Very unprofessional, it took me few days but I have realized what ius the issue. Many thanks!

Fantastic.  That is exactly why I posted my experience so others with the same issue could possibly have a resolution. How long are you able to run your system on battery power now? I’ll bet the improvement is dramatic. As of right now I’m still getting 7 to 7.5 hours when operating my XPS 15 9510 with non-graphic intensive software.  One other thing you may check out is the functionality under Windows 11 that allows you to decide what software utilizes the discrete GPU. I have found that the vast majority of things I do with my PC are not speed enhanced by using the GPU and work just fine with the onboard Intel graphics.  I reserve the GPU for use with video editing and gaming. I’m glad you resolved your issue.