That's solidly in the middle of the tablet pack for battery life. (It's true that Bay Trail, Intel's new lower power CPU from the Atom family, achieves 8.6 hours of WiFi web browsing. Microsoft positions Windows 8 as an operating system that's great for tablets, which are designed for casual web browsing and light app use – but how can that possibly be true when Windows idle power management is so much worse than the competition's desktop operating system in OS X – much less their tablet and phone operating system, iOS?.If anything the disparity between OS X and Windows light usage battery life has gotten worse. The Windows light usage battery life situation has not improved at all since 2009.That's fine, I knew about this discrepancy, but here's what really bothers me: Wireless Web Browsing (No Flash) Battery Life Way back in 2009, AnandTech tested a MacBook Pro with multiple operating systems: It's not exactly news that Windows historically doesn't do as well as OS X on battery life. Once updated, the WiFi adapter enters lower idle power states and this helps a lot, going from 6.6 hours of browsing time to 8.3 hours, a 25% improvement! That puts it much more in line with the rest of the field, at least, even if it doesn't achieve Mac like runtime. UPDATE: Turns out the Surface 2 Pro was shipped with bad firmware. Still, over 11 hours of battery life browsing the web on WiFi? That means the Air is somehow producing nearly two times the battery efficiency of the best hardware and software combination Microsoft can muster, for what I consider to be the most common usage pattern on a computer today. The Surface Pro 2 has a 42 Wh battery, which puts it closer to the 11 inch Air in capacity. It's a real computer, too, using the latest Intel technology. The screen is somewhat lower resolution and not touch capable, of course, but under the hood, the i5-4200u CPU and LPDDR3 RAM are nearly the same. Nearly 7 whole hours of WiFi web browsing for a real computer in tablet form factor … that's not bad, right? Let's see how the 2013 MacBook Air does, which spec-wise is about as close as we can get to the Surface Pro 2. That's a decent increase, I suppose, but I was hoping for something more like 8 hours, something closer to doubling of battery life – to bring the Surface Pro in line with other tablets. So WiFi web browsing battery life, arguably the most common user activity there is on a computer these days, goes from 4.7 hours on the Surface Pro to 6.7 hours on the Surface Pro 2, a 42% increase. Still, I was hopeful that the first Surface Pro with Haswell inside would produce giant gains in battery life as Intel promised. Granted, this is a classic Intel x86 box we're talking about, not some efficient ARM system-on-a-chip designed to run on a tiny battery. My main complaint with the Surface Pro is the incredibly lackluster battery life. Because it is a blazingly fast, modern Intel machine, I like to use the Surface Pro to predict where tablet performance ought to be for everyone in 2 to 3 years. I can't wait for the iPad 5 this week (I'll be ordering three), and my Surface Pro 2 should arrive this week too. I believe that most things we think of as "computers" will be de-facto tablets, either in our pocket, in our hands, possibly even mounted on our wrists or forearms. I've become a huge fan of touch computing. Why Does Windows Have Terrible Battery Life?
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