Hi All
wondering if anyone here has worked out the lenovo p15 gen2 battery life issue ?
I used to have a lenovo p15 gen1 and it has perhaps 6hrs or so battery life
my lenovo p15 gen2 HAD great battery life for a pro workstation… prob around 5hrs or so…
but somewhere with a bios update or windows update (though the latter ive eliminated as linux does same) so i think a bios upgrade broke something…
no matter what i do (regarding power saving modes etc), 2hrs-2h30 max…
what gives ?
truthfully i havent put much effort into troubleshooting this…yet
was hoping someone may have found a solution…
battery health and stats all look good…
No experience with the P series but I just got an X13 Gen 3 AMD setup. What does Lenovo Vantage say when you run a diagnostic? Your battery could be toast, sounds like you do not leave it plugged in all of the time. IF you were not using the battery saver feature then you may need to just re-baseline the battery if it is not terribly old. all of this can be done in Lenovo Vatage application.
Otherwise, if you are using MS Windows 11, there are bugs and issues that happen especially with firmware updates. It is recommended to turn that feature off for now, especially if you have a newer Intel chipset and just do the firmware updates manually.
A few things to Check in BIOS:
1 See if the P15 has multiple batteries, and if one of them has been disabled.
My P15s doesn’t, but my P51s did, and that would have made a difference. There’s also a BIOS option that disconnects internal batteries to make the system safe to service, so look for that as well.
The second thing is to make sure the dGPU, if present, is set to an optimal (switchable) setting, so it isn’t handling all the graphics all the time. The dGPUs soak a lot of power, and if they’re in always-on mode it will blow away battery performance.
Those are the two I can think of. I don’t know how easy/difficult a BIOS downgrade would be, but that might be worth considering if it’s possible.
Laptop is relatively new think it’s build date is March or April 2022 . I bought it when it was literally 1month old or so …
P15 gen 2 has 1 x 94wh battery.
Vantage says the battery is good,design capacity and actual capacity match up…
Actual capacity is actually about 1wh or so higher than design capacity …
Linux … Ubuntu 22.04 lts gives exactly same battery life so pretty sure it’s not windows software (win 10)… Has to be a bios update …
Have you looked through uEFI. There is a feature to disable the battery. I would do that, then unplug the system, and then power it on. this should force a battery diagnostic. There are also some power settings in the uEFI.
Oh, I forgot. Lenovo has a really good hardware diagnostics system:
To launch the diagnostics, press F10 during the boot sequence to launch Lenovo diagnostics. Additionally, press F12 during the boot sequence to access the Boot Menu. Then press Tab to select Application Menu and arrow down to Lenovo Diagnostics and select it by pressing Enter.
so an update: fiddled with some bios settings… ran diagnostics on battery… no issues detected everything tests out normally…
even disabled intel amt in bios… didnt make a difference.
after exactly 1hr of just youtube and web browsing…58% remaining - 1hr40 remaining
I have just spotted that corsair icue seems to “poll” the gpu#1 (nvidia t1200) so for laughs ive uninstalled that.will test again later…
also, I burn a iso image of the latest bios+intel management engine, hoping to re-flash… but it wouldnt allow it… “saying its not needed”. obviously detects its already upto date…
So, kind of sorted this out, lenovo release a v1.23 bios update which has seemingly helped, but what actually made the huuuuge difference is unplugging my little usb-c hub, yes yes i know, but all thats plugged into it is a keyboard and a mouse (cabled)
seems for some reason plugging a little usb-c hub into the usb c port at the back causes some functions not to go to sleep.
this can be seen if going into VANTAGE and clicking the battery properties,. seems the usb-c hub draws like 15w or something… constantly …
If you hub supports power delivery then yeah, I can see that being a big issues. I am only attached to a hub when I am at my desk, but I am also plugged in and stationary.