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Microsoft Confirms Surface Book 2 Can't Stay Charged During Gaming Sessions (engadget.com)
The Verge mentioned in their review that the Surface Book 2's power supply can't charge the battery fast enough to prevent it from draining in some cases. Microsoft has since confirmed that "in some intense, prolonged gaming scenarios with Power Mode Slider set to 'best performance' the battery may discharge while connected to the power supply." Engadget reports: To let you choose between performance and battery life, the Surface Book has a range of power settings. If you're doing video editing or other GPU intensive tasks, you can crank it up to "best performance" to activate the NVIDIA GPU and get more speed. Battery drain is normally not an issue with graphics apps because the chip only kicks in when needed. You'll also need the "best performance" setting for GPU-intensive games, as they'll slow down or drop frames otherwise. The problem is that select titles like Destiny 2 use the NVIDIA chip nearly continuously, pulling up to 70 watts of power on top of the 35 watt CPU. Unfortunately, the Surface Book comes with a 102-watt charger, and only about 95 watts of that reaches the device, the Verge points out. Microsoft says that the power management system will prevent the battery from draining completely, even during intense gaming, but it would certainly mess up your Destiny 2 session. It also notes that the machine is intended for designers, developers and engineers, with the subtext that it's not exactly marketed as a gaming rig.
Batteries are one of those things that Microsoft has a tough time getting right in their hardware products. The Xbox One Controller "Play and Charge Kit" absolutely sucks. The rechargeable battery it comes with doesn't charge after about 3 months, giving you ~20min of play time before the controller dies. Might as well keep using AA batteries and not waste the money. Same issue with the Xbox 360 play and charge kits. Back in the day the Zune had battery issues as well. I guess we can add the Surface Book 2 to the rooster of Microsoft doing batteries wrong.
It's not the USB C connector, Macs with the older MagSafe one have the same problem. It's a design decision.
What same problem? Being unable to maintain a charge with the included charger under load? I did not know that was an issue. I'm not saying it didn't happen, only that I have not heard of it elsewhere and I have not experienced it myself. I have two MagSafe laptops, one ten years old and the other five. Both stay charged from 85 watt chargers. This tells me that the laptops and chargers were designed with matching power draw to power supplied.
The issue is that they want to sell a small, under-powered charger. It has to be thin and light weight, rather than appropriately spec'ed. If they really wanted to they could sell a more powerful charger and just use two USB C ports to supply 200W.
I recall from previous uses of two USB cables to draw sufficient power for a device that the USB Implementer Forum frowned on this practice. I know it's been done, that's without doubt. Calling this good practice does seem suspect. I'd think offering a single charging connection to meet all power demands would not only be logical but also not appear as a hack to get around a poor design decision. The Surface family of devices also use the SurfaceConnect port, does that provide more than 100 watts? I've been looking and I can find very little that is definitive on this port.
This also means that if^H^H when your battery is dead in a couple of years your Surface won't work properly any more.
That's far from unique to Microsoft.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Pretty much all the phone makers. None of the flagship LG or Samsung phones will stay charged at full CPU load.