Many Surface Pro 3 customers are reporting sudden degrade of battery life

As per Microsoft, the batteries on Surface devices are designed with some of the highest charge cycles for consumer electronic devices which means that the battery can get charged daily (5 days a week) for over 4.5 years and still maintain 80% capacity. Many Surface Pro 3 customers are now reporting on Microsoft forums that they are seeing sudden drop in battery performance on their devices. It seems some Surface Pro 3 devices were shipped with defective battery units.

Check out the forum post by a Surface Pro 3 owner below,

My wife’s Surface Pro 3 is about 18 months old, and we have seen the battery life just tank on it in the last 3 months.  Running powercfg /batteryreport shows the following:

Installed Batteries

NAME	X898289
MANUFACTURER	SIMPLO
SERIAL NUMBER	1162811908
CHEMISTRY	LION
DESIGN CAPACITY	42,157 mWh
FULL CHARGE CAPACITY	144 mWh
CYCLE COUNT	130

Battery capacity history

2016-04-17 – 2016-04-24	19,698 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-04-24 – 2016-05-01	15,069 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-05-01 – 2016-05-08	12,148 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-05-08 – 2016-05-15	10,091 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-05-15 – 2016-05-22	7,678 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-05-22 – 2016-05-29	5,717 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-05-29 – 2016-06-05	4,091 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-06-05 – 2016-06-12	2,770 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-06-12 – 2016-06-19	1,077 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-06-19 – 2016-06-26	551 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-06-27	502 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-06-28	272 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-06-29	144 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-06-30	144 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-07-01	144 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-07-02	144 mWh	42,157 mWh
2016-07-03	144 mWh	42,157 mWh

From searching this forum, it looks like Microsoft has a serious issue with these Surface Pro 3 batteries, specifically the SIMPLO model.  I spoke with support today, and even referenced the Reddit post that other’s have found about the $200 replacement for batteries, and they did not budge off their position that it would be $450 + tax to exchange this unit out of warranty.  And they could provide no more than a 90-day warranty on the new replacement, no thank you!

During a Reddit AmA, Surface Cheif Panos Panay said that if the battery fails during the warranty period, Microsoft will replace the battery. If the battery fails after the warranty period, you can get it replaced from Microsoft Support for $200 USD. Even when Surface Pro 3 customers pointed out this info from Panos Panay, Microsoft Support has refused to change the batteries for $200. We reached out to Microsoft regarding this issue and got the following response.

We are aware of some customers reporting a scenario with their Surface Pro 3 batteries in which the system is reporting lower battery capacity than expected. This is a top priority for our team, and we are working quickly to understand the root cause. If you are experiencing this scenario, please contact Microsoft customer support.

Hopefully, Microsoft will resolve this issue soon for the affected Surface Pro 3 customers.