Surface Tip: How to enable Battery Limit feature on Surface devices
In this article, we will walk you through how to enable and verify the battery limit feature on supported Surface devices.
Starting from September 2018, Microsoft started rollout a new feature called “Battery Limit” to all Surface devices starting from Surface Pro 3 forward. This feature can prolong your Surface’s battery lifespan by limiting total charge to a maximum of 50%.
Enabling the setting preserves the battery’s ability to take and hold a charge while it’s connected to external power for an extended period of time and is recommended for Surface devices integrated into solutions like kiosks, consoles, and other scenarios where they are constantly connected to an external power supply.
The feature is being rolled out to Surface devices via the Firmware update. In this article, we will walk you through how to enable this feature on your supported Surface devices.
- Battery Limit feature supported Surface devices
- How to enable Battery Limit feature on Surface devices
- How to verify the enabled Battery Limit feature
Battery Limit feature supported Surface devices
Here is the complete list of Surface devices that support “Battery Limit” feature with the associated firmware updates.
| Surface Model | Required Firmware Update | UEFI version | EC* version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Surface 3 | |||
| Surface Pro 3 | Sep 10, 2018 update | 3.11.2550.0 | 38.14.80.0 |
| Surface Go | |||
| Surface Pro 4 | Sep 10, 2018 update | 108.2318.769.0 | 103.2241.256.0 |
| Surface Pro 5 | |||
| Surface Book | Oct 10, 2018 update | 91.2327.769.0 | 90.2226.256.0 |
| Surface Book 2 | |||
| Surface Laptop | |||
| Surface Laptop 2 |
*EC = Embedded Controller
How to enable Battery Limit feature on Surface devices
You can enable the Battery Limit feature by booting into Surface UEFI. To do so:
- Shut down your Surface Book.
- Press and hold the Volume Up button on your Surface, then press and release the Power button.
- When you see the Surface logo screen appear, release the Volume Up button. The Surface UEFI screen will appear in a few seconds.
- In Surface UEFI menu, choose Boot Configuration page as below:
- Under Advanced Options, toggle the Enable Battery Limit Mode to On.
- After you have made changes, you can restart your Surface by choose Exit menu and click Restart Now.
How to verify the enabled Battery Limit feature
You can verify the Battery Limit setting by:
- On the Windows taskbar, click on the battery icon, it will popup the battery status windows with the following information
- You will notice that after charging for a while, the battery will cap at 50%.
Note On Surface Book, the tablet section will remain fully charged (Battery 2) at 100%, while the base section (Battery 1) is capped at 50%.
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