Folks who game on laptops are eternally battling for battery life, even if gaming laptops have gotten much better in the last few years. Laptop gaming means doing everything humanly possible to eke out as much life from your system as possible. Bad news for Fortnite players: it turns out that the Epic Games Store might be draining more juice from your laptop than you'd think.
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This comes from PCW's testing of the Microsoft Surface Pro 7+ with the new 11th gen Tiger Lake processors inside. After receiving some inconsistent results on their battery tests, they discovered that the Epic Games Store app still running hidden in the taskbar was having a drastic effect on the tablet's battery life.
PCWorld breaks down their whole testing methodology in the article, but they ran a battery test in airplane mode on two systems and measured the battery life with EGS on and off, signed in and running, signed off and running, etc. to see what kind of impact Epic's platform has on PC.
They found an average drop in battery life by 20 percent (nearly two hours) on the Pro 7+, and an eight percent drop on the Ryzen-powered Microsoft Surface Laptop 3. All open applications consume a bit of battery, but it was surprising to see how much the Epic Game Store was guilty of using.
The same tests were run with the Steam app running in the background and little to no effect on battery life. Epic responded to PC World's findings by saying via email that "in general, we are actively working to improve the performance and reduce the power consumption of our launcher."
The more severe battery drain looks to be an issue with the new Tiger Lake system or Surface Pro tablets in general. But as shown with the Ryzen system, the Epic launcher can still affect performance even on non-Tiger Lake systems, even just running in the background.
So, what can you do in the meantime to make sure you're getting the maximum battery life on your laptop? Ensure that the Epic Games Store—and, really, any other apps you're not using—aren't running in the background. Always check the system tray.
