Windows 8 Power settings: Does “Balanced” mean automatic?

[WinFreak]

Does Balanced in the power settings mean that the system automatically uses power saving when operating on battery and maximum performance on external power?

Or does Balanced mean moderate power consumption, no matter whether plugged or not?

 

[ussnorway]

auto

 

[Neemobeer]

Balanced means it will enforce throttling and other power savings techniques to everything it can. Power savings settings can and are different between AC and DC states.

Some of the items that are affected by this.
The hard drive, Internet Explorer, slide show backgrounds are paused in balanced, the wireless nic, time until sleep on the system, usb suspension, the graphics card, NIC link state, CPU throttling min and max amounts, display brightness, multimedia playback, java, video quality, battery notifications and actions.

 

[MonikaGShah]

Does balanced allocate resources as per requirement ? If so, it should also allocate max resources to max performance requirement applications. what is need of "High Performance" power plan.

 

[Neemobeer]

Balanced means the system runs with a balance between power saving and performance. High performance means no throttling of resources and highest quality or in other words power saving isn't important which is often the case when power is plugged in on a laptop. You can also create your own custom power plans if the default ones do not suit your needs.