I have a 10 year old ipad that still has acceptable battery life, I’ve never obsessed enough to go looking for something to measure it. They probably have a battery replacement option at a reasonable cost as they do for Apple Watches. I would go that route if I just didn’t want to replace my device. But after about 3 to 4 years I start looking at the new ones and checking my credit card balance. Never have looked at some battery statistic.
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iPad Pro iPad Pro battery health at 96% after 9 months, is it good? What’s yours?
- Thread starter slplss
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Ten years? Sounds really good! Do you know how many load cycles do you have ? Would like to see a screenshot from coconut battery from your device i
Never used such an app. Never needed one. If it needs to be charged I plug it in. If something is draining it I find out what it is and disable it if necessary. I’ve only ever had one app, a gps app years ago that was draining my phone even while it was plugged in. I stopped using it until the developers fixed it. And my original Apple Watch series 0 had bad battery life after one watchOS update but I was ready for a new one anyway. That’s all the battery issues I’ve ever had in 15 years.
My iPad 2 (bought new in 2010) still holds about 70%, but I used it rarely since 5 years ago. It’s even better than my Galaxy Tab (bought in 2011) which couldn’t hold any charge unless plugged in.
The iPads have had phenomenal battery performance. I started with the very first iPad and have never paid attention to the battery. I just plug them in overnight.
Worrying about battery health on iPads is a waste of time, in my opinion. Hell, worrying about battery health in general is a waste of time. On iPhones, if you don’t update iOS, severely degraded batteries are just fine (my iPhone 6s on iOS 10 with 63% health and original battery has almost like-new battery life); if you update iOS, battery replacements improve the situation but are largely irrelevant anyway. Let’s take the same iPhone, the 6s. Degraded batteries on iOS 15 are abhorrent, yes, with many reports indicating about one hour of screen-on time at best. Replaced batteries... are pathetic as well, with people reporting 2-3 hours. Better? Yes. Usable as a main phone throughout the day with current standards? Absolutely not. The iPhone 6s is gone as a moderate full-day phone thanks to iOS updates. Worrying about battery health won’t ever fix that, regardless of how many batteries you throw in there.
On iPads? Even less necessary. People use 8-year-old iPads with original batteries and they retain decent battery life. iOS updates obliterate battery life, but if the user is a light user, they won’t care much. Yeah, heavy use coupled with the maximum amount of iOS updates will obliterate battery life if looked through the lens of “when it was new it was a lot better”, but people still report maybe 6-7 hours of light use years after purchase. Yeah, heavier use gets maybe 4, but for an 8-year-old updated iPad? I think that’s a lot better. An 8-year-old updated iPhone would be totally unusable, even with light use. 7 hours of light use gives the vast majority of its users a full day. If they’re enthusiasts, they probably have moved on by then. If they haven’t, it’s still decent.
My 9.7-inch iPad Pro saw an immediate decrease in battery life after Apple forced it from iOS 9 to iOS 12 back in 2019. Battery life has remained stable since then, with about 11 hours of screen-on time with light use (got 14 on iOS 9). A little under 700 cycles and 85% health. I doubt it will change significantly even if I throw another 500 cycles on it. It remains to be seen.
I’ve yet to try a massively cycled iPad, but I am extremely confident. The iPhone 6s I mentioned earlier has almost 1400 cycles and battery life is just fine. iPads with their larger batteries give me even more confidence. I reckon even 3000 cycles wouldn’t do much damage, at least if kept on a half-decent iOS version. Updates can always shatter these predictions, but still, like I said, fully updated, old iPads are just fine with light use, even if they don’t compare to the original iOS version.
On iPads? Even less necessary. People use 8-year-old iPads with original batteries and they retain decent battery life. iOS updates obliterate battery life, but if the user is a light user, they won’t care much. Yeah, heavy use coupled with the maximum amount of iOS updates will obliterate battery life if looked through the lens of “when it was new it was a lot better”, but people still report maybe 6-7 hours of light use years after purchase. Yeah, heavier use gets maybe 4, but for an 8-year-old updated iPad? I think that’s a lot better. An 8-year-old updated iPhone would be totally unusable, even with light use. 7 hours of light use gives the vast majority of its users a full day. If they’re enthusiasts, they probably have moved on by then. If they haven’t, it’s still decent.
My 9.7-inch iPad Pro saw an immediate decrease in battery life after Apple forced it from iOS 9 to iOS 12 back in 2019. Battery life has remained stable since then, with about 11 hours of screen-on time with light use (got 14 on iOS 9). A little under 700 cycles and 85% health. I doubt it will change significantly even if I throw another 500 cycles on it. It remains to be seen.
I’ve yet to try a massively cycled iPad, but I am extremely confident. The iPhone 6s I mentioned earlier has almost 1400 cycles and battery life is just fine. iPads with their larger batteries give me even more confidence. I reckon even 3000 cycles wouldn’t do much damage, at least if kept on a half-decent iOS version. Updates can always shatter these predictions, but still, like I said, fully updated, old iPads are just fine with light use, even if they don’t compare to the original iOS version.
Thats crazy. My four year old XR is at 87% and my six year old 9.7" iPad Pro is 82%.
I will say that leaving the iPad on low-power mode drastically improves its in-use battery life.
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iPad Pro 9.7 battery health as of 12-13-2022.
![iPad Pro 9.7 2022-12-13.png]( "iPad Pro 9.7 2022-12-13.png")
It was 90.5%, 340 cycles on iOS 10.3.3 as of 07-29-2019.
It saw pretty heavy use (12+ hour/day, several drains to 0% and pretty much needed to be charged daily) from 2016-2018. That's likely when bulk of the battery degradation occurred. Iirc, battery health when it was brand new was around 105-107%.
It doesn't really see much use nowadays. Pretty much all that cycling since 2019 has been due to standby battery drain.
It was 90.5%, 340 cycles on iOS 10.3.3 as of 07-29-2019.
It saw pretty heavy use (12+ hour/day, several drains to 0% and pretty much needed to be charged daily) from 2016-2018. That's likely when bulk of the battery degradation occurred. Iirc, battery health when it was brand new was around 105-107%.
It doesn't really see much use nowadays. Pretty much all that cycling since 2019 has been due to standby battery drain.
That’s very decent in terms of cycles-to-health ratio! I’ve always had worse. Maybe it’s due to the way I use it, I don’t really know. That said, my 9.7-inch iPad Pro, was pretty abhorrent, standing at about 500 cycles and like 85% health. It was on iOS 9, so I didn’t really care, battery life was perfect (I monitor it closely). After it was forced out of iOS 9, usage diminished sharply, and it now stands at around 650 cycles... and it still has 85% health, three years later.
That said, I’ve found that health doesn’t really matter, like I said earlier. I haven’t been able to test the limits of that, but if my iPhone 6s is like-new on iOS 10 with 63% health and 1400 cycles, iPads with their larger batteries should be even better. Why do I say that I haven’t been able to test the limits of that? Simply because I haven’t been able to test an iPad on its original version of iOS with many years, many cycles, and poor battery health. 900 cycles is more than I’ve ever had. How’s screen-on time for you? What iOS version is your iPad on?
It’s not mine, but the best I have access to right now is a 6th gen iPad on iOS 12. Cycle count hovers around 500. I need at least twice that to extract any meaningful conclusions, so it won’t happen anytime soon. My 9.7-inch iPad Pro isn’t too interesting due to it being on iOS 12. That said, it will still take a huge while to get it to any interesting number. Even on iOS 12, I’m not a heavy user. iOS devices last a long time, it gets me 11 hours, and I don’t use it enough to cycle through it quickly.
However, if I had to guess? It’s even more irrelevant than on iPhones. Like I said, I reckon even 3000 cycles wouldn’t do much, even if it has something like 60% health. Can an iPad really be worse than an iPhone 6s? I doubt it.
That’s more like my experience in terms of cycles-to-health ratio. That’s three days ago, on iPadOS 14.8.1 right? I think you’d said it was on that version.
Yep, 14.8.1. Mind, the data from 2019 shows 29C average battery temp (used it during 95+F summers back then). No doubt that affected battery health as well.
I'm sure my mom's Pro 9.7 has better battery health. She only uses hers for maybe 1-2 hours while I used mine pretty much the entire day.
Yeah, heat definitely plays a part there, especially if used continuously at high temperatures.
That‘s very likely; good battery health doesn’t guarantee good battery life, however.
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How’s battery life? Screen-on time?Just checked my 1st gen iPad Pro in Techtool Pro (even though it works great....).
Max capacity 80%, 540 cycles, almost 7 years old.
That sounds a LOT higher than I’d expect, and a lot higher than pretty much every reported usage I’ve seen for the first-gen iPad Pros (both the 9.7-inch and the 12.9-inch) on iPadOS 16.
It’s not that I don’t believe you, but I’ve seen that data read incorrectly thousands of times; are you counting since you unplugged the iPad? If you’re counting from last 10 days, you might be including screen-on time from the previous cycle. Like I said, I’m sorry to be skeptical, but I’ve seen thousands of screenshots incorrectly reported, and it really sounds too high.
I’m barely scraping 10-11 hours of similar use (web browsing and media consumption), on my 9.7-inch iPad Pro on iOS 12, with low brightness. That use is light, and I’ve never been able to get any more... on iOS 12. 9 hours would be at most two hours below what I’m getting, and according to everything I’ve read, it’s too much. I’ve optimized every single setting, and I know how to do it: I’m getting 16 hours of screen-on time on my iPhone Xʀ. I’ve only seen one other person, ever, get 16 hours on a Xʀ. The vast majority were at 10-11, at best (on iOS 12, like me). On iOS 16? They’re barely scraping 6.
I’d expect 6-7 with light use maybe, at best? I’ve seen some screenshots and they were all on about 4, but with lighter usage, 6 or 7 may be possible.
I’m not discounting the possibility of me being completely and entirely wrong (I’d never do that): if I am, that’s great news for all first-gen iPad Pro owners, at least battery life isn’t as obliterated as it could be; in fact, I hope I’m wrong.