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New 2024 iPads Still Have 10 Hours of Battery Life
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Cut the weight, reduced the thickness. Seems pretty clear where the battery "improvement" went. Smaller, lighter, doing more, and not shortening the life of the charge. Seems like a win to me. I've yet to need my iPad more than 10 hours without access to charge and I use daily. On a phone, or watch... recently got almost 3 days out of a single change on my iPhone 15 Pro Max and Watch Ultra 2 and was shocked as I used quite a bit. But for my iPad, even when traveling I have a chance to charge daily after heavy usage. For me, thinner and lighter far outweighs squeezing out a couple more hours.
So then, and this isn't sarcasm- this is a software issue. People who want more fine grained power saving options should ask Apple for it.
International flights. But for those I carry an external battery pack.
My wife uses her ipad as her primary device, and is regularly charging it by 4PM or so, especially when working outside. I'm hoping the brighter screen uses less watts per nit (is that a real metric?).
Given all the upgrades, sidegrades, and downgrades in the new pros, having a net-even battery life is just fine in the end. As long as the thing doesn't bend because it's so thin.
Ultimately major changes in battery life are going to require a fundamentally different battery chemistry.
I was told by fanboys that 3nm would dramatically increase battery life and that the 3nm was the chip worth waiting for. What happened?
As someone who is usually near an outlet - the 10 hours is more than fine.
I am sure I am in the minority, but I am really hoping that this iPad has the "charge to 80%" option. I keep my iPads for a while and would really like to reduce the wear on the battery.
Of course it would be switchable like it is on the iPhone, so people who need/want the maximum charge could get it.
I am sure I am in the minority, but I am really hoping that this iPad has the "charge to 80%" option. I keep my iPads for a while and would really like to reduce the wear on the battery.
Of course it would be switchable like it is on the iPhone, so people who need/want the maximum charge could get it.
I'm more worried about long term battery health and replaceability. As the pace of processor improvement slows down, computers should last longer. Even though it's seven years old now, my 2017 10.5" iPad Pro still runs quite well. My iPad 3 didn't last half as long before it started to feel sluggish.
But the battery life on my 10.5" is abysmal. I would have had the battery replaced, but the Lightning port stopped working and I have to charge it through its keyboard connector. I don't think Apple would replace just the battery.
This should be my time to upgrade. I like upgrading with major display improvements. I got the first Retina and the first 120Hz/ProMotion display. OLED could be an amazing boost. But will it just turn into trash when the battery degrades?
Also, if I could use MacOS when paired with a keyboard, I might just consider upgrading anyway.
But the battery life on my 10.5" is abysmal. I would have had the battery replaced, but the Lightning port stopped working and I have to charge it through its keyboard connector. I don't think Apple would replace just the battery.
This should be my time to upgrade. I like upgrading with major display improvements. I got the first Retina and the first 120Hz/ProMotion display. OLED could be an amazing boost. But will it just turn into trash when the battery degrades?
Also, if I could use MacOS when paired with a keyboard, I might just consider upgrading anyway.
Totally agree!! I wish we had more granularity. If we could choose power, like CPU power, savings - I’d take it in an instant. On my 2020 IPad Pro I’ve never felt that anything took “too long.” Having extra battery life at the cost of performance throttling would be awesome.
Where are all the tech enthusiasts?! All I see are critics and nit-pickers…
It’s incredible to see these devices evolve over the years. They aren’t perfect, by any means, but neither are they junk, useless, or badly designed.
I can’t wait to get my grubby little fingers on one of these puppies!
It’s a fantastic time to be a tech enthusiast. 🤓👍
It’s incredible to see these devices evolve over the years. They aren’t perfect, by any means, but neither are they junk, useless, or badly designed.
I can’t wait to get my grubby little fingers on one of these puppies!
It’s a fantastic time to be a tech enthusiast. 🤓👍
iPads’ battery life has improved massively thanks to hardware efficiency... with light enough use.
My 9.7-inch iPad Pro got 14 hours of light use on iOS 9. My iPad Air 5 gets about 25 hours of SOT with the same light use on iPadOS 15.
Heavy usage has always overcome any processor efficiency - you can kill any iOS device very quickly if usage is heavy enough.
I don’t care about Apple’s rating, it’s nonsensical. The 9.7-inch iPad Pro doesn’t have the same battery life as the iPad 4 on iOS 6, which doesn’t have the same battery life as the iPad Air 5 on iPadOS 15. Apple says all three models have the same battery life. Nonsense.
Battery life if astonishing since M1 processors if you’re a light enough user. Heavy usage will never give good battery life.
Not even one of the best iOS devices ever - the iPhone 13 Pro Max on iOS 15 - can withstand extremely heavy usage with good battery life.
My 9.7-inch iPad Pro got 14 hours of light use on iOS 9. My iPad Air 5 gets about 25 hours of SOT with the same light use on iPadOS 15.
Heavy usage has always overcome any processor efficiency - you can kill any iOS device very quickly if usage is heavy enough.
I don’t care about Apple’s rating, it’s nonsensical. The 9.7-inch iPad Pro doesn’t have the same battery life as the iPad 4 on iOS 6, which doesn’t have the same battery life as the iPad Air 5 on iPadOS 15. Apple says all three models have the same battery life. Nonsense.
Battery life if astonishing since M1 processors if you’re a light enough user. Heavy usage will never give good battery life.
Not even one of the best iOS devices ever - the iPhone 13 Pro Max on iOS 15 - can withstand extremely heavy usage with good battery life.
May turn out that there are predictable and specific applications that have been taken into account and folded into all the normal computational overhead to get to *this* 10 hour battery life. Maybe. I heard they were working on something that usually seems to require a lot of extra parallel processing cycles…
I don't really believe the battery figures anymore. My M1 iPad Pro didn't get anywhere near 10 hours of use on a charge.
I guess I'm No One, I'd enjoy a thinner/lighter iPad, I never use up the battery.
Not gonna pay the price these things cost though, it's completely nuts.
The Bitching app. Sucks energy like nothing else. Always requires max battery hours + 1.
Subpar display, but it was a still good Macbook. Cheaper and more reliable than the 12 inch at that time.
My M1 iPad Pro 11 inch is sufficient for me along with the 2nd Gen Apple Pencil. Oh, I get about 10 hrs max. But I don't be on it that long, for maybe 3 to 5 hrs sketching or drawing something or watching a video or movie, depending on what I'm using it for.
This makes me even less inclined to purchase. The biggest problem with my M1 iPad Pro 12.9” is that it seems to be sucking battery and I’m not sure why. I typically only get 3-4 hours and I haven’t put that many cycles on it. For the longest time until this past autumn I would probably only charge it 2-3 times per week. Now I charge it more often when I’m using it, but honestly I use it less now that I have a smaller 14” MBP with a battery that easily lasts all day or longer, especially since the battery has gotten even worse on the iPad. Overall this has been one of my least favorite iPads, and least durable. Never cracked an iPad or iPhone until this one, and I may never know why. It cracked inside of its folio case inside of a padded insert inside of a padded camera bag that was just sitting firmly in the back of a car during an uneventful 2 hour trip. And I kinda wonder if the screen replacement has something to do with the battery life since it seemed to get worse after that. Irritated with the entire thing. Honestly thinking about just going down to an iPad Air next time since it’s such a tertiary device for me nowadays. Basically a glorified couch computer.
We overestimated the importance of node size and did not fully understand what it meant to jump from intel to Apple Silicon at the time.
We thought it was the node size dictating a lot of the energy consumption, when the architecture (ARM) is actually the main culprit. The significant jump in battery life compared to intel also cemented that Apple could pull a more significant battery life improvement each generation compared to intel. Albeit with a smaller significance than the first jump it is still at least 1+ hour per generation. With a node size reduction we were drowning in hype that it could be 3+ hours of battery life improvement.
Low and behold it was actually the initial architectural shift that dictated such a jump (x86 > ARM). Apple is no magical company, it was just intel being stuck to x86 that they had such piss poor battery life. To intel's credit they did improve battery life incrementally each node and minor architecture shift.
The truth is each architectural jump is more like a plateau. This is ARM's plateau of battery life where it will fluctuate little by little with each optimization. Depending on form factor as well of course. If we want to have another massive jump of 3+ hours we would either need a 10-20% increase in battery capacity for each form factor or jump to a whole new more efficient architecture (RISC V?).
This is my current understanding with my limited knowledge so I might be wrong.