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dcaccount

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 17, 2013
316
14
Hello,
I have the latest 12.9” iPad M1 on the latest iOS 14.7.1.

It seems to me that the battery is draining too fast, yesterday evening I fully charged it and now it is already at 94% and I haven’t used it at all since I unplugged it.

Has anyone experienced anything similar?

Please advise, thanks.
Dan
 

akash.nu

macrumors G4
May 26, 2016
10,870
16,998
That doesn’t sound like a battery drain problem. How many hours are we talking when you say “yesterday evening” and “now”?
 
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dcaccount

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 17, 2013
316
14
That doesn’t sound like a battery drain problem. How many hours are we talking when you say “yesterday evening” and “now”?
We are talking about 12 hours, it has lost more or less 6% in more or less 12 hours
 

ElDuderino91

macrumors regular
Jul 31, 2020
161
360
I constantly have the feeling my M1 12.9 iPad suffers from weak battery life. Yesterday I used the magic keyboard while writing in pages and the iPad lost 25% in one hour.

Then I tested it under following conditions: iPad fully loaded to 100%, screen brightness about at 50% and volume less than 50%. No apps running in the background and everything that could cause energy consumption in the background turned off. I started a series on Netflix to see how many hours the iPad will work. After nearly 7 hours the battery had 4% left.

The support told me that 7 hours isn’t good enough but it’s hard to say because they don’t know how efficient the Netflix app is. They told me I should test it again like apple does. Screen brightness set to 75%, Bluetooth off, everything in the background off and then watching YouTube over safari. Very important to not use the YouTube app. Then I should get 9 to 10 hours of usage. If it’s still worse they’ll give me a new one. I’ll do that test today. Any recommendations on YouTube videos long enough?
 
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VaruLV

macrumors 6502a
Mar 25, 2019
636
561
I think its normal, I dont consider this to be battery drain/issue on mine.
Yes, it consumes considerably more battery while turned on and in standby, you might want to turn on airplane mode on yours if thats the case, I have 5G version so I have it on all the time to avoid getting "no sim" message once in a while+its easier to turn off bluetooth permamently when I dont need it.

My iPP 10.5 was left at home, connected to the wifi, on standby, pinged twice during 10 day period with Find My just to make sure its still at home while I was on vacation, coming home it still had some good 50% of battery left.

I imagine that nothing of that sort would be possible with current M1 iPads, then again, perhaps it would be at last 5% after 10 days of standby, who knows.
 
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secretk

macrumors 65816
Oct 19, 2018
1,494
1,229
I am not sure that it is related to the M1 chip. I have similar standby battery drain for my 2018 iPP. What happens is that I have Skype. I might skype with friends on my computer, but the notifications are also sent to the iPad and I have noticed that this causes battery drain on my iPP.

Might be similar for you guys. Some app that you have been using on another device in the same time.
 
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spiderman0616

Suspended
Aug 1, 2010
5,670
7,499
Honestly, I have always had some form of this problem with all my iPad Pro models. It seems to come and go based on what iPadOS release we're on, and I gave up trying to figure it out long ago, after spending hours and hours of my free time troubleshooting and driving back and forth to the Apple Store. Granted, your problem doesn't sound too severe, but keep one thing in mind: 100% to 94% is a lot more than it sounds like. It always takes a lot longer for your iPad battery to go from 100% to 99% than it does to go from 99% to 98%. There's some buffer present when you're charged up to 100%.

I can give you some advice based on my own extensive testing that may help you figure out if there really is a problem and how to possibly solve it:

1) Take a look at your battery percentage tonight and log that number and time of day it was at that number. DO NOT start at 100% charge. It's easier to detect excessive drain if you start less than 100%.

2) Let the iPad sit for the night not in use.

3) In the morning, notate the battery percentage and time again.

4) I'd say if you see anywhere from 5-10% drain overnight after the above test, you're in a pretty normal range. If you are seeing more than that, you need to look at the battery settings and see if something is running in the background overnight to wake up the iPad and make it do things when you're not using it.

5) If, like me, you see no apps draining the battery overnight excessively, the next night try turning wifi off and letting the iPad sit overnight again. You'll most likely find that it doesn't drain at all, or drains very little.

Again, the only fix I ever found was turning off wifi. After a couple of iPadOS dot releases, the problem would stop and I could leave it on again, and then something else would break it. I've been through this about 3 different times with 3 different iPad Pros. It's maddening.
 

ElDuderino91

macrumors regular
Jul 31, 2020
161
360
I finished the second test under the conditions the support told me. My battery lasted a little over 8 hours. So now I’m between the “everything is good“ 9 to 10 hours and the “Apple will replace it” ~7 hours…
 

SoYoung

macrumors 68000
Jul 3, 2015
1,545
955
Losing 6% battery on full 100% charge in 12 hours is actually not very good, especially if your iPad is a Wi-Fi only model. its like losing around 12-14% battery if its not full charge. iPads, especially iPad pros don't have very good battery life in my experience and Apple should improve in that regard. My 2018 11' iPad pro don't have a good battery from the start. Just today it drain from 50% to 34% in standby in 8 hours, not very good but in revenge, both my 2018 12,9 and Air 3 have excellent battery life in standby with a full 100% charge can remain at 100% for a good 12 hours.

I don't know if its because my 11' pro is the LTE version (and activated with a sim card in it) or its because it have more ram and more apps staying in the background (every tech pros says we should never close apps because its bad for the battery, but sometimes I really doubt this because every time it drains like crazy in standby, I always have a tons of apps in the background) but the battery is definitively not very good for such a pricey tablet.

I just think when you buy a new phone or tablet its just a lottery when it comes to the battery you'll have, It was always hit or miss from my experience with Apple products. My iPhone 3GS had good battery, than iPhone 5 not, then iPhone 6 plus have awesome battery life, and 6s plus have poor one and now my XS max also have still amazing battery life after 3 years and I didn't change anything on how I use my devices since.
 
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spiderman0616

Suspended
Aug 1, 2010
5,670
7,499
Losing 6% battery on full 100% charge in 12 hours is actually not very good, especially if your iPad is a Wi-Fi only model. its like losing around 12-14% battery if its not full charge. iPads, especially iPad pros don't have very good battery life in my experience and Apple should improve in that regard. My 2018 11' iPad pro don't have a good battery from the start. Just today it drain from 50% to 34% in standby in 8 hours, not very good but in revenge, both my 2018 12,9 and Air 3 have excellent battery life in standby with a full 100% charge can remain at 100% for a good 12 hours.

I don't know if its because my 11' pro is the LTE version (and activated with a sim card in it) or its because it have more ram and more apps staying in the background (every tech pros says we should never close apps because its bad for the battery, but sometimes I really doubt this because every time it drains like crazy in standby, I always have a tons of apps in the background) but the battery is definitively not very good for such a pricey tablet.

I just think when you buy a new phone or tablet its just a lottery when it comes to the battery you'll have, It was always hit or miss from my experience with Apple products. My iPhone 3GS had good battery, than iPhone 5 not, then iPhone 6 plus have awesome battery life, and 6s plus have poor one and now my XS max also have still amazing battery life after 3 years and I didn't change anything on how I use my devices since.
In general, I'd have to agree with you here. Apple advertises all their iPads as having 10 hour battery life, but the Pros definitely do not give you that much usage out of a charge. Standby activities seem to really hammer on the battery in iPadOS, especially iCloud syncing. As I said in my post above, they seem to fix it and break it again at least twice in every new series of dot releases and it's very frustrating.

I think it needs to be addressed via software somehow. I can leave my M1 MacBook Air in standby for days with multiple apps and spaces open and it still sips battery. iPads used to operate this way too, but its been years since that's been the case. I remember my iPad 2, 3, Air, and mini used to lose 1-2% overnight in standby. That's just not reality anymore.
 
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Goompa

macrumors member
Oct 29, 2018
87
125
Mine led is the problem I think, I swapped it to a M1 11inch iPad Pro.
 

Isengardtom

macrumors 65816
Feb 14, 2009
1,346
2,193
I’m on the iPadOS15 beta and have a feeling it’s actually improved a lot compared to when I bought it at launch

I”ll try to do a test the next few days where I’ll be using it a lot at the office and home.
12.9 M1 here
 
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taxi_driver

macrumors regular
Sep 26, 2017
129
24
I’m on the iPadOS15 beta and have a feeling it’s actually improved a lot compared to when I bought it at launch

I”ll try to do a test the next few days where I’ll be using it a lot at the office and home.
12.9 M1 here
any update/results from this? had a 12.9 for a while that I exchanged due to battery drain among other reasons. if an improvement on iOS 15, may reconsider but it was very frustrating
 

Mc0

macrumors regular
Nov 6, 2017
188
369
Up+ Also interested to know about the battery life. I want to replace my air 3 to a pro iPad
 

Vivian125

macrumors 6502
May 19, 2017
392
94
As far as I know.. Top 3 battery eater in such device

1. Maxed speaker volume - I realized whenever I’m in the max volume playing COD and watching Netflix at louder volumes it drains battery the most for me.. so my solution is to wear AirPods instead and it saved me 2-4 hours with that and now it’s back to 8-12 hours usage with Bluetooth earphones vs Only 6-7 hours with max volume on my iPad watching dramas scene.
2. Maximum Brightness 🔆 - why not turning it into half? Or 1/4? If you used a laminated iPad the brightness shouldn’t be a problem. brightness is also a factor and will save you couple of hours .
3. Background App Refresh : Turning this off will help a lot to get rid of unused app In the back ground
 
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