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Jsaltz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 31, 2022
23
15
I have an iPad Air 4 that is a little over a month old. The battery is down to 25 percent after 4 hours 8 minutes of usage. I thought iPads had 10 hours of use before recharging. Have been watching a lot of YouTube vids but regardless I think it should be at a higher percentage than 25 %? Should I contact Apple?
 

spiderman0616

Suspended
Aug 1, 2010
5,670
7,499
Have you looked at your battery drainage stats in Settings yet? Take a look there and see if anything unusual is draining the battery an excessive amount in the background. Can you also list what version of iPadOS you're using currently? I believe there's been an update or two since you got your iPad.

Unfortunately though, I have had your exact same problem on three different iPads in the past. It always seemed to come and go with dot releases of iPadOS. For example 13.3 would make my iPad Pro drain 25% overnight in standby if I didn't turn its wifi off before I went to bed, but then maybe 13.3.1 would fix it, then maybe 13.3.4 would reintroduce it, etc. There were even a couple of months when the Pencil 2 hadn't been out very long where the Pencil itself was draining in standby, even while connected to the side to charge.

I've had this issue on the 10.5" iPad Pro, the 2018 11" iPad Pro, and the 2020 12.9" iPad Pro. Never for long, it was usually resolved by the next dot release, but I also never figured out how to fix it other than turning off the iPad's wifi radio overnight so it couldn't chug away on whatever it was doing while I was sleeping. I tried everything from a simple force quit all apps and hard reboot to a full blown DFU restore while connected to a Mac and then not installing any apps at all afterwards. Not even that ever fixed it on any of the models. 2 or 3 days later, even just letting it sit with stock setup out of the box on a freshly downloaded and installed OS, the problem would return.

My current iPad, the mini 6, does not have this issue on the latest public release of iPadOS, which is why I'm so curious about what version your device is on.
 

rui no onna

Contributor
Oct 25, 2013
14,920
13,264
I have an iPad Air 4 that is a little over a month old. The battery is down to 25 percent after 4 hours 8 minutes of usage. I thought iPads had 10 hours of use before recharging. Have been watching a lot of YouTube vids but regardless I think it should be at a higher percentage than 25 %? Should I contact Apple?

Display brightness? That's probably the biggest cause of battery drain on iPads.

Iirc, Apple tests at around 50% display brightness. If you're using higher brightness, then expect lower battery life than the estimated 10 hours.

Mind, at 0-25% brightness (dark room), I typically get 12-16 hours onscreen time on the Air 4.
 
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Isengardtom

macrumors 65816
Feb 14, 2009
1,350
2,194
i agree , brightness is one of the biggest drains. I also seem to get a lot of battery drain with YouTube
 

Jsaltz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 31, 2022
23
15
Have you looked at your battery drainage stats in Settings yet? Take a look there and see if anything unusual is draining the battery an excessive amount in the background. Can you also list what version of iPadOS you're using currently? I believe there's been an update or two since you got your iPad.

Unfortunately though, I have had your exact same problem on three different iPads in the past. It always seemed to come and go with dot releases of iPadOS. For example 13.3 would make my iPad Pro drain 25% overnight in standby if I didn't turn its wifi off before I went to bed, but then maybe 13.3.1 would fix it, then maybe 13.3.4 would reintroduce it, etc. There were even a couple of months when the Pencil 2 hadn't been out very long where the Pencil itself was draining in standby, even while connected to the side to charge.

I've had this issue on the 10.5" iPad Pro, the 2018 11" iPad Pro, and the 2020 12.9" iPad Pro. Never for long, it was usually resolved by the next dot release, but I also never figured out how to fix it other than turning off the iPad's wifi radio overnight so it couldn't chug away on whatever it was doing while I was sleeping. I tried everything from a simple force quit all apps and hard reboot to a full blown DFU restore while connected to a Mac and then not installing any apps at all afterwards. Not even that ever fixed it on any of the models. 2 or 3 days later, even just letting it sit with stock setup out of the box on a freshly downloaded and installed OS, the problem would return.

My current iPad, the mini 6, does not have this issue on the latest public release of iPadOS, which is why I'm so curious about what version your device

I dont have issues with drainage On standby. I have the latest version of IOS. Brightness is 50
Percent or less. I’ve tried completely resetting it, doing a complete battery drain and recharging It and also Turing
It completely off and on again. It seems my air 3 had exactly the same settings and it’s battery drain was not this severe. It seems that when the iPad air 4 is at 100 to say 60 percent the drainage is acceptable but once it gets below 50 percent or so it drains a lot faster
 
Last edited:

Jsaltz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 31, 2022
23
15
i agree , brightness is one of the biggest drains. I also seem to get a lot of battery drain with YouTube
I just think I used the air 3 which had the same settings and same web sites looked at and it drained half as slow as the air 4. My 2 year old air 3 drains slower than my air 4. Same settings , brightness , web browsing
 
Last edited:

Jsaltz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 31, 2022
23
15
Display brightness? That's probably the biggest cause of battery drain on iPads.

Iirc, Apple tests at around 50% display brightness. If you're using higher brightness, then expect lower battery life than the estimated 10 hours.

Mind, at 0-25% brightness (dark room), I typically get 12-16 hours onscreen time on the Air 4.
Brightness 50 percent or less. I couldn’t dream of getting 12 hours on my air 4. 8 would be pushing it
 

Jsaltz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 31, 2022
23
15
Have you looked at your battery drainage stats in Settings yet? Take a look there and see if anything unusual is draining the battery an excessive amount in the background. Can you also list what version of iPadOS you're using currently? I believe there's been an update or two since you got your iPad.

Unfortunately though, I have had your exact same problem on three different iPads in the past. It always seemed to come and go with dot releases of iPadOS. For example 13.3 would make my iPad Pro drain 25% overnight in standby if I didn't turn its wifi off before I went to bed, but then maybe 13.3.1 would fix it, then maybe 13.3.4 would reintroduce it, etc. There were even a couple of months when the Pencil 2 hadn't been out very long where the Pencil itself was draining in standby, even while connected to the side to charge.

I've had this issue on the 10.5" iPad Pro, the 2018 11" iPad Pro, and the 2020 12.9" iPad Pro. Never for long, it was usually resolved by the next dot release, but I also never figured out how to fix it other than turning off the iPad's wifi radio overnight so it couldn't chug away on whatever it was doing while I was sleeping. I tried everything from a simple force quit all apps and hard reboot to a full blown DFU restore while connected to a Mac and then not installing any apps at all afterwards. Not even that ever fixed it on any of the models. 2 or 3 days later, even just letting it sit with stock setup out of the box on a freshly downloaded and installed OS, the problem would return.

My current iPad, the mini 6, does not have this issue on the latest public release of iPadOS, which is why I'm so curious about what version your device is on.
How do you check drain in the background? I have the latest version of IOS
 

snipr125

macrumors 68020
Oct 17, 2015
2,013
3,127
UK
Op, the Macrumours website itself that we are on is a drain on battery many people have found on their iPhones and iPads. Something to do with the ad macros. Adblockers help somewhat but not much.
 

BigMcGuire

Cancelled
Jan 10, 2012
9,832
14,032
Op, the Macrumours website itself that we are on is a drain on battery many people have found on their iPhones and iPads. Something to do with the ad macros. Adblockers help somewhat but not much.
It's been getting worse and worse for me. More times than not, I go to load a page and only half of it loads while the CPU screams at 100%. It's definitely ad related because I have adblockers and I can pick up another device and load it without a problem. But the last 2 weeks? I go to load macrumors on safari and only half of it loads (but it's scrollable kinda) and then I hear CPU screaming. And instant close. Noticing it on my mobile devices too - first time ever.
 
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AppleNooble

macrumors regular
May 14, 2021
120
23
It lasts for around 10 hours if you're not doing anything too demanding. I agree, the air battery life isn't amazing, in fact for me, the battery life is probably my only negative about the thing.
 

Isamilis

macrumors 68020
Apr 3, 2012
2,191
1,074
I have an iPad Air 4 that is a little over a month old. The battery is down to 25 percent after 4 hours 8 minutes of usage. I thought iPads had 10 hours of use before recharging. Have been watching a lot of YouTube vids but regardless I think it should be at a higher percentage than 25 %? Should I contact Apple?
If you constantly reading this forum or reddit, you need use adblocker, otherwise it will drain your battery.
 
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