iPad as a laptop replacement

[Populus]

You might need to switch it to mirror mode on the iPad… that way it will be forced to show content full screen.

Right, I didn’t though about that option, although I think apps should be easily made full screen on external displays. But what you said works as a workaround! Thank you.

Regarding playing content off a hard drive, yep, even using the native player of Files it eats a 1% each 3 minutes, even with the low power mode on. This M2 chip is power hungry…

 

[sparksd]

So… I just connected my iPad to the TV to watch a movie on a streaming service, but when I move the app on the external TV, and click on the three dots on top, it doesn’t offer me the option to make it full screen. Does this improve on iPadOS 17 or it depends on the developer?

Secondly, I watch a movie (MP4 format) located at an external drive, using the app NPlayer I purchased time ago, and the M2 iPad Pro is burning a 3% each 9 minutes, or the equivalent of 1% each 3 minutes, giving me only 5 hours of payback from the external hard drive. Is this normal? If this is the usual drain then the M2 is not worth it for multimedia.

When playing back from the drive, what is your screen brightness?

 

[Ludatyk]

Right, I didn’t though about that option, although I think apps should be easily made full screen on external displays. But what you said works as a workaround! Thank you.

No problem, I agree… all apps should be made full screen. But some devs haven’t implemented the feature... I recently found that apps whom support pre-existing multitasking (SplitView & SlideOver) do well when it comes to full screen on external display.

Regarding playing content off a hard drive, yep, even using the native player of Files it eats a 1% each 3 minutes, even with the low power mode on. This M2 chip is power hungry…

Yeah, that’s not good. I often alternate between OutPlayer, NPlayer or Infuse when it comes to watching videos… but OutPlayer app does well when it comes to playing video through an external monitor.

 

[Boil]

Regarding playing content off a hard drive, yep, even using the native player of Files it eats a 1% each 3 minutes, even with the low power mode on. This M2 chip is power hungry…

Is the external drive powered by an external power supply, or is it getting power from the tablet...?

 

[Populus]

When playing back from the drive, what is your screen brightness?

Good question. Approximately at 35-40%. Keep in mind tho that I watch the content on an external TV, and the drive is a spinning hard drive, maybe the SSD requires less power.

Next time I’ll try to leave the iPad screen at minimum brightness to see if power consumption decreases.

 

[Populus]

Is the external drive powered by an external power supply, or is it getting power from the tablet...?

From the tablet itself. Also it is not an SSD, but rather a 2.5 spinning hard drive.
I guess that makes it more power demanding. Next time I’ll try watching movies from my Samsung T7 SSD, maybe it drains less power.

 

[darngooddesign]

There’s nothing really stopping them from putting one on just for the app. Or it can just use the iPad’s built in Menu Bar thing when you hold CMD (or whatever the button is) for a moment.

Apple would need to add functionality to iPadOS and the developers would need to rewrite, test, and support their MacOS apps on iPadOS; unless people plan on buying those apps a second time, there is no additional revenue stream for developers to use for al this additional work.

 

[sparksd]

From the tablet itself. Also it is not an SSD, but rather a 2.5 spinning hard drive.
I guess that makes it more power demanding. Next time I’ll try watching movies from my Samsung T7 SSD, maybe it drains less power.

I used videos on spinning drives with my M1 12.9 and they really sucked power - some would not work unless attached to a powered hub. I switched to 500GB T5 & 1TB T7 SSDs and they have been great.

 

[Boil]

Secondly, I watch a movie (MP4 format) located at an external drive, using the app NPlayer I purchased time ago, and the M2 iPad Pro is burning a 3% each 9 minutes, or the equivalent of 1% each 3 minutes, giving me only 5 hours of payback from the external hard drive. Is this normal? If this is the usual drain then the M2 is not worth it for multimedia.

Regarding playing content off a hard drive, yep, even using the native player of Files it eats a 1% each 3 minutes, even with the low power mode on. This M2 chip is power hungry…

Is the external drive powered by an external power supply, or is it getting power from the tablet...?

From the tablet itself. Also it is not an SSD, but rather a 2.5 spinning hard drive.
I guess that makes it more power demanding. Next time I’ll try watching movies from my Samsung T7 SSD, maybe it drains less power.

So, all your talk about how the M2 chip is power hungry and not worth it for multimedia, kinda disingenuous, seeing as how the external drive is being powered by the tablet and all...?

 

[teh_hunterer]

217 pages in this thread and you assume I am talking only about you 😯 and even take time to bold a previous post!

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks.".

You were talking about the topic I just brought up, so right back at you.

 

[Digitalguy]

iPads can output up to 7.5w to external devices, and HDDs can use virtually all that power (SSDs suck aroung 4w, with some, like larger Sandisk ones, going over 5w). So the drain is perfectly normal and it has nothing to do with M2. External monitors can also suck a lot of power if they are not battery powered.

 

[teh_hunterer]

So… I just connected my iPad to the TV to watch a movie on a streaming service, but when I move the app on the external TV, and click on the three dots on top, it doesn’t offer me the option to make it full screen. Does this improve on iPadOS 17 or it depends on the developer?

It depends on the developer and how they implement it. It's a bit of a mess, which is fair enough as Stage Manager is still somewhat new. I tried it about a year ago when I was on holiday and just had my iPad with me and we wanted to watch stuff on the TV over HDMI - from memory one app worked with Stage Manager and going full screen via the three dots, and a couple other apps I had to turn Stage Manager off because the app behaved really weirdly with it on and then iPad automatically output the video to the full screen.

One thing I noticed though is that the quality of the output to the TV in a couple of the streaming apps wasn't very good. I guess they tune the quality of streaming to iPad with the iPad's 11"-12.9" screen in mind. They don't give you the kind of bitrate that looks good on a big TV. At least when I tried it a year ago they didn't seem to.

Regarding playing content off a hard drive, yep, even using the native player of Files it eats a 1% each 3 minutes, even with the low power mode on. This M2 chip is power hungry…

The M2 chip is not power hungry. You are outputting to an external display while powering an external spinning HDD, while the iPad screen is still on. You are using a dongle to connect the TV and the external HDD already right? Use a dongle that has a USB-C charging port in it and plug that into power.

 

[Populus]

iPads can output up to 7.5w to external devices, and HDDs can use virtually all that power (SSDs suck aroung 4w, with some, like larger Sandisk ones, going over 5w). So the drain is perfectly normal and it has nothing to do with M2. External monitors can also suck a lot of power if they are not battery powered.

Thank you for your respectful reply, that’s my guess as well after giving it a thought or two. I will try with the SSD next time.

 

[Populus]

I used videos on spinning drives with my M1 12.9 and they really sucked power - some would not work unless attached to a powered hub. I switched to 500GB T5 & 1TB T7 SSDs and they have been great.

Okay, then that must be the main power draw. Hopefully SSDs are more efficient in that regard. Thank you.

 

[Populus]

So, all your talk about how the M2 chip is power hungry and not worth it for multimedia, kinda disingenuous, seeing as how the external drive is being powered by the tablet and all...?

I don’t know what disingenuous means, I looked it up, and it says “dishonest”. Not sir, I’m not being dishonest, I’m just reaching conclusions as I read replies and reply myself.

Also, it could be a multi-factorial issue, maybe the M2 draws more power than an M1 at the same time that the external HDD is draining extra power. You know, things aren’t usually as simple, and usually it’s not black or white, although in this case, it seems like the source of the media content, the HDD, could be indeed the culprit of this faster rate of discharge.

 

[MBAir2010]

Air play is designed for watching movies on an ipad.
i tried other way which were annoying so i stuck with airplay.
hoped this helped

 

[Populus]

It depends on the developer and how they implement it. It's a bit of a mess, which is fair enough as Stage Manager is still somewhat new. I tried it about a year ago when I was on holiday and just had my iPad with me and we wanted to watch stuff on the TV over HDMI - from memory one app worked with Stage Manager and going full screen via the three dots, and a couple other apps I had to turn Stage Manager off because the app behaved really weirdly with it on and then iPad automatically output the video to the full screen.

One thing I noticed though is that the quality of the output to the TV in a couple of the streaming apps wasn't very good. I guess they tune the quality of streaming to iPad with the iPad's 11"-12.9" screen in mind. They don't give you the kind of bitrate that looks good on a big TV. At least when I tried it a year ago they didn't seem to.



The M2 chip is not power hungry. You are outputting to an external display while powering an external spinning HDD, while the iPad screen is still on. You are using a dongle to connect the TV and the external HDD already right? Use a dongle that has a USB-C charging port in it and plug that into power.

Thank you for your complete, in-depth, and, most importantly, respectful reply. I hope that little by little, devs start to adopt the different configurations iPadOS offers. And yeah, I’ll connect it to a power source, although from my experience, the dongle doesn’t provide as much power as when directly connected. But it should help.

 

[Populus]

Air play is designed for watching movies on an ipad.
i tried other way which were annoying so i stuck with airplay.
hoped this helped

I don’t have an Apple TV and my TV doesn’t have AirPlay built in. But yea, it seems like an interesting feature. I’m really curious about how does it work, it had to feel like tech magic. It would be nice if the Apple Studio Display had AirPlay.

 

[sparksd]

I don’t have an Apple TV and my TV doesn’t have AirPlay built in. But yea, it seems like an interesting feature. I’m really curious about how does it work, it had to feel like tech magic. It would be nice if the Apple Studio Display had AirPlay.

I've run a USB-C to HDMI cable from my M1 12.9 to either of my 4K TVs, playing videos either stored on my iPad or streamed wirelessly from offline storage using nPlayer and it's worked really well.

 

[teh_hunterer]

Thank you for your complete, in-depth, and, most importantly, respectful reply. I hope that little by little, devs start to adopt the different configurations iPadOS offers. And yeah, I’ll connect it to a power source, although from my experience, the dongle doesn’t provide as much power as when directly connected. But it should help.

A dongle should pass through enough power to power the external drive and at least slowly charge the iPad, so it should be fine. Good luck!

 

[sparksd]

A dongle should pass through enough power to power the external drive and at least slowly charge the iPad, so it should be fine. Good luck!

I agree. With a good hub or dongle and charger, it shouldn't be a problem, even with brightness cranked up.

 

[fw85]

FYI, in iPadOS 17.1 you can now select the iPad's speakers as the audio output when connected to an external display or dock. Just hit the AirPlay button and it's there.

 

[Populus]

FYI, in iPadOS 17.1 you can now select the iPad's speakers as the audio output when connected to an external display or dock. Just hit the AirPlay button and it's there.

Wow! This is great news!! Finally!!!

 

[Digitalguy]

I tried 17.1 last night and in addition to speakers with external displays I have to say they have improved external monitor support quite a bit, now it almosts feels like using Macs or PCs. Still not happy with Stage Manager, especially on the device, I can't resize things as I want, but at least one can work better with an external display

 

[Populus]

I tried 17.1 last night and in addition to speakers with external displays I have to say they have improved external monitor support quite a bit, now it almosts feels like using Macs or PCs. Still not happy with Stage Manager, especially on the device, I can't resize things as I want, but at least one can work better with an external display

Aside from the speakers thing, what did you notice regarding a better external monitor support? Now I’m curious, but I don’t want to install iPadOS 17 yet.