Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I have noticed worse battery life on my 2021 12.9 iPad Pro vs my 2018 12.9 iPad Pro. But I’ve only had it for 5 days and I use a lot with my Magic Keyboard and the Pencil attached.
 
Same issue here. So we should use the iPad Pro 12.9” 2021 for about two weeks and see if battery life improves before complaining to Apple? Why for some, using it for about a week could improve the battery life?
 
Macrumors site and forums is notorious for eating battery, in particular their ad partners. There is a whole thread about it. I was a victim of this, and nothing worked for me, at the end I just paid annual subscription to overcome this issue.


I could literally see the batter % go down every minute before I became a contributor. Also the iPhone was overheating...
 
  • Haha
Reactions: WhySoSerious
Check the battery life to see which apps are the big drain and turn them off if you can. I turned off NordVPN to save on battery life when I'm home. But the real vampire is PDF Expert. I use it a lot and it is by far the biggest hog. Overall, I agree that the battery life of the 12.9 iPad Pro is terrible.
 
How often do you charge the ipad? As I need to charge every other day and I don’t use any keyboard or Apple Pencil. My ipad is just 7 days old.

Also should I use dark mode to increase battery life?
 
Been under the weather lately. So, just lounging around and watching videos all day for two days in a row. Each day easily 10 hours of battery life. I learned long ago the backlighting is the biggest battery hog, so I use auto brightness. I do agree the latest release of 15 seems to have made an improvement. But, I haven’t measured them before to compare directly.
 
Macrumors site and forums is notorious for eating battery, in particular their ad partners. There is a whole thread about it. I was a victim of this, and nothing worked for me, at the end I just paid annual subscription to overcome this issue.


I could literally see the batter % go down every minute before I became a contributor. Also the iPhone was overheating...

me too. Something is definitely up with this site. I installed ad guard and all is well now.

Battery life on mine is fine otherwise. A solid 10 hours.
 
It's not your specific IPAD.
It's an extremely poor battery performance, I don't use the pen or keyboard and the battery doesn't keep up with the charging while I'm streaming news.
( nothing else running in the background)
 
Today picked up a 12.9 wifi iPad Pro 128gb. My 1st Gen Pro needed to be charged 2x a day now and getting hot with usage. I used to get 2 days out of a charge, that was reading news, light surfing, & email. Rarely any video. So figured battery was going and it was time to upgrade after 7 good years.

This new one lost 50% on it's first charge in 4 hours. Most of that time was spent verifying settings and background restore of iCloud backup (about 40GB of stuff) from my Gen1. This Gen5 has lots of nice feature but the battery life leaves me feeling like I should have done a battery replacement on the Gen1 instead of getting this nice new device. Looking forward to the claimed improvements after a week of use.
 
It's not your specific IPAD.
It's an extremely poor battery performance, I don't use the pen or keyboard and the battery doesn't keep up with the charging while I'm streaming news.
( nothing else running in the background)

That's really odd. My 2021 12.9 - when I'm streaming multimedia - e.g., Netflix or Prime video - at 100% brightness it will remain at 100% charge (or will continue to charge) if plugged in.
 
I was having kinda meh battery life for a bit, never bad but just kinda meh. I forget which update but one of the iPadOS 15 updates gave me much better battery life again.
 
I found the culprit for my issue and it was iCloud sync for Contacts, turning it off in iCloud > all apps stopped the drain.
It was particularly hard to diagnose as it didn't show up in Battery Status, but I found network activity through my router and through process of elimination found it was Contacts having a issue Syncing using iCloud.
 
I found the culprit for my issue and it was iCloud sync for Contacts, turning it off in iCloud > all apps stopped the drain.
It was particularly hard to diagnose as it didn't show up in Battery Status, but I found network activity through my router and through process of elimination found it was Contacts having a issue Syncing using iCloud.
Interesting.. What version of iPad OS are you running? I just picked up a 12.9 M1 (15.7.1) and on it's first full charge I'm at 5hrs SOT at 50%. Seems acceptable to me and definitely better than what I was seeing on my 5yr old Air2.
 
Last edited:
Interesting.. What version of iPad OS are you running? I just picked up a 12.9 M1 (15.7.1) and on it's first full charge I'm at 5hrs SOT at 50%. Seems acceptable to me and definitely better than what I was seeing on my 5yr old Air2.
I wonder whether the 12.9-inch’s battery life is any different to the 11-inch. I’ve only used the 11-inch Air 5, but I’ve never had a 12.9.
 
Interesting.. What version of iPad OS are you running? I just picked up a 12.9 M1 (15.7.1) and on it's first full charge I'm at 5hrs SOT at 50%. Seems acceptable to me and definitely better than what I was seeing on my 5yr old Air2.
latest, 16.1.1
 
  • Like
Reactions: BugeyeSTI
I recently bought an iPad Pro 12.9 M1. Apart from being a little annoyed by the edge shadow, I was initially happy.
However the battery life seems rather poor. As an example, browsing the web with both Safari or Brave will use 1% every few minutes. Sometimes even more.

I found a Youtube video comparing an 11 inch M1 with last years for battery tests with some pretty demanding tasks and the guy manages 7hrs 28 minutes on the 11 inch M1. As part of the test he used a 10 hour jungle sounds video on Youtube. I took this video and played it from 100% until flat with the volume at 0 like him. I managed 5hrs 12 minutes which seems very bad considering the 12.9 has a larger battery and I didn't do any of the demanding tasks he did such as exporting 4k video or gaming.

I am getting a replacement tomorrow in the hope it is just bad luck. What is everyone else's experience with the 12.9?

The Youtube video for reference. Final word to say I did a hard reset, removed all background tasks etc.
Side note, YouTubers have shown thru battery testing that the M1 11 inch outperforms the M1 12.9 in by a sizable margin. Considering the larger screen and the mini-leds this is to be expected despite the larger battery.
 
  • Like
Reactions: VaruLV
Side note, YouTubers have shown thru battery testing that the M1 11 inch outperforms the M1 12.9 in by a sizable margin. Considering the larger screen and the mini-leds this is to be expected despite the larger battery.
Is the 11-inch still better with lighter use? I assume YouTube tests are made with heavy use, high brightness, and everything on, which would obviously favour the smaller screen, due to reduced power consumption.
 
I am also having poor battery life on my 5th generation 12.9 iPad Pro. I dropped from 100% to 8% in two hours and all I have been doing is reading articles on the internet and newspapers through PressReader. I do have screen at 90%, but it seems like I used to get a lot better battery life. Strange.
 
I think if CPU makes that big a difference and the iPad's getting hot, then the problem is likely a rogue process running in the background.

Personally, I get more than 10 hours battery with my usage and settings. Indeed, the M1 12.9 has the best battery life I've seen on a Pro model (compared to Pro 9.7, Pro 10.5, 2017 Pro 12.9 and 2018 Pro 12.9).
Which settings do you use to help with this. I just got one a week ago and am noticing it getting oddly hot and pretty poor battery. Worse battery than my 3 year old iPad Air
 
The one thing that will drain your battery the most is having your screen brightness cranked all the way up. I have tried 75% brightness and 50% and the difference in battery life is substantial!
 
If you run out of battery before the end of the day, then sell it and buy a M2 MacBook Air.
 
I recently bought an iPad Pro 12.9 M1. Apart from being a little annoyed by the edge shadow, I was initially happy.
However the battery life seems rather poor. As an example, browsing the web with both Safari or Brave will use 1% every few minutes. Sometimes even more.

I found a Youtube video comparing an 11 inch M1 with last years for battery tests with some pretty demanding tasks and the guy manages 7hrs 28 minutes on the 11 inch M1. As part of the test he used a 10 hour jungle sounds video on Youtube. I took this video and played it from 100% until flat with the volume at 0 like him. I managed 5hrs 12 minutes which seems very bad considering the 12.9 has a larger battery and I didn't do any of the demanding tasks he did such as exporting 4k video or gaming.

I am getting a replacement tomorrow in the hope it is just bad luck. What is everyone else's experience with the 12.9?

The Youtube video for reference. Final word to say I did a hard reset, removed all background tasks etc.

With web browsing, my M1 12.9 iPad Pro can get 7-10 hours depending how heavy the websites are. So 1% every few minutes seems quite excessive.
 
The one thing that will drain your battery the most is having your screen brightness cranked all the way up. I have tried 75% brightness and 50% and the difference in battery life is substantial!
That does make a big difference. I prefer to run my iPad 12.9 Pro at 100 percent brightness in the day and it just kills battery life. Seems like it has gotten worse though lately.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.