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iPad Pro iPad Pro M4 Standby Battery

mansplains

mansplains

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 8, 2021
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Howdy,

My wife's been eyeing the iPad Pro M4 to replace her iPad Air M1. She's interested in a variety of aspects this upgrade would constitute, but standby battery was an odd point I didn't think of. My last iPad was an iPad Pro 12.9" 2nd Gen, which had amazing standby time. I was surprised to find that her Air standby is lacking. To be fair, it is a cellular model, but it hasn't had service for most of its life.

To iPad Pro M4 owners, what is your standby time like? What about cellular users? She would pick an 11", likely wifi this time, but I'm curious about the 13" myself. I imagine the OLED helps battery life in-use, but I wouldn't think it makes a difference in standby (it's not an AOD after all).
 
Sounds promising. Something I left out of OP, it is pretty annoying when you want to use your device and realize it's dead. Much like booting up Steam and psych there's a 100GB update.
 
mansplains said:
Sounds promising. Something I left out of OP, it is pretty annoying when you want to use your device and realize it's dead. Much like booting up Steam and psych there's a 100GB update.
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Agree. My cellular Mini 6 on the other hand has poor standby time - it loses several percent/night on WiFi, cellular off. I find in-use battery life on the M4 to be quite good.
 
sparksd said:
Agree. My cellular Mini 6 on the other hand has poor standby time - it loses several percent/night on WiFi, cellular off. I find in-use battery life on the M4 to be quite good.
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Good to know as well. I'm eyeing a mini 7, if it ever releases. Hopefully it will address some battery concerns, although physics gonna physics when it comes to battery size.
 
mansplains said:
Good to know as well. I'm eyeing a mini 7, if it ever releases. Hopefully it will address some battery concerns, although physics gonna physics when it comes to battery size.
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I usually keep it active on WiFi but it can lose up to 10% overnight and the usage monitor doesn't show anything actively running. But on Airplane mode, it will drop to just a couple of percent. Battery usage in use on just WiFi is fairly high, too - but as you say, battery size + display size ...
 
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Do you leave it on the Magic Keyboard? Big drain too on my M4. Almost negligible when detached, not sure the cause for such as difference.
 
Ok, and just to clarify when I say “big drain” I mean only about 5-6% vs off the keyboard it might be 1-2%
 
There doesn't appear to be any standby battery drain on my cellular M413 at all, with MKB closed and cellular (all) networks disabled.
 
A bit off topic, but I have a mini 6 and it's stand by time is 24 hour or less from a full charge. Doesn't seem normal to me. This is even turning it on airplane mode. Anyone have similar experiences?
 
sparksd said:
Agree. My cellular Mini 6 on the other hand has poor standby time - it loses several percent/night on WiFi, cellular off.
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My Mini 6 is the same.

Enabling airplane mode greatly improved standby battery life. It would lose anywhere from 15-50% per day on standby with low power mode enabled when connected to a network (either wifi or cellular). When it’s totally offline, it only loses 1-5% per day even when I don’t use low power mode. I guess there are too many background processes phoning home on latest iOS.

Another thing, I have two iCloud accounts: main and beta testing. I’ve noticed the devices on my main account (thousands of iMessages, photos, etc) have higher standby drain than the devices on my beta account (barely has anything).
 
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I see the same in airplane mode. What is confusing to me is that my Mini 6 is set up virtually exactly the same as my 13" Pro (and as my M1 12.9 was) but the Pro will see only 1% drain under the same standby conditions under which the Mini drains at least 10% (both on WiFi enabled).
 
What a good time to stumble upon this post. I just upgraded from m1 to m4. Couldn’t believe the increase in standby time over night unplugged.
 
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Not exactly sure why standby time is that important. At night I turn my 11" M4 off. When I pick it up to use it I hold the power button and since they boot so fast by the time I am settled in it's ready to go. Additional benefit is that it results with less useage battery life should be better.
 
ctg7w6 said:
What a good time to stumble upon this post. I just upgraded from m1 to m4. Couldn’t believe the increase in standby time over night unplugged
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Have yours been cellular models? My 5G M1 Air has had awful standby battery since I first bought it, often picking it up to find it’s died since I last used it.
 
11” M4 Cellular here… when I first got it, I restored it from a backup of an M1 Pro and the standby battery life was pretty awful… I don’t remember the exact percentages but it was probably 15-20% overnight.

Eventually I wiped it and set it up as new, and the drain completely went away. Now it’s >5% per night. So for anyone experiencing high standby power loss, that could be worth trying.
 
My M4 13" will drain ~1-2% overnight while attached to the Magic Keyboard, both on 17.6.1 and more recently iOS 18 b6
 
HDFan said:
Not exactly sure why standby time is that important. At night I turn my 11" M4 off. When I pick it up to use it I hold the power button and since they boot so fast by the time I am settled in it's ready to go. Additional benefit is that it results with less useage battery life should be better.
Click to expand...
Higher standby allows you to pick it up and go without worrying about needing to charge while out and about. That said, do you experience any battery difference between power off and boot the following day?
 
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