All iPads Who is daily driving an older ipad on iOS 15?

[Ghost31]

Curious. I got a bit of a challenge to myself that I just decided on recently to keep my 2020 iPad Pro as long as humanly possible before upgrading next as a matter of getting the most value out of the products I buy. I always buy new every single year and the older I get the more it just seems like a waste.

For those rocking older iPads, how’s iOS 15 treating ya? Battery? Still happy?

 

[danny842003]

I’ve got a launch day iPad Pro 10.5 and it’s fine.

 

[radow]

Had been rocking an iPad 6th gen, iPadOS 15 behaves pretty much like iPadOS 14, which behaves like 13. I’d say that iOS/iPadOS 13 significantly raised the bar up, noticeably slower on 2GB RAM iDevices. Still occasionally lag observed on 4GB RAM devices like Air 4 and mini 6, but it’s much better and just fine for daily use.

 

[rui no onna]

Curious. I got a bit of a challenge to myself that I just decided on recently to keep my 2020 iPad Pro as long as humanly possible before upgrading next as a matter of getting the most value out of the products I buy. I always buy new every single year and the older I get the more it just seems like a waste.

For those rocking older iPads, how’s iOS 15 treating ya? Battery? Still happy?

iPad 7th gen (A10/3GB RAM) here used for beta testing. Device was released in 2019 but the chipset itself is already 5 years old. Works OK but definitely experiencing more reloads on 15 compared to 13/14. Battery life seems to have remained the same.

Of course, the iPad's on a separate dummy iCloud account so there's not much data syncing going on (maybe a hundred screenshots and a handful of files and notes on iCloud). Perhaps performance would be worse if I were using my primary iCloud account.

Mind, I stopped with yearly upgrades after 2017. The sticker shock was too much.

$1229 2017 12.9 512GB LTE

$1899 2018 12.9 1TB LTE

 

[1BadManVan]

I wouldn’t really call a 2020 iPad Pro an “older iPad” lol. It won’t have any issues running any iPadOS for the next few years I’m sure.

 

[Richard8655]

About to upgrade my 2 iPad 5th generations to 15. We'll see how they'll perform. But I think Apple has learned how to manage older iPads with the latest OS releases based on past disastrous outcomes. I continue to rock and roll with my iPad 5's with no plans for device upgrade as they still perform perfectly.

 

[1BadManVan]

About to upgrade my 2 iPad 5th generations to 15. We'll see how they'll perform. But I think Apple has learned how to manage older iPads with the latest OS releases based on past disastrous outcomes. I continue to rock and roll with my iPad 5's with no plans for device upgrade as they still perform perfectly.

It’s definitely more glitchy. I have a 6s plus which is the same internals . Still usable but not as smooth

 

[TheRealAlex]

Launch Day 11” 2018 iPad Pro…….wake me up when there’s a new feature it doesn’t get.

 

[1BadManVan]

Launch Day 11” 2018 iPad Pro…….wake me up when there’s a new feature it doesn’t get.

LiDAR Scanner and ultra wide! Boom *mic drop*

 

[Richard8655]

It’s definitely more glitchy. I have a 6s plus which is the same internals . Still usable but not as smooth

Good to know, thanks. Might hold off for a while. Under 14 it's still relatively zippy.

 

[Dented]

My 2017 iPad Pro is still rock solid on it. Haven’t had any complaints from wife about her 7th gen iPad (A10 to my A10X) either.

 

[secretk]

I have iPadOS 15 installed on the 6th generation iPad while my 2018 iPP is on iPadOs 14. Honestly for me the 6th generation iPad is unusable on iPadOS 15. It reloads apps and tabs like crazy. Forget about reloading something in the background. I will be on Safari reading something and the tab would get reloaded or I will see a message that loading was broken due to error. Books app will reload every 3-4 minutes. Podcast app will need 30 seconds to resume playing a podcast. Sometimes even a minute or two. It might even force shut down on its own and I might have to re-open it.

Initially I had thought to gift this iPad to my mother but she won't have the patience for that.

 

[Richard8655]

I have iPadOS 15 installed on the 6th generation iPad while my 2018 iPP is on iPadOs 14. Honestly for me the 6th generation iPad is unusable on iPadOS 15. It reloads apps and tabs like crazy. Forget about reloading something in the background. I will be on Safari reading something and the tab would get reloaded or I will see a message that loading was broken due to error. Books app will reload every 3-4 minutes. Podcast app will need 30 seconds to resume playing a podcast. Sometimes even a minute or two. It might even force shut down on its own and I might have to re-open it.

Initially I had thought to gift this iPad to my mother but she won't have the patience for that.

That bad? Wow. That's with the A10 chip. I can only imagine running on A9 with iPad 5. Good info, thanks.

 

[secretk]

That bad? Wow. That's with the A10 chip. I can only imagine running on A9 with iPad 5. Good info, thanks.

For my usage it is really bad. I just had to restart the iPad as it would consistently refuse to load the Macrumors iPad forum page.

For comparison I usually have around 10 tabs open in Safari. I also use Facebook Messenger and Skype for chatting with friends. And I regularly use Youtube and Podcasts app.

I am not sure that it is because of A10. I think the issue is that the iPad has just 2 GB RAM and this is just not enough.

 

[RayB4]

Got an iPad 6. On IOS 15 I’ve found that a very few websites load a bit slower, Google being the main culprit, but the battery seems to be performing better. So no problems to worry about.

 

[BenTrovato]

A10x on 15 has been outstanding for me, still a joy to use. iPhone XS A12 on 15 has been laggy and noticeably slower than 14.

 

[1BadManVan]

That bad? Wow. That's with the A10 chip. I can only imagine running on A9 with iPad 5. Good info, thanks.

I have a 6th gen in my house and it’s definitely a nicer experience than the A9 6s plus. My wife uses it everyday running iPadOS 15.1 without much issue

 

[rui no onna]

For my usage it is really bad. I just had to restart the iPad as it would consistently refuse to load the Macrumors iPad forum page.

For comparison I usually have around 10 tabs open in Safari. I also use Facebook Messenger and Skype for chatting with friends. And I regularly use Youtube and Podcasts app.

I am not sure that it is because of A10. I think the issue is that the iPad has just 2 GB RAM and this is just not enough.

Agreed. I have the 7th gen (A10/3GB) and while it's worse than 14, I don't feel the situation is as bad as what you've described with the 6th gen. The early 15 betas, I definitely had issues with active webpages crashing but I haven't really experienced that again on later betas.

Mind, I generally just have Safari (with tons of tabs), Messages and my ebook/comic reading apps open on the 7th gen. I mostly just use it for single-focus apps. No multitasking required. I find it too small for multitasking anyway (prefer the 12.9 for that).

 

[secretk]

Agreed. I have the 7th gen (A10/3GB) and while it's worse than 14, I don't feel the situation is as bad as what you've described with the 6th gen. The early 15 betas, I definitely had issues with active webpages crashing but I haven't really experienced that again on later betas.

Thanks for reporting on how it behaves with 3 GB RAM!

Mind, I generally just have Safari (with tons of tabs), Messages and my ebook/comic reading apps open on the 7th gen. I mostly just use it for single-focus apps. No multitasking required. I find it too small for multitasking anyway (prefer the 12.9 for that).

I am trying to moderate my usage. I do more with my iPP 11 inch but I know that this iPad cannot handle it. I actually would open regularly more than 20-30 apps and would have huge Notability notebooks (around 500 pages).

So what I describe is not so much how I usually use my devices but how I use this one specifically so that the experience is at least somewhat bearable. If we are talking about my real needs then this iPad is just not cutting it at all.

 

[Richard8655]

All good info. Will likely just stay on the last version of 14 (14.8.1) on my iPad 5. Mixed feedback results with iPad 6 from comments here, but likely improved performance odds than iPad 5.

 

[NoBoMac]

For comparison I usually have around 10 tabs open in Safari. I also use Facebook Messenger and Skype for chatting with friends. And I regularly use Youtube and Podcasts app.

I am not sure that it is because of A10. I think the issue is that the iPad has just 2 GB RAM and this is just not enough.

Guess... Safari bad memory management.

Have seen the "page reloaded due to error" error for years now. Usually see if after a few days and watching a fair number of Youtube videos, otherwise everything else works fine. "Solution" is to reboot the device and things run smoothly in Safari for a few more days and more Youtubes.

Force quitting Safari sometimes works for a while, but eventually gets to the point only a reboot clears things up.

And I'm not a big tab user: at most maybe 5-10 open and they are not kept open for long.

 

[secretk]

Guess... Safari bad memory management.

Have seen the "page reloaded due to error" error for years now. Usually see if after a few days and watching a fair number of Youtube videos, otherwise everything else works fine. "Solution" is to reboot the device and things run smoothly in Safari for a few more days and more Youtubes.

Force quitting Safari sometimes works for a while, but eventually gets to the point only a reboot clears things up.

And I'm not a big tab user: at most maybe 5-10 open and they are not kept open for long.

Thanks for sharing your experience! Indeed reboot helps for few days. Then issue start again. I guess I will have to reboot more often.

 

[rui no onna]

Guess... Safari bad memory management.

Have seen the "page reloaded due to error" error for years now. Usually see if after a few days and watching a fair number of Youtube videos, otherwise everything else works fine. "Solution" is to reboot the device and things run smoothly in Safari for a few more days and more Youtubes.

Force quitting Safari sometimes works for a while, but eventually gets to the point only a reboot clears things up.

And I'm not a big tab user: at most maybe 5-10 open and they are not kept open for long.

This is an issue I experienced frequently with the 2017 iPad Pro 12.9 (and to a lesser extent, 10.5) after upgrading from iOS 12 to 13. I'd need to reboot 2-3x a week to get things running normally again.

 

[Ghost31]

I wouldn’t really call a 2020 iPad Pro an “older iPad” lol. It won’t have any issues running any iPadOS for the next few years I’m sure.

I didn’t say it was an older iPad. I said I wanted to keep it as long as I could and asked others how their older iPads were running.

 

[Rodan52]

Honestly for me the 6th generation iPad is unusable on iPadOS 15

Interesting I have the opposite experience. No doubting what you say about your iPad but could it be attributed to some other issue? As you were thinking of giving it away why not try resetting to factory settings, set up as a new iPad, only load the native apps and try again? If you backup first you can always restore to your backup if the problem is fixed.