iPad mini short battery life (is there a standardized battery test?)

I have had an iPad mini for about three weeks now and I have a very subjective feeling its battery life is very disappointing. I'm trying to rationalize and refute this subjective feeling, but with no success so far. I switched to the mini from a 3rd Gen iPad which is notoriously the most battery-hungry and it seems the mini lasts much less with doing exactly the same tasks I always do on an iPad - web, email, facebook, music in the background, and occasional gaming. I know that 3D games drain the battery really fast but to me it seems as if the battery drained as quickly when performing "standard" tasks. I also mostly use 100% screen brightness in daylight, and although I realize that that drains the battery a lot, I did the same on the Retina iPad and it lasted much longer still. Today I started using the iPad just before 11 o'clock, now it's 2 PM where I'm located and the battery is at 40% (100% brightness, using just Music, Safari, Mail, WiFi only). Is it normal? Is there an objective test that I can do with the iPad and compare the battery performance with some sort of a reference? I have been searching for something like that but to no avail. I'll be very thankful for any help and comments.

Yeah, I'm thinking about doing that next week. I just wanted to ask to rule out any possibility it's my fault and not the device's.

It's strange, but on my iPhone I'm always at 50% brightness (or even way below) unless I'm in very bright sunlight and it looks great to me but on iPads, most of the time anything below 100% seems too dark to me, all the smudges and fingerprints are visible, etc. I think I have to "reset" my brain and eyes. Tomorrow I'll try to set the brightness slider on the iPad mini halfway down and see how long the battery lasts then. I'll post my results.

bursthead said:

Did you restore from your ipad 3 backup. I was having issues with my mini when i had restored from my ipad 3 backup. My ipad would freeze and crash constantly. After restoring and setting it up as a new ipad, it fixed all my problems. Try that before you head to the apple store.

Click to expand...

Funny you should mention that. Yes, first I restored it from my iPad 3 backup and I indeed ended up with issues, it ran slowly and occasionally froze and some apps ran weird (such as GTA Vice City, which had a completely messed up UI). So I wiped the mini (using iTunes, so the software gets completely overwritten) and set it up anew. The issues indeed disappeared, save the perceived battery problems, that is.

But I'm getting closer to a conclusion that it really is because of my excessive brightness. I'm now at 50% with auto brightness turned on, have been using it constantly for over an hour (including a 23 minute FaceTime call) and I'm at 90%. Which is fine, isn't it?