All iPads 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB does it slow down your device if you fill it up ?

[max2]

Do SSD or whatever storage iPads use slow down if you use all of the storage like SSDs in computers ?

 

[appltech]

One would have to test it to make sure, but when looking for reasons why a phone/tablet is slow one of the common tips is to erase "other storage", clean up duplicated files, etc

 

[secretk]

My iPad Pro is 512 GB and is far from full (it has like 200 GB full) so I cannot tell you about 512 GB. I have a 6th gen iPad that had 98 GB fill out of 128 GB storage. It was behaving rather badly once I upgraded to iPadOS 15. I decided to delete apps that I no longer use (it was like 20-30 apps). I did not free a lot of storage (just 5 GB) but I do see improvement. My iPad is less lagging now and reloads tabs and apps less often compared to before. I cannot say if this is a coincidence or not.

 

[Rafterman]

Only when you connect it to a computer. Then it can take the 2TB, when full, 30 seconds for iTunes or the TV app to load. But during use, I never noticed a slowdown.

 

[BR3W]

It slows down write speeds, but I've never read (or experienced) it slows down read speeds. In everyday usage consisting mainly of reads with minimal writes, I don't know how much degradation a typical end-user would experience. The explanation hinges on the technical details of how flash functions but most importantly for us is that it's best to maintain a <70-80% capacity level. Not only does it slow the writes down by about 10x--but again, whether an everyday user experiences this slowdown since NVMEs are multiples faster than SSD, which are themselves multiples faster than spinning drives, is questionable--it also shortens the lifespan of the flash media, which has a finite amount of writes.

The silver-haired among us might remember when 3.5" SSDs were new and OS X couldn't handle TRIM correctly (and didn't know the drive it was on was an SSD) and would subsequently slow down until we instigated the drive's garbage collection manually (usually by booting into Windows/Linux). That was about ten years ago if I'm remembering correctly so I'm having to dust some cobwebs off the corners of my brain. 🙂

 

[DeepIn2U]

Not sure about recent systems - iPads/iPhones but on an OG iPhone SE 32GB I had just fall of last year, with under 500MB free space the iPhone was incredibly slow - and this is just using apps.

That said like @BL4zD stated doesn't affect reading information.
Pulling up Contacts, existing saved pictures, alarms (already set to initiating the clock), calls and most SMS was not affected for performance. Listing to Music (locally stored not Apple Music) also not affected.
Social media apps constantly write to the storage via the streams of info being cached (written on device) - so those were immediately deleted by me.

Since the OS segments off part of the storage for itself, its' still shared storage.

 

[YanniDepp]

In desktop computers it’s generally considered a good idea to keep your storage at least 10% free. Gives the OS some room to breathe and move stuff around and store temporary files if it needs to.

I’d probably consider it good advice to do likewise on an iPad.

 

[rui no onna]

In desktop computers it’s generally considered a good idea to keep your storage at least 10% free. Gives the OS some room to breathe and move stuff around and store temporary files if it needs to.

I’d probably consider it good advice to do likewise on an iPad.

I think Apple actually likes to keep free space at 20%.

I have iCloud Photos set to Download and Keep Originals and it used to give me "not enough space for syncing" messages on the Air 2 128GB and Pro 9.7 256GB whenever free space dropped below 20%.

 

[LogicalApex]

Yes, it would slow down once it is full compared to when it has some space available.

One of the major reasons solid state storage is able to perform very quickly is it can run concurrent operations in parallel. The extra space allows the controller to spread the load across various portions of the NAND and to ensure more operations can occur in parallel. It is a natural reality of solid state storage.