3.5 Years Later, Air 2 Battery Still Sucks

[puma1552]

My Air 2 has never had a great battery, I have NEVER got the advertised 10 hours or even close, 7.5 if extremely lucky with half brightness, bluetooth off, and everything else optimized for battery life. For the first time ever I just now plugged it into Coconut Battery and its at 75% capacity after just 321 cycles. Figures, should've done something about it a long time ago. Oh well.

/rant

 

[BugeyeSTI]

That's too bad, my Air2 has always gotten at least 10 hours on a charge.. Apple has a battery replacement available for $99... https://support.apple.com/ipad/repair/service

 

[JPack]

The Air 2 has 16% lower display power efficiency compared to iPad Air.

Then, consider that Apple also decreased the Whr rating of the battery by 20% from 32.9 (Air) to 27.6 (Air 2).

It's no surprise Apple went back to the original Air design for 2017 and 2018 as most consumers are using their tablet at home for entertainment where weight isn't a concern and battery life is appreciated.

 

[puma1552]

That's too bad, my Air2 has always gotten at least 10 hours on a charge.. Apple has a battery replacement available for $99... https://support.apple.com/ipad/repair/service

Thanks, but at this point I'm just going to buy a new one at some point instead...sort of sick and tired of staring at chamfered edges like it's still 2012 though, going to wait until they put some real effort into a redesign.

 

[puma1552]

screen at 40% brightness, 3 tabs in safari, all other apps killed, ram reset, ipad restarted, on 11.3

doesnt get much worse than this

 

[cwerdna]

Your title's a bit odd. Did you expect it to somehow get better after 3.5 years? The battery's degraded a bunch compared to new, so all else being equal, it's going to just decline over time.

Apple discontinued the Air 2 over a year ago...

 

[FeliApple]

screen at 40% brightness, 3 tabs in safari, all other apps killed, ram reset, ipad restarted, on 11.3

doesnt get much worse than this

If it was always that low, you might have to consider that it might have been a failed battery from the factory. 4 hours using Safari at 40% is far too low. I had an iPad 4 with 700 cycles and 77% battery health that was getting 14 hours at 20% brightness using Safari without an issue. My 9.7 Pro (with a battery comparable to the Air 2 and far smaller than the one on the iPad 4) gets 13 hours on Safari without issues. Granted, at 20% brightness, but it still shouldn't be that low.
About the capacity, it's too low, yes. As I said, I had 77% with 700 cycles in 4 years. It probably is a flawed battery.

 

[puma1552]

Your title's a bit odd. Did you expect it to somehow get better after 3.5 years? The battery's degraded a bunch compared to new, so all else being equal, it's going to just decline over time.

Apple discontinued the Air 2 over a year ago...

No, I just needed a catchy title to complain.

 

[fokmik]

Your battery seems to have some problems
With safari i always got over 10 hours

 

[Sunshoopa]

My friend also had his iPad Air 2 battery do the same. He’d get barely 4 hours of usage out of it and I was like I get 9-10 hours of battery on my regular Air.

I got a feeling there was pretty many cases of Air 2 batteries losing a lot of capacity compared to other models.

 

[rui no onna]

My friend also had his iPad Air 2 battery do the same. He’d get barely 4 hours of usage out of it and I was like I get 9-10 hours of battery on my regular Air.

I got a feeling there was pretty many cases of Air 2 batteries losing a lot of capacity compared to other models.

The Air 2 and Pro 9.7 have the lowest battery capacities among the 9.7" retina iPads. They've only got 27.3 Wh compared to the whopping 42.5 Wh on the iPad 3 and 4. The longer the battery lasts between charges, the less often it needs charging so less charge cycles which contributes to battery health. The iPad 3 at 4 years old actually had better battery life compared to my then brand new iPad Pro 9.7.

Personally, until the 2017 iPad I haven't seen an iPad that could hold a candle to the iPad 4's battery life. Mind, unless it's heavily used for gaming at max brightness, 4 hours is too low even for the Air 2.

I usually keep brightness between 0-25% and I get the following onscreen time (mostly reading, black text on sepia background, wifi and bluetooth on).

iPad 4 (iOS 6) 16+ hours
iPad Air ~12 hours
iPad Air 2 ~10 hours
iPad Pro 9.7 ~10 hours
iPad 5th gen 16+ hours

 

[FeliApple]

The Air 2 and Pro 9.7 have the lowest battery capacities among the 9.7" retina iPads. They've only got 27.3 Wh compared to the whopping 42.5 Wh on the iPad 3 and 4. The longer the battery lasts between charges, the less often it needs charging so less charge cycles which contributes to battery health. The iPad 3 at 4 years old actually had better battery life compared to my then brand new iPad Pro 9.7.

Personally, until the 2017 iPad I haven't seen an iPad that could hold a candle to the iPad 4's battery life. Mind, unless it's heavily used for gaming at max brightness, 4 hours is too low even for the Air 2.

I usually keep brightness between 0-25% and I get the following onscreen time (mostly reading, black text on sepia background, wifi and bluetooth on).

iPad 4 (iOS 6) 16+ hours
iPad Air ~12 hours
iPad Air 2 ~10 hours
iPad Pro 9.7 ~10 hours
iPad 5th gen 16+ hours

You made me want the iPad 5th gen now. I was amazed by the battery life of the iPad 4. My Pro 9.7 gets 14 hours with same usage my 4 got 16. I didn't find it to be as low as 6 hours less, but a good 2 hours less at least. Even more sometimes.

 

[rui no onna]

You made me want the iPad 5th gen now. I was amazed by the battery life of the iPad 4. My Pro 9.7 gets 14 hours with same usage my 4 got 16. I didn't find it to be as low as 6 hours less, but a good 2 hours less at least. Even more sometimes.

Lol, I do wonder how the iPad 6th gen compares to 5th gen considering it has the A10 Fusion with 2 low power cores. That would be interesting to see and I'm tempted to get one just for that.

We've got 2x iPP 9.7 LTE in the household and it's the same scenario on both. Both iPad 3 and 4 were LTE models, too. Would've actually been better if that second iPP 9.7 was a 5th gen. Alas, it hadn't been released at the time of purchase, the Air 2 LTE was very close in price with less storage and the iPad 3 on iOS 6 was extremely limited while updating it to iOS 9 would've made it too slow.