iPad Pro Battery drains very quickly.

[I7guy]

I put back full screen app mode on my IPP M5 and anecdotally that seems to have helped with my battery drain.

 

[FeliApple]

I put back full screen app mode on my IPP M5 and anecdotally that seems to have helped with my battery drain.

How’s standby drain on the M5 versus older iPads? My A16 is beyond amazing, but my Air 5 like I said is rather poor by my standards. Is the M5 like the M1?

I’m also not sure how much of a factor is iPadOS 26. Like I said, standby being poor seems update-independent. Even with maximum efficiency, some devices on original iOS versions struggle. Both my iPhone Xʀ on iOS 12 and my Air 5 (M1) on iPadOS 15 have always been rather poor when compared to both older AND newer devices.

I don’t know why. I’ve never found a solution or a reason.

Is it M-series iPads? OP mentioned 11% overnight on the M5, another user mentioned 15% overnight on an M2, another 20% on an M1.

I’ve never left the Pencil attached, but I reckon that my Air 5 would be appalling, considering that it’s already pretty poor even with maximum efficiency and on iPadOS 15. There’s no more optimisation to be done. Honestly? It should drop 1% every 24 hours at most. I might run a 24-hour test at some point, but it shouldn’t be more than 1%.

 

[sparksd]

How’s standby drain on the M5 versus older iPads? My A16 is beyond amazing, but my Air 5 like I said is rather poor by my standards. Is the M5 like the M1?

I’m also not sure how much of a factor is iPadOS 26. Like I said, standby being poor seems update-independent. Even with maximum efficiency, some devices on original iOS versions struggle. Both my iPhone Xʀ on iOS 12 and my Air 5 (M1) on iPadOS 15 have always been rather poor when compared to both older AND newer devices.

I don’t know why. I’ve never found a solution or a reason.

Is it M-series iPads? OP mentioned 11% overnight on the M5, another user mentioned 15% overnight on an M2, another 20% on an M1.

I’ve never left the Pencil attached, but I reckon that my Air 5 would be appalling, considering that it’s already pretty poor even with maximum efficiency and on iPadOS 15. There’s no more optimisation to be done. Honestly? It should drop 1% every 24 hours at most. I might run a 24-hour test at some point, but it shouldn’t be more than 1%.

My 13" M5 Pro has very little standby drain - if I leave it at 100% in the evening, it will be at 100 or 99 the next morning.

 

[I7guy]

How’s standby drain on the M5 versus older iPads? My A16 is beyond amazing, but my Air 5 like I said is rather poor by my standards. Is the M5 like the M1?

I’m also not sure how much of a factor is iPadOS 26. Like I said, standby being poor seems update-independent. Even with maximum efficiency, some devices on original iOS versions struggle. Both my iPhone Xʀ on iOS 12 and my Air 5 (M1) on iPadOS 15 have always been rather poor when compared to both older AND newer devices.

I don’t know why. I’ve never found a solution or a reason.

Is it M-series iPads? OP mentioned 11% overnight on the M5, another user mentioned 15% overnight on an M2, another 20% on an M1.

I’ve never left the Pencil attached, but I reckon that my Air 5 would be appalling, considering that it’s already pretty poor even with maximum efficiency and on iPadOS 15. There’s no more optimisation to be done. Honestly? It should drop 1% every 24 hours at most. I might run a 24-hour test at some point, but it shouldn’t be more than 1%.

Standby is much better without windowed mode, for reasons I can only guess at. I close all open windows and shut the magnetic cover. Drain is about 1%. I do not put it in low power mode but I’m going to try it. Seems like I shouldn’t have to though.

I don’t have a pencil and I also will turn off Bluetooth and see if that makes a difference.

 

[FeliApple]

My 13" M5 Pro has very little standby drain - if I leave it at 100% in the evening, it will be at 100 or 99 the next morning.

Even 99% overnight would be poor. The first percentage point is equivalent to about 7-8 percentage points (takes 7-8 times more to drop than every other percentage point). Assuming “overnight” to be 8 hours, it shouldn’t drop from 100%.

 

[FeliApple]

Standby is much better without windowed mode, for reasons I can only guess at. I close all open windows and shut the magnetic cover. Drain is about 1%. I do not put it in low power mode but I’m going to try it. Seems like I shouldn’t have to though.

I don’t have a pencil and I also will turn off Bluetooth and see if that makes a difference.

1% overnight assuming it’s not the 100-99% percentage point sounds good, I don’t think you even need to use LPM if that’s the drop you get. It will drop at some point regardless of how good it is. If I leave my 11th-gen iPad on standby it will drop at some point, even from 100%. It takes a while, but it’s inevitable.

The issue is when it significantly affects overall battery life. If 24 hours of standby (or even 30, or 35) impact the cycle meaningfully, something is wrong, imo. And in my experience, if the device and the iOS version combo is inefficient, there’s no solution. I have my Air 5 on Airplane mode and with LPM enabled, every setting is off. It’s still worse than what I’d expect or want.

If 35 hours of standby drain 10%, it’s horrible. As I see it, reasonable standby times (so, not 10 days long), should affect overall battery life very little. Say I get 7 hours of SOT to 50%. I can tolerate it dropping to 6.5 hours due to 35 hours of standby, maybe 6h 20 min. But not more than that. iOS has always been a standby king, especially on original iOS versions. It just can’t be this poor. I’m not expecting anything out of the ordinary, it has always been this way.

 

[I7guy]

1% overnight assuming it’s not the 100-99% percentage point sounds good, I don’t think you even need to use LPM if that’s the drop you get. It will drop at some point regardless of how good it is. If I leave my 11th-gen iPad on standby it will drop at some point, even from 100%. It takes a while, but it’s inevitable.

The issue is when it significantly affects overall battery life. If 24 hours of standby (or even 30, or 35) impact the cycle meaningfully, something is wrong, imo. And in my experience, if the device and the iOS version combo is inefficient, there’s no solution. I have my Air 5 on Airplane mode and with LPM enabled, every setting is off. It’s still worse than what I’d expect or want.

If 35 hours of standby drain 10%, it’s horrible. As I see it, reasonable standby times (so, not 10 days long), should affect overall battery life very little. Say I get 7 hours of SOT to 50%. I can tolerate it dropping to 6.5 hours due to 35 hours of standby, maybe 6h 20 min. But not more than that. iOS has always been a standby king, especially on original iOS versions. It just can’t be this poor. I’m not expecting anything out of the ordinary, it has always been this way.

I charge my phone and iPad to 80. My phone hardly drops 1% overnight. With full screen mode and turning off Bluetooth it looks like phantom drain stopped on the new iPad. I’ll keep playing around with it.

 

[sparksd]

Even 99% overnight would be poor. The first percentage point is equivalent to about 7-8 percentage points (takes 7-8 times more to drop than every other percentage point). Assuming “overnight” to be 8 hours, it shouldn’t drop from 100%.

Still at 100% from 8 hours overnight last night. Windowed mode enabled.

 

[sparksd]

Still at 100% from 8 hours overnight last night. Windowed mode enabled.

14 hrs - still 100%.

 

[FeliApple]

14 hrs - still 100%.

Looking good! It is even quite variable too, my Air 5 is at 86% five hours after I last touched it, when it was at 86%, no drops. Sometimes in the same timeframe it’ll drop 3%, it’s a little odd and it isn’t even consistent.

Were I to leave it on standby for 24 hours I reckon it’d drop several percentage points. The issue is that I’d pretty much expect my 11th-gen iPad to drop 0%. My 10-year-old 9.7-inch iPad Pro would pretty much also drop 0%.

I do wonder how much your M5 iPad Pro would drop if it weren’t at 100% (which is, like I said, equivalent to 7-8 percentage points). But some replies I’ve seen have been ludicrous, even 11% overnight (or even in a 24-hour period) would be garbage. You’d think that standby would only get better versus the early days. It’s pretty much a universal opinion that regardless of whether it’s decent or not, today’s devices are worse than 32-bit and early 64-bit devices, especially iPads.

But to be honest even 32-bit devices dropped something. Today? Standby should be pretty much a non-issue. A week should use 1% or something like that. Sadly, software only gets more resource-intensive as time goes by, but the fact that we are struggling to see the level of efficiency that a 2011 device had is a little sad, in my opinion.

 

[FeliApple]

This is what I meant about M-series iPads being worse. I found the screenshot. This is my iPad Air 5, six months old here, running its original iPadOS version, iPadOS 15.6, from 28-02-2023 until 09-03-2023, so about ten days of standby:

This is… well, beyond pathetic. Ten days of standby with no use and it dropped from 100% to 59%. So, the 8% of the 100-99% plus the other 40%, for a daily drop of 4.8%/day. I’d call this garbage, and I reckon no other device of mine barring my iPhone Xʀ on iOS 12 would exhibit similar levels of standby drop.

 

[sparksd]

Looking good! It is even quite variable too, my Air 5 is at 86% five hours after I last touched it, when it was at 86%, no drops. Sometimes in the same timeframe it’ll drop 3%, it’s a little odd and it isn’t even consistent.

Were I to leave it on standby for 24 hours I reckon it’d drop several percentage points. The issue is that I’d pretty much expect my 11th-gen iPad to drop 0%. My 10-year-old 9.7-inch iPad Pro would pretty much also drop 0%.

I do wonder how much your M5 iPad Pro would drop if it weren’t at 100% (which is, like I said, equivalent to 7-8 percentage points). But some replies I’ve seen have been ludicrous, even 11% overnight (or even in a 24-hour period) would be garbage. You’d think that standby would only get better versus the early days. It’s pretty much a universal opinion that regardless of whether it’s decent or not, today’s devices are worse than 32-bit and early 64-bit devices, especially iPads.

But to be honest even 32-bit devices dropped something. Today? Standby should be pretty much a non-issue. A week should use 1% or something like that. Sadly, software only gets more resource-intensive as time goes by, but the fact that we are struggling to see the level of efficiency that a 2011 device had is a little sad, in my opinion.

I started using it at 16 hours, still at 100%.

 

[FeliApple]

I started using it at 16 hours, still at 100%.

Funnily enough, if you check my screenshot above, if the 100-99% drop takes about as long as 8 percentage points to register, then the Air 5 - even with that 100-59% in 10 days result - would need about 40 hours to drop from 100%.

I’d still call my 100-59% result garbage.

Edit: not saying yours is, just saying that perhaps it’s too early to tell.

 

[sparksd]

Funnily enough, if you check my screenshot above, if the 100-99% drop takes about as long as 8 percentage points to register, then the Air 5 - even with that 100-59% in 10 days result - would need about 40 hours to drop from 100%.

I’d still call my 100-59% result garbage.

Edit: not saying yours is, just saying that perhaps it’s too early to tell.

No, I've been using it for 6 months (and the M4 & M1 before that), no battery issues. Not something I'll keep on my radar.