iPad Confusion about RAM usage on iPads

[jm31828]

Due to the holiday sales being in effect with long return windows, I just picked up a 9th gen iPad and an iPad Air 5 to test both out and see which I want to keep.
I can afford the Air, but sometimes am sensitive to the temporal dithering on the P3 displays, and always like a deal- so I was thinking if the 9th gen did everything I wanted it to do, I might be happy with it.

The Air is an amazing device, I really like the look and feel, and the idea of having a lot of extra horsepower in the M1 chip and extra RAM to handle beefy tasks- though to be honest I see very little difference in performance between the two in what I use it for (Affinity Photo, iMovie, Reddit, Facebook, and possibly starting to use LumaFusion).

One question I have is about RAM usage. As we know, the 9th gen iPad has 3GB RAM, and the Air has 8GB. I installed a system monitor app and on each of these- with no other apps open- they both show about 90% or more RAM in use. How could it be that on one device the IPadOS uses so much more RAM than iPadOS does on the 9th gen with less than half as much total RAM?

 

[Jonr515]

Due to the holiday sales being in effect with long return windows, I just picked up a 9th gen iPad and an iPad Air 5 to test both out and see which I want to keep.
I can afford the Air, but sometimes am sensitive to the temporal dithering on the P3 displays, and always like a deal- so I was thinking if the 9th gen did everything I wanted it to do, I might be happy with it.

The Air is an amazing device, I really like the look and feel, and the idea of having a lot of extra horsepower in the M1 chip and extra RAM to handle beefy tasks- though to be honest I see very little difference in performance between the two in what I use it for (Affinity Photo, iMovie, Reddit, Facebook, and possibly starting to use LumaFusion).

One question I have is about RAM usage. As we know, the 9th gen iPad has 3GB RAM, and the Air has 8GB. I installed a system monitor app and on each of these- with no other apps open- they both show about 90% or more RAM in use. How could it be that on one device the IPadOS uses so much more RAM than iPadOS does on the 9th gen with less than half as much total RAM?

I can’t answer your question, but I’m curious about what system monitor you are using?

 

[jm31828]

I can’t answer your question, but I’m curious about what system monitor you are using?

It's an app called "Device Monitor":

‎Device Monitor²

‎Device Monitor² is a one-of-a-kind app designed for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Apple Watch, providing all the essential information about your device at a glance, quickly and effortlessly. Discover which sensors apps have access to and take control of your privacy. It is also compatible...

apps.apple.com

It's a great app for those of us who are tech nerds and are into looking at these sorts of details.

 

[Digitalguy]

The answer is very simple. RAM on iPad does not work like on a Mac. As you use the device, iPadOS will keep as much as it can in RAM, leaving just a small amount free and will eject apps and tabs from RAM as soon as RAM is not enough. So the air is keeping apps and tabs for 90% of its 8GB RAM and the iPad 9 for 90% of its 3GB. So if you had the same usage on both the air would be keeping way more stuff, while the 9 would reload a ton more apps and tabs. It's actually a bit more complex that the simplified way I presented it (there are things like memory compression/decompression etc.) but that doesn't change how RAM management essentially works.

 

[Isamilis]

The answer is very simple. RAM on iPad does not work like on a Mac. As you use the device, iPadOS will keep as much as it can in RAM, leaving just a small amount free and will eject apps and tabs from RAM as soon as RAM is not enough. So the air is keeping apps and tabs for 90% of its 8GB RAM and the iPad 9 for 90% of its 3GB. So if you had the same usage on both the air would be keeping way more stuff, while the 9 would reload a ton more apps and tabs. It's actually a bit more complex that the simplified way I presented it (there are things like memory compression/decompression etc.) but that doesn't change how RAM management essentially works.

Just a thought. That 8gb ram is really useful, made the iPad much less annoying by preventing page reload.

 

[Digitalguy]

Just a thought. That 8gb ram is really useful, made the iPad much less annoying by preventing page reload.

At this point devices with 3 and 4 GB RAM are pretty annoying for my usage, iPads start becoming much better from 6GB. Of course 8 is even better, but 6 is already a big improvement over 4.

 

[jm31828]

The answer is very simple. RAM on iPad does not work like on a Mac. As you use the device, iPadOS will keep as much as it can in RAM, leaving just a small amount free and will eject apps and tabs from RAM as soon as RAM is not enough. So the air is keeping apps and tabs for 90% of its 8GB RAM and the iPad 9 for 90% of its 3GB. So if you had the same usage on both the air would be keeping way more stuff, while the 9 would reload a ton more apps and tabs. It's actually a bit more complex that the simplified way I presented it (there are things like memory compression/decompression etc.) but that doesn't change how RAM management essentially works.

Thanks for that! It makes sense.
It was just odd that I was seeing this ~90% usage with no apps at all open. I will need to study the details the app provides a bit more to see the breakdown of what's in RAM to try to get a better feel for what capacity there really is.

I had played around a bit on the 9th gen where I opened 4 or 5 tabs in Safari, then flipped over and opened a couple of other apps- and didn't see this RAM usage metric change much, and my tabs did not refresh when going between them.

Interestingly, even on the Air 5 with its 8GB- I started with nothing open, saw that 90% or so RAM in use- then turned on stage manager, opened Safari with several tabs, then opened 3 or 4 other apps- all open in stage manager- and that 90% number remained steady.

The memory management on these devices is interesting!

 

[jm31828]

At this point devices with 3 and 4 GB RAM are pretty annoying for my usage, iPads start becoming much better from 6GB. Of course 8 is even better, but 6 is already a big improvement over 4.

If you don't mind my asking, what is your use case where this lower amount of RAM gets frustrating? Do you open a lot of browser tabs, or do you have memory-intensive apps that bog down or crash on iPads with less than 6GB?

 

[Digitalguy]

Thanks for that! It makes sense.
It was just odd that I was seeing this ~90% usage with no apps at all open. I will need to study the details the app provides a bit more to see the breakdown of what's in RAM to try to get a better feel for what capacity there really is.

I had played around a bit on the 9th gen where I opened 4 or 5 tabs in Safari, then flipped over and opened a couple of other apps- and didn't see this RAM usage metric change much, and my tabs did not refresh when going between them.

Interestingly, even on the Air 5 with its 8GB- I started with nothing open, saw that 90% or so RAM in use- then turned on stage manager, opened Safari with several tabs, then opened 3 or 4 other apps- all open in stage manager- and that 90% number remained steady.

The memory management on these devices is interesting!

Because you probably use "mobile" tabs. I tend to use several "desktop" tabs, which take more RAM (I have 2 desktop gmail tabs and at least 1 desktop youtube tab, which are all RAM hungry), so it's not just a matter of number of apps but of how much each takes.
As for system info apps I have tried a lot and there is no way to see how reliable they are since there is no detailed breakdown like on MacOS an Windows

 

[jm31828]

Because you probably use "mobile" tabs. I tend to use several "desktop" tabs, which take more RAM (I have 2 desktop gmail tabs and at least 1 desktop youtube tab, which are all RAM hungry), so it's not just a matter of number of apps but of how much each takes.
As for system info apps I have tried a lot and there is no way to see how reliable they are since there is no detailed breakdown like on MacOS an Windows

Great points- I believe I was on the full desktop version of each web page, but I'll check that out. Makes sense.

 

[Digitalguy]

If you don't mind my asking, what is your use case where this lower amount of RAM gets frustrating? Do you open a lot of browser tabs, or do you have memory-intensive apps that bog down or crash on iPads with less than 6GB?

My main frustrastion is desktop youtube... I don't use the youtube apps to avoid ads (you cannot use adblockers with the youtube app). So when I pause a video and then reopen it the following day and it's reloaded I cannot continue watching where I left. This happens even with just one video, let alone when I have 4-5 of them at the same time...

 

[jm31828]

My main frustrastion is desktop youtube... I don't use the youtube apps to avoid ads (you cannot use adblockers with the youtube app). So when I pause a video and then reopen it the following day and it's reloaded I cannot continue watching where I left. This happens even with just one video, let alone when I have 4-5 of them at the same time...

Ah, yeah totally makes sense.

For people that strictly only work one app at a time, aside from your mention of Youtube in the browser- would the lower 3GB or even 4GB RAM configurations be a problem in the very near future- or are these apps so well optimized that this should be fine, and the true concern is (for the most part) multitasking?

 

[Digitalguy]

Great points- I believe I was on the full desktop version of each web page, but I'll check that out. Makes sense.

It doesn't matter if you are on the full desktop version if the version doesn't differ much from the mobile one. Desktop gmail is optimized for Mac just like desktop youtube vs m.youtube. Which is way google will try to to not show their desktop version on mobile systems, but Apple tricks it into believing it's Mac's Safari...

 

[jm31828]

It doesn't matter if you are on the full desktop version if the version doesn't differ much from the mobile one. Desktop gmail is optimized for Mac just like desktop youtube vs m.youtube. Which is way google will try to to not show their desktop version on mobile systems, but Apple tricks it into believing it's Mac's Safari...

Gotcha- thanks for the explanation!

 

[Digitalguy]

Ah, yeah totally makes sense.

For people that strictly only work one app at a time, aside from your mention of Youtube in the browser- would the lower 3GB or even 4GB RAM configurations be a problem in the very near future- or are these apps so well optimized that this should be fine, and the true concern is (for the most part) multitasking?

There are hard limitations, like extended display support, Final Cut / Logic, which only run on 8GB iPads, and softer limitations like Davinci crashing on less 6GB for many of it's advanced features. There may be more in the future.
Also crashes happen more often when multitasking on low RAM devices, but generally it's not often. It's not only Safari that reloads. Games reload too, so if you play a game and then stop you have much less chances of continuing where you left on a low RAM iPad. But again if you don't care about any type of reload and are ok with very rare crashes other than in a few RAM hungry apps, 3GB work well for now and do not cause any slowdown at all (contrary to the old 1GB RAM iPads) and I don't believe this will change in the supported life of these devices.

 

[jm31828]

There are hard limitations, like extended display support, Final Cut / Logic, which only run on 8GB iPads, and softer limitations like Davinci crashing on less 6GB for many of it's advanced features. There may be more in the future.
Also crashes happen more often when multitasking on low RAM devices, but generally it's not often. It's not only Safari that reloads. Games reload too, so if you play a game and then stop you have much less chances of continuing where you left on a low RAM iPad. But again if you don't care about any type of reload and are ok with very rare crashes other than in a few RAM hungry apps, 3GB work well for now and do not cause any slowdown at all (contrary to the old 1GB RAM iPads) and I don't believe this will change in the supported life of these devices.

Thanks for clarifying!

 

[JustAnExpat]

What are you using your iPad for? I noticed you mentioned iMovie, which is used to make movies. I would recommend the iPad Air if you're making movies, because of the higher Ram.

 

[jm31828]

What are you using your iPad for? I noticed you mentioned iMovie, which is used to make movies. I would recommend the iPad Air if you're making movies, because of the higher Ram.

I use it mostly for browsing the web and social media apps- but I do use it for light video creation as well in iMovie… just hiking videos from my phone that I put together with text and soundtracks, making movies that are about 5 minutes in length.

i did a side by side comparison of the 9 and air 5 exporting a 5 minute movie- the air was faster, but surprisingly not my much.