Does personal hotspot use up battery of you leave it on?

[Boilermaker_coday]

I am getting a iPad mini tomorrow. My only decision now is whether or not to get the LTE model or just WiFi. I am have AT&T shared data plan, so if I got the cellular model, it would be +$10/month. But I also have an iPhone 5 with the ability to use the mobile hotspot. I could save some money if I just used that for my iPad.

But I wouldn't want to go through and turn it on/off everytime I used my iPad. For that reason I would just like to leave it on all the time. When I do, it will obviously have a password so I'm not worried about it using up my data. But I would be worried about my phone's battery life. I'm guessing, however, that it doesn't use up battery life because you can set it to go through the phone's airport antenna (instead of Bluetooth) which I have turned on all the time anyway. Am I right?

 

[CEmajr]

Yeah it drains battery like crazy when on even if you're not using it at the time. You'll need to turn it off when you're not using it.

 

[Applejuiced]

If you turn the personal hotspot on and nothing is connected or if the ipad or any device that's connected to the iphone is not using any data then the personal hotspot turns off by itself due to inactivity and in order to save on battery life.
It takes a few seconds to turn it back on if you need to reconnect again.

 

[treichert]

With no device connected to it, it makes no difference wether it is on or off.

 

[Menel]

I am getting a iPad mini tomorrow. My only decision now is whether or not to get the LTE model or just WiFi. I am have AT&T shared data plan, so if I got the cellular model, it would be +$10/month. But I also have an iPhone 5 with the ability to use the mobile hotspot. I could save some money if I just used that for my iPad.

But I wouldn't want to go through and turn it on/off everytime I used my iPad. For that reason I would just like to leave it on all the time. When I do, it will obviously have a password so I'm not worried about it using up my data. But I would be worried about my phone's battery life. I'm guessing, however, that it doesn't use up battery life because you can set it to go through the phone's airport antenna (instead of Bluetooth) which I have turned on all the time anyway. Am I right?

Bluetooth tethering uses far less battery than wifi hotspot, it also reconnects on the fly without having to put phone in listen mode to reconnect iPad, you wont even have to take phone out of pocket to reconnect with bluetooth.

Downside... Is you're capped at about 1-1.5mbps.