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iPad mini How's the battery life like for iPad Mini?

The iPad 1 I have lasts me two days between charging usually, even after all this time, with around 4 hrs video use, and 6-8hrs web browsing and non-gaming app usage, wifi and 3G always on, using iCloud and push notifications, before it needs charging, something to be said for non-retina, no cameras and a slower CPU.

My friends mini needs charging every night, usually it gets him from 100% at unplugging at 7am to around ~30% by 8pm so not to shoddy, his mini is WiFi only, no-3g and he reads books, uses it as an iPod "jumbo" and watches video on it whilst commuting.

My experience with iPhones has been unplug at 7am, and be at under 30% usually near 20% by 11am, requiring charging at work in order to unplug again at 5:30pm and again be down to 30-20% by the time i get home at 7:30pm, this is watching video, browsing the web or playing games, this has been the experience on all the iPhone i have owned except the 1st gen one, iPhones need to be half again as thick as they are now, so they can extend the battery to last a day,
 
Superb, so far!

I have had usage hours as high as 22 hours, with my average being around 12-14 hours. This is through gaming (Fifa 2013, Need for Speed) Surfing the web, checking e-mails, you tube videos etc. I agree the iPhone 4s, which I also have, is very poor. But iPad mini so far is very impressive!

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Ashin said:
Don't believe anyone claiming they get over 10 hours.

Just the "usage" going on in standby, so they believe they have amazing battery life.

Apple test their battery to purposely make it look good, getting the advertised 10 hours is lucky.
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Impossible!
 
Not true I play lots of mc4 and the battery lasts me forever so people that say ten hours are right
 
The mini does have good battery life, but some of the claims are just silly. It's not possible to get 22 hours of actual use out of it, it simply doesn't have the power for it. 13 ½ hours of browsing the web at 80% brightness also probably isn't true. You simply can't make any claims without having manually timed it with a stop watch. The "usage" meter is not measuring the amount of actual use.

Mine seems to show 10-12 hours "usage" on average when I charge it, but there's no way I used it that much. I've never timed it with a stop watch though. Having used it in a bright office setting with the need for 80-100% brightness and maybe not the strongest wifi signal a few times, I feel like it probably didn't make it much past 5-6 hours.
 
I usually do about 6-8 hrs streaming on my slingbox on LTE. This is with medium to full brightness.
 
xEnOnn said:
Are these 10 hours of battery life referring to idling mode? What if the iPad was constantly used for reading, browsing the web, streaming video, etc? How long would it last?

My iPhone 4s can last for about a day when I don't use it at all, ie, idle mode. But when I use it for straight 2-3 hours, the battery can get below 20% very quickly.
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I get about 9hrs with 100% brightness on my cellular mini. Very impressive. And that's constant use, that doesn't include the idle time.
 
Since I generally charge all my devices overnight anyways, this isn't as crazy - but i thought this was interesting nonetheless....

As I was pluggin in my iPad4, iPad mini and iPhone 5 last night I noticed they all had about 4.5 hours of usage time and 1 day of standby time -

My iPhone 5 was at 49%
My iPad 4 was at 57%
My iPad mini was at 68%

Take from that whatever you want - suffice it to say I have no problem going more than a day with all my devices and have never had a problem with battery life.

My brother-in-law, who owns a GS3, never leaves the house without a charger - probably because he doesn't charge on a regular basis but who knows :cool:

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bursthead said:
I usually do about 6-8 hrs streaming on my slingbox on LTE. This is with medium to full brightness.
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Good heavens - how much data do you consume over LTE?
 
bobbysmith said:
The mini does have good battery life, but some of the claims are just silly. It's not possible to get 22 hours of actual use out of it, it simply doesn't have the power for it. 13 ½ hours of browsing the web at 80% brightness also probably isn't true. You simply can't make any claims without having manually timed it with a stop watch. The "usage" meter is not measuring the amount of actual use.

Mine seems to show 10-12 hours "usage" on average when I charge it, but there's no way I used it that much. I've never timed it with a stop watch though. Having used it in a bright office setting with the need for 80-100% brightness and maybe not the strongest wifi signal a few times, I feel like it probably didn't make it much past 5-6 hours.
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I got a little over 24 hrs of usage on my iPad 2 numerous times. Of course I got rid of the screenshots when I got my mini (giving you no reason to believe me), but it's definitely possible and I've done it many times. It's not 24 hrs of intense 3D gaming, but various tasks like watching YouTube, browsing the web, Tweetbot, typing documents, etc.
 
batting1000 said:
I got a little over 24 hrs of usage on my iPad 2 numerous times. Of course I got rid of the screenshots when I got my mini (giving you no reason to believe me), but it's definitely possible and I've done it many times. It's not 24 hrs of intense 3D gaming, but various tasks like watching YouTube, browsing the web, Tweetbot, typing documents, etc.
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Hard to believe, but not completely out of the realm of possibility if you set the screen below medium brightness and have the newer version of the iPad 2, which has been well documented to get battery life beyond the 10 hours that Apple officially claims.

My mini gets really good battery life as well. I've been quite impressed. Not 24 hours, but easily 10 doing routine things that most people would use a tablet for.
 
batting1000 said:
I got a little over 24 hrs of usage on my iPad 2 numerous times. Of course I got rid of the screenshots when I got my mini (giving you no reason to believe me), but it's definitely possible and I've done it many times. It's not 24 hrs of intense 3D gaming, but various tasks like watching YouTube, browsing the web, Tweetbot, typing documents, etc.
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Actual usage or usage meter "usage"? If it's the first, I don't believe you. If it's the latter, I'm sure it might be possible although it's meaningless measure. Right now my mini reads almost 6 ½ hours of use, but I haven't used it more than maybe one hour.
 
xEnOnn said:
How's the battery life like for iPad Mini? On the Apple website, it claims that I could watch videos for up to 10 hours but I know that certainly is B.S. because on my iPhone 4S, I can't even surf the Internet for more than 3 hours.
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I call BS on your 4S not even getting 3 hours of internet. Sounds like a warranty issue.
 
thelookingglass said:
Hard to believe, but not completely out of the realm of possibility if you set the screen below medium brightness and have the newer version of the iPad 2, which has been well documented to get battery life beyond the 10 hours that Apple officially claims.

My mini gets really good battery life as well. I've been quite impressed. Not 24 hours, but easily 10 doing routine things that most people would use a tablet for.
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bobbysmith said:
Actual usage or usage meter "usage"? If it's the first, I don't believe you. If it's the latter, I'm sure it might be possible although it's meaningless measure. Right now my mini reads almost 6 ½ hours of use, but I haven't used it more than maybe one hour.
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Yes, usage meter "usage". For me, I see it as "screen on time" because I don't do anything like listen to music with the display off. Really wish I had the screenshots still, but I don't use Photo Stream and it was never saved. I'm only on my second charging cycle with my mini (don't have the 1st cycle usage times because it was at 92% out of the box and I didn't bother charging it to 100) so i'll let you know if I get similar stats this time around.
 
This is my second day
Mostly reading books and browsing the web
Been on it for 13 hours so far with 49% battery left
 
batting1000 said:
Yes, usage meter "usage". For me, I see it as "screen on time" because I don't do anything like listen to music with the display off. Really wish I had the screenshots still, but I don't use Photo Stream and it was never saved. I'm only on my second charging cycle with my mini (don't have the 1st cycle usage times because it was at 92% out of the box and I didn't bother charging it to 100) so i'll let you know if I get similar stats this time around.
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Usage meter usage time definitely isn't screen on time.

And, keep in mind that the usage meter usage time doesn't reset until the battery is charged in full. Is it possible that you connected your iPad to your computer for a bit to sync with itunes or something?
 
I have been massively impressed with the Mini's battery life. I used it a LOT over the holidays since I was off work from just before Christmas until yesterday, and I got my Mini for Christmas. And, since it's a new gadget and I had a lot of time to mess with it, I used it a LOT.

I charge it at night, and I have yet to see the 20% battery warning. The lowest I've run it is to 22%, and that was with the iPad off charger all day (so plenty of standby) and over 9 hours of usage. (I read a lot during the day that day, plus a bunch of web browsing and some video watching and games.)

Normally I finished the day around 50%. Yesterday, I think I was at 55%, and I used it for recording meeting minutes for an hour and a half, plus about 4 hours of usage at home. Today, I haven't used it much...just some news and web browsing at home before work and at lunch. I'm showing 1 hour 51 minutes of usage and 10 hours 15 minutes of standby, and I'm at 91%.

Needless to say, I can't really conceive of a situation where the mini wouldn't last you all day, and for most light usage, 2-4 days.
 
burgundyyears said:
Engadget measured battery life on the mini to be the best they had ever seen on any tablet: 12 hours, 43 minutes on their video looping test, wifi on.
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I had high hopes after reading this is in Engadget's review, but the iPad mini's battery didn't show me any noticeable improvement over the iPad 3.
 
bobbysmith said:
Well you can't, because it's not.
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thelookingglass said:
Usage meter usage time definitely isn't screen on time.

And, keep in mind that the usage meter usage time doesn't reset until the battery is charged in full. Is it possible that you connected your iPad to your computer for a bit to sync with itunes or something?
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Ok, so what does it represent? The total time I've used my microwave in the past year? I'm pretty sure it's the total time the device has been used, whether you turned it on to read some news for 5 minutes, browsed the web for 20 minutes, or had a phone call for 10.

I don't sync with iTunes so it's not that. The only time I connect is to charge.
 
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I use my mini almost all day (using it now) and I get very, very good battery life. I usually charge it overnight. Usually have between 30%-40% after a full day of constant use. Brightness turned up all the way.
 
My girlfriend uses a Chinese streaming app called PPS, and she has been watching that for the last 4 hours or so and I checked the battery and it's at 70% :eek:

Seems insane to me
 
I know this thread is about 2 months old, but I thought I'd share my latest battery usage time. This is from mostly WiFi internet browsing, some RR3 gameplay, YouTube, document typing, and Pandora.

Note that I'm not a hardcore user who brings this thing everywhere and has to recharge every few days. I'm more of a casual iPad mini user.
 

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I get on average about 10 hours usage on my wifi model with typical internet browsing and some music streaming. It's really no better than my old iPad2.
 
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