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SYCAMOREGRAD

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 23, 2006
187
108
Indianapolis
I have an M4 iPad Pro 13”. After less than one year, my maximum capacity is 89%, with 256 cycle counts. Is this average?
 
Looks and feels average, maybe slightly below. Regardless, you can get a battery replacement if it falls below 80%. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
 
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my M4 11" iPP is at 88% with 268 cycles but I use it about 4-5 hours per day. A ton of video watching, browsing & reading. My TV's basically sit idle. First use May 2024.
 
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From my experience iPad battery health tends to drop more quickly compared to iphone but it will stabilize after some time. For exemple, all of my iPads go down to around ~85% in a year or so and then it will stick to that number for like the next 3-4 years.
 
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hm. my m4 iPad pro 13 inch is at 100% with 52 cycles. First use june 2024. I think these estimates are a lil suspect sometimes. I'm not using the 80% charge limit setting. Are you noticing that the battery is dying quickly for you?
 
I have an M4 iPad Pro 13”. After less than one year, my maximum capacity is 89%, with 256 cycle counts. Is this average?

My 11” iPad Pro is at 92% battery health with 213 charge cycles. A little faster than I would like (it works out to about 1% deterioration per month), but otherwise, seems on par with yours.

I am using the 80% charging cap, but it also means I have to recharge it back to 80% in the middle of the day, so I am not entirely certain it has helped at the end of the day.
 
Just got my 11” M4 Pro last month and have 21 cycles. Haven’t done much other than web surfing and listening to music on my BT headphones. I hope this isn’t abnormal 😬
 
I have a launch day 11” M4, it’s at 123 cycles and 100% health. I’m not using charge limits or take any special care, I do however plug in every morning to charge, so it rarely goes below 60% or so.
 
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11” M4 IPP manuf. 8/24 began usage 12/24 always using 80% batt. cap & still 100% w/ 51 cycles on 18.3.1 but last 7ish days batt seems to drop sorta quickly, am I the only one?
 
100% at 125 cycles here, first use in May. I use a relatively low wattage charger (17W) and the 80% charging limit, and usually recharge when it falls below 25% (alarm via automation).
 
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Mine is at 97% / 158 cycles - I use it very intensively but I do keep the charging cap at 80%

That said I think it started to decrease about 1-2 months ago - before was still at 100%
 

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From my experience iPad battery health tends to drop more quickly compared to iphone but it will stabilize after some time. For exemple, all of my iPads go down to around ~85% in a year or so and then it will stick to that number for like the next 3-4 years.
This. I’ve found that iPads drop pretty quickly initially, then stabilize (mostly). The health-to-cycles ratio (which I love to track) is initially abhorrent on iPads. I had 91% after 320 cycles, and now I have 85% after about 780.

Not that it matters, iPad batteries are too large to be affected if not updated, and they will be killed by iOS updates if updated, but they do tend to drop fairly quickly at first.

I did get an 11th-gen iPad, which is my first iPad with the included health and cycles meter. We’ll see how it goes. I’m a light, efficient user who gets a quintillion hours, though, so as much as I would love to try my usage pattern with significantly faster cycling, I doubt I’ll be able to.

Since I keep iOS devices for very long (or give them to family and they sometimes remain in-use), Ideally I’d like 200 cycles per year for testing purposes. I’ve always failed, but after a family member cycled a 6th-gen iPad running iOS 12 to about 780 cycles in five years and it hovered at 90%, I knew something better was possible. Same cycles as mine, but mine needed three more years. Battery life was like-new (I tried it, 14 hours of SOT).

Since I don’t update iOS because it kills iOS devices, I have about five years or six before my iOS devices start to suffer in terms of compatibility, so it’s tough for me to test with the parameters I’d like.

I think that for a good health-to-cycles ratio with my usage I’d need about 130 cycles per year, or about one every three days. With current, long-lasting iPhones and iPads with light use (my Air 5 on iPadOS 15 and 11th-gen iPad on iPadOS 18 seem to get north of 20 hours, my iPhone Xʀ gets 16 on iOS 12 and my 16 Plus seems to get about 27 on iOS 18 with light use, about 17 with LTE), getting a reasonably high cycle count in six years seems impossible.

I’d like to test the four variables: battery health, cycle count, screen-on time (battery life), while running the original iOS version. 150 cycles per year in 6 years would give me 900, which is a decent amount. I can never test this because my cycle count is too slow, my Xʀ on iOS 12 has 350 in 5.5 years, will be retired from active use, and is largely incompatible with what I need. A tough goal, since I need a lot of cycles on an iOS version that gives me incredible battery life. I’d need 20 hours of SOT a day combined on my iPhone and iPad on iOS 18 to achieve this and it obviously won’t happen. Now I have an iPhone (the 16 Plus) and an iPad (the 11th-gen iPad) on iOS 18. Last time I had this? iOS 9! I put in 400 cycles on each and was forced to update both because of an Apple bug with activation servers on iOS 9. I mainly use devices with low brightness, efficient settings, and light apps indoors. I use iPads like that 100% of the time. Impossible to test. They obviously showed nothing of interest after only 400 cycles. For anything interesting to happen I’d probably need north of 1000. Do you know how many years I’d need to put in 1000 cycles on an iPad on its original iOS version? A lot. Longer than the original version’s useful lifespan. With current iPhones’ battery life, I’d need too long as well. Maybe if I could use something like the iPhone 5s on iOS 7 it would be possible. Not now. Or I’d need infinite compatibility. Assure me now that I can use an iPad for 10 years on its original version and I’ll give it a shot. To make it even more interesting, I’d need to push an iPad. 2000 cycles on an original version. Even with reasonable use as my only device, I’d need something like 15 years. Not happening. I can start at that rate (133 cycles/year) but with a new device acquisition it would drop in five years at best.
 
My M4 13 inch 2 TB iPadPro is at 158 cycles and 88 percent I noticed the larger drops with the 18.0-.2 betas and it stayed at 90-89 percent til I did the 18.3.x regular updates and then on the 18.4 and 18.5 betas dropped to 88 percent.

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My M4 13 inch 2 TB iPadPro is at 158 cycles and 88 percent I noticed the larger drops with the 18.0-.2 betas and it stayed at 90-89 percent til I did the 18.3.x regular updates and then on the 18.4 and 18.5 betas dropped to 88 percent.

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That looks very bad, but then again being concerned about battery life and installing all betas don’t really go together.
 
Launch M4 13" here. Using it daily for hours (VLC/youtube mostly, it's an expensive content device (by choice))

Health normal, 96% max cap. 242 cycle count. I do have 80% limit turned on from pretty much the beginning.
 
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Launch M4 13" here. Using it daily for hours (VLC/youtube mostly, it's an expensive content device (by choice))

Health normal, 96% max cap. 242 cycle count. I do have 80% limit turned on from pretty much the beginning.
Hmm, so identical cycle count and charging practice, with higher battery health overall (mine seems to have stabilised at 92% for now). Oh well, 4% doesn't seem that bad, and I will see how that number changes over time.
 
That looks very bad, but then again being concerned about battery life and installing all betas don’t really go together.
Well battery health before the M4 was not even something I worried about and found iPads easier to test betas on but yeah maybe not a good plan. fortunately my iPad is always near charger wherever I am so i will likely live with this for 3 plus years like I usually do
 
Well battery health before the M4 was not even something I worried about and found iPads easier to test betas on but yeah maybe not a good plan. fortunately my iPad is always near charger wherever I am so i will likely live with this for 3 plus years like I usually do
Yeah, if you are going to install betas on it I would just ignore battery health, screen-on time, and all battery measurements. Otherwise you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment.
 
macOS has something similar, Optimized Charging Limit.


Yes. It's not reliable, though. In practice, it still charges to 100% most of the time if you don't plug in on a fixed daily schedule.

For me, it's pretty useless: a fixed 80% limit is much better. Thankfully there are apps to do that!
 
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