I have an M4 iPad Pro 13”. After less than one year, my maximum capacity is 89%, with 256 cycle counts. Is this average?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPad Pro M4 pro battery health
- Thread starter SYCAMOREGRAD
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
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.
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?
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.
11" M4 iPP
I place her on charge maybe once every few weeks...she is the Neglected Child in my house.
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.
That looks very bad, but then again being concerned about battery life and installing all betas don’t really go together.
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.
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.
I wish they'd add the "80% Limit" option on MacBooks. I know you can do it with third party apps, but it's such a simple thing that it's really something the OS should be able to implement itself.
macOS has something similar, Optimized Battery Charging.
If battery charging is paused or on hold on your Mac - Apple Support
Use the battery status menu to resume charging if you need to have your Mac fully charged sooner.
macOS has something similar, Optimized Charging Limit.
If battery charging is paused or on hold on your Mac - Apple Support
Use the battery status menu to resume charging if you need to have your Mac fully charged sooner.support.apple.com
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!
