I looked on Apple's website to see what the battery is like but I didn't find anything. Is the new iPad M5 coming with better battery life?
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iPad Pro M5 iPad Pro Battery [MERGED]
- Thread starter Orangeman13
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Apple always states 10 hours for every iPad even if every iPad having the same battery life isn’t true. With light, efficient, and low brightness use, I got 14 hours of SOT with my 9.7-inch iPad Pro on iOS 9 and 10 hours after it was forced to iOS 12; with the same usage, I’m getting around 20 hours with my iPad Air 5 on iPadOS 15; and about 26 hours on my 11th-gen iPad on iPadOS 18.
Apple has improved battery life significantly, yet… states that all of these models get the same 10 hours.
Apple has improved battery life significantly, yet… states that all of these models get the same 10 hours.
According to the Apple website, the battery capacities are 31.29 WH for the 11" and 38.99 Wh for the 13" I think this is similar to the previous model so, expect the same battery life as always, fluctuating between 8 to 12 hours depending on usage.
I just got my M5 iPad Pro today. I’m really hoping that the new chip is more efficient and I get a little bit better battery life than I did on the M4. My iPhone 17 Pro has been getting better battery life than my iPhone 16 Pro did so, fingers crossed…
Interestingly I did a test the other day. I played a 1 hours youtube video (timer) on my:
- 2018 pro (iPadOS 17 91.5% battery with 634, I have no shame in saying battery has been babied, no full discharges, most of the time kept around 90%,
- M1 12.9 iPadOS 26 661 cycles 83.8% battery health, not babied at all
- M2 12.9 iPadOS 18 100% battery 18 cycles, bought recently,
- M4 iPadOS 18 100% battery 55 cycles
- M1 11" iPadOS 15 (in order to have Windows on it) 103.5% battery 29 cycles, essentially new since I keept it off most of the time at 50%, use it only when I need Windows and iPad) and
- 2015 pro on iPadOS 16 (1051 cycles with 73% health)
Results
M2 lost 5%, 20h SOT estimated
M4 lost 6% 16.6h SOT estimated
M1 11 lost 8/9% 12h SOT estimated
2018 and M1 12.9 lost 16%, 6,25h SOT estimated
2015 lost 22%, 4.5% SOT estimated
My conclusions:
- as much as people say nobody should do it, babying a battery does work in term of battery health (whether it's worth it or not in terms of convinience it's anyone choice, my take is that it's only worth it when you have multiple iPads, and none has a battery limit, but I can understand those you don't care, as long as they don't come and say it makes no difference, because they are wrong)
- battery health does matter
- the 12.9 last longer than the 11" everything else being equal (although everything else is never really equal)
As for the theory that the original OS has better SOT, I can't test that, as I would need 2 devices with the same health etc. the same specs and 2 different OS versions). Personally I don't believe this theory, but I do believe that some OS have better standby time.
As for the theory that updating is always worse for battery life, again, I don't believe it but I can't really prove it, I don't have enough test devices to verify it.
I didn't have the M5 when I did the test, but SOT seems to be the same as the M4, will have to do another test once I buy a M4/M5 11 (will only buy it when I find a 1/2TB cellular model under $1000 as I did for my previous 11" devices)
Very interesting test. What I can glean from it:
-iPadOS 26 is abhorrent. Just look at that difference! This matches pretty much everyone’s experience.
-M2 vs M4 are the same and any difference is negligible and probably due to impossible-to-avoid variation.
-The M1 11” is surprising, based on my experience with the M1 Air. That said, however, as you said (and multiple tests confirm this), the 12.9” is, all else equal, better than other M-chips than the 11”. I reckon my A16 iPad on iPadOS 18 could rival those, however. A-series chips on original versions are ridiculously efficient (more so than M-series).
-I experienced half the decline on my 9.7-inch iPad Pro (A9X) on iOS 12. As I knew and expected from reading hundreds of posts and looking at a LOT of screenshots, the first-gen Pros pushed to iPadOS 16 have been absolutely obliterated. Sad.
-I agree with your conclusion: battery health is benefitted from battery charging care. I have never disputed this. I do argue that it is not relevant for battery life. If you update, health matters partly. If you don’t, health does not matter and never will, especially on iPads. If you update (which you did, as your 2018 iPad is not running iOS 12), and if you plan to keep it for long (which you also did) then I can see the benefit. I will argue that staying behind is even better and you can avoid the battery care, but if you are inclined to update, then I will never say that battery health doesn’t matter.
My argument has always been this: you update and you kill battery life anyway. Sure, health matters then (as in, a 95% health device will perform better than a 75% one, unlike original versions), but you can’t prevent degradation forever anyway, so why worry? And there is a portion of luck: with iPhones and their relatively new health feature in settings, many have become obsessed by it and they have gone to extreme measures to conserve battery health: only to fail anyway and end up with worse health than if they just charged to 100%. My point is that even if taking care of it can help, and the end of the day it is still luck.
What were the test’s settings? Brightness? Speakers?
Also, I reckon the M5 would match your M4 and M2 results (also the M1 on a non-iPadOS 26 version).
Honestly the M1 battery health is not great, I don't see much difference from 18 to 26, but I didn't test that.
agree and both has 100% battery health and are on the same OS
Yeah the 12.9 have longer battery life
I was not thinking about you when I said that, but about some people here and above all on reddit
I do update as long as performance is not impacted, I care more about compatibility than risk to battery life, but I can even more about performance (including reloads)
There was no sound, timer videos only sound where the time is up. I try to set the brightness to around 2/3 for every iPad, but I had to put it lower for the M4 which is brighter, to match the others
Yeah M5 on 26 should match the M4
By the way I just shot a video comparing the speakers of all the 12.9 / 13 devices I have (5 of them), but I don't think it's possible to upload a video to Macrumors, or I don't know how to do it...
Yes it may look abhorrent but at least we have really great features for iPadOS 26
as of M2 to M4 I feel like your probably more than half right but I’d say M2-M5 is quite a big difference than M2 to M4 especially since the Vision Pro 2nd gen got M5 from M2. Yes M4 iPad Pro existed ahead of schedule but the M4 iPad Pro’s existence feel almost like the A8X since M5 feels like the A9X in ways especially since A8X supported eMMC, A9X supported NVM-e for the first time and whilst M4s PCI-e Gen 3s speeds are great M5’s SSD now supports Gen-4 for double the speed reminding me again of A9 SoC to the A8X and A8 (not the 1GB versions definitely but the 2GB Versions)
Definitely impressive ( though even the iPad Pro doesn’t really need mmWave for now because of C1X but Even if future Apple devices before the C2 end up being the C1X it makes me happy that the 16e ended up getting C1 first and foremost.
I am coming from using a M4 MacBook Pro 16 inch to buying a one terabyte M5 iPad Pro and if I want to have a hard-core day and night of watching content, including a lot of videos and movies, this iPad can’t really make it through that time. Period without being recharged. Unfortunately, I have to send it back because I really wanted to have this iPad as a second option, but the battery life is just so miserable. It’s not feasible.
It should! How high is brightness? What apps are you using? And how many hours of SOT are you getting?
