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Your experience may defer but I wished I had stayed on 6.0.2.

Went straight to OS 6.1.3 and my battery life has been awful; 9-10 hours to about 7 hours on average. 😕
 
The update reboots the iPad anyway, no need to do that again.
Rebooting and turning it off and back on are slightly different. And my observation is that turning it off and back on after an iOS update is needed more often than not.
 
But in what way?

The process is exactly the same.
Many devices go thorough a reset/test sequence when powered on that they don't necessarily go through when it is rebooted. Also ram gets scrambled when the device is powered off.

As I've said elsewhere, I had battery life issues on a couple of iOS devices after an upgrade until I turned them off and back on. I have no solid data to back it. But it's what I've observed. And for all that it takes less than a minute, it can't hurt.
 
I updated my 3rd generation iPad from 6.0.1 to 6.1.3. and the battery life became much better.
 
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