[bubblewand]

I’m guessing the main (technical) hang-up is that it messes really badly with one of the most distinctive things about iPads vs other devices, which is extremely low time-to-interactive from any sleep state. Device been sitting on your desk untouched for three weeks? Pick it up and it’s ready to go almost before you are, and still with a useful amount of battery left (offer void for cellular models).

[minton]

Not my experience. I have iPad Pro and I only use it for workouts. It sits on my workout machine and once or twice a week I try to watch a ~45 min episode while doing cardio. It’s always dead and needs constant charging. Never last more than 3 days without needing charging.

[bubblewand]

Weird, mine’s usually good for a month at least if it’s got a decent charge. I just picked mine up off a table in front of me and it hasn’t been plugged in for at least two weeks, instantly on, 82% charge. It’s an earlier Pro 12.9” though, I think the last pre-M-series model, though god I hope they didn’t screw up the battery life that badly in the M series.

If it’s not a regression in the newer models, my top 3 guesses would be:

1) Is it a cellular model? Those have phone-like battery life (non-cellular should have iPod-like battery life, I used to develop for these things and seeing a bunch of “good” Android tablets next to iPads and how huge the idle battery life difference was contributed to my going all-in on Apple, every model I’ve personally seen that’s non-cellular has weeks of useful battery life when idle)

2) Some accessory somehow forcing it to wake periodically? I have AirPods and an Apple Watch, and those don’t do it to mine, but maybe if they were malfunctioning or something, or maybe some other device is doing it.

3) Faulty hardware

[edit] fwiw I do have find-my enabled on everything, never noticed a hit from that.

[NetMageSCW]

4) Bad app that is tricking iPad into using battery all the time.

[lossyalgo]

Yeah something weird going on over there. Even my cheapo 2025 iPad with A16 chip ($300) lasts a few weeks if I don't use it - plenty of other non-Apple devices could really learn something about how power-saving mode is supposed to work.