[2510c39011c5]

I am not sure if a single stick of 2GB DDR3 RAM would consume much more power than a sinlge stick of 1GB RAM...At least on a PC, the difference seems to be negligible (such as indicated in http://www.buildcomputers.net/power-consumption-of-pc-compon...)...

Assuming ipad Air 2 has roughly the same power consumption as Air 1 (32.5 w), even if 2GB memory consumes twice the power than 1GB (on PC a DDR3 stick, which has much greater capacity, would be 2~3 w), comparing to the power consumption of CPU and screen, still the power consumed by memory is only a small fraction of the whole...

Well, I am not quite familiar with this energy aspect...Perhaps some experts here could provide more insight or pointers?

[ema]

When the iPad is just laying around you can turn of the screen, the cpu, and the gpu, you can't turn of the ram. So while the power consumption of the ram might be negligible when the iPad is in use, it might be the majority when it isn't. So for usecases where the iPad is only used for a few minutes every hour double the ram might cut the battery lifetime by a third.

Also I'm pretty sure the 32.5 watt power consumption represents the maximum, otherwise that thing would overheat without a fan.

[2510c39011c5]

Yes, I agree that even if every other component is put into sleep, the memory would still drains the energy; and no matter how slow that process is, if not recharged, there will be a time the battery finally runs out.

But the thing is, it looks like there is not much difference between a single stick of 1GB RAM and a single stick of 2GB RAM in terms of the power consumption rate. This is indicated in this article http://www.buildcomputers.net/power-consumption-of-pc-compon... ; well, it's for desktop RAM but I would assume tablet RAM will behave similarly, as seen from other tablets that upgraded from 1GB to 2GB.

From the user experience perspective, if there is no noticeable penalty -- the physical size and the power consumption are the same for 1GB and 2GB RAM, then why not just put in the one with larger capacity, for a better user experience? (and possibly much better for those of heavy multitasking tendency).

Is that because 2GB is much more expensive than 1GB, for tablet RAM? I could not find any tablet RAM price information through googling -- it's not for retail to individual consumer but only sold in batch to manufacturers...