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iPad Air conquers all in tablet battery test with 11-13 hour showing

Tablet-battery-life

Apple boasted about maintaining its 10-hour iPad battery-life in the new iPad Air despite an overall thinner and faster design, but how does it compare to other tablets? Most reviews had good things to say about battery life (many even experiencing more than 10 hours), but it’s interesting to see how the device stacks up against the rest of the tablet market. While battery life largely depends on how you’re using your iPad, an extensive test from Which? shows that iPad Air comes out on top in just about any case and significantly beats out much of the competition.

The iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina display and iPad 2 all performed better than the Android alternatives for web browsing. On a full tank, Apple’s iPad Air will last for 658 minutes of web-browsing – beating the 483 minutes offered by the longest-lasting Android tablet we tested, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 edition). Likewise, the iPad mini with Retina display features an impressive 614 minutes of internet usage, while Apple’s three year old iPad 2 managed a sterling 590 minutes.

The graphic above pretty much speaks for itself, but you can read more about the test on Which.

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Comments

  1. PMZanetti - 10 years ago

    I like how no tablet even approaches the iPad 2, let alone iPad Air.

  2. themis333 - 10 years ago

    Reblogged this on Taste of Apple and commented:
    I’m not too shocked. iPad has always been great with battery life.

  3. blakegentry777 - 10 years ago

    As a retina iPad mini and iPad Air owner, I can confirm that this chart is erroneous on the part of the retina iPad mini. I regularly get 12-13 hours of battery life with internet use. Almost identical to my iPad Air. Might want to double check before using tests performed by little known websites.

    • Tim Jr. - 10 years ago

      Retina or Non-Retina? My Mini Non-Retina beat my retina by several hours. They only show Retina on this chart.

  4. Drew (@gettysburg11s) - 10 years ago

    Yep, the iPad is the battery king. My iPad mini gets amazing battery life. About the only thing that drains it (more than anything else) is e-reading.

  5. rottenbittenfruit - 10 years ago

    Hopefully, if Apple builds a large display iPhone, they’ll be able to pack enough battery in the case to outlast any number of Android smartphones that already have large displays. That A7 processor must be really efficient or Apple is using displays that are very power-efficient. Tim Cook had mentioned about large smartphone displays not being where Apple wanted them to be. It’s possible that power draw was a major factor in deciding that Apple not to go to larger display iPhones. I suppose we’ll never really know.

    Some pundits had remarked on how much better the displays on the Kindle HDX and Nexus 7 looked in terms of color gamut and brightness when compared to the iPad Mini Retina, but maybe Apple had to compromise and chose battery life over color quality. Pure speculation on my part because only Apple knows what they’re looking for in terms of a product’s usefulness.

  6. Nick (@andsoitgoes) - 10 years ago

    Well but like the ads, the kindle fire MUST still be better!

    According to the ads:

    It’s lighter (of course not noting the fact that it’s almost 1″ smaller and has a cheap plastic back)
    It’s cheaper (…but, again, is an inch smaller)
    The display has a million more pixels (but tests show that the displays are a draw, with each having a specific set of weaknesses)

    But they don’t mention the fact that they’re running a specialized version of Android with “more than 100,000 apps” (which I’m sure means, what, 110,000?) of which they also don’t state which are tablet optimized. But then, Apple isn’t better than that right? Oh wait, sorry, Apple actually has 475,000 apps… Oh, no. That’s how many tablet optimized apps. Silly me. But yeah, that kindle is worth saving a bit of money on.

Author

Avatar for Jordan Kahn Jordan Kahn

Jordan writes about all things Apple as Senior Editor of 9to5Mac, & contributes to 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, & Electrek.co. He also co-authors 9to5Mac’s Logic Pros series.