iPad Pro discharges even when plugged in

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iPad Pro discharges even when plugged in

Our iPad Pro has been pressed into education duty while the Macbook is in the shop.

No matter what charger / cable combination we use we just can't get it to keep charge while we're using it. The battery discharges even though it's plugged in. We've even used the high-power Macbook USB-C charger as well as the stock charger and cable and nothing works. It just keeps discharging and shuts down when it gets to 0.

For clarity to avoid the standard "don't plug it into the laptop" answers:

It is plugged into the wall
We have used many chargers including the high-powered Macbook one
We've tried multiple cables including official Apple ones
We're NOT using a keyboard, just the device

I assume this is a design flaw but would love to hear about a solution if anyone has one.

iPad Pro 12.9-inch Wi-Fi

Posted on Sep 18, 2020 9:53 AM

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Answer 1

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Brad Einarsen Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 18, 2020 11:31 AM in response to Brad Einarsen

I'm answering my own question with the hope that this will help others with this issue as I've seen the question asked a lot.

It turns out that I was wrong about my cables. I have a watt meter (handy little device) and I measured how much power was going to the iPad Pro. Only 5.5 watts were being drawn from the wall from a 30 watt power adapter so that made me suspicious. I took one of our new Apple cables from one of our many (many!) iPhones and sure enough the power draw went right up to 29 watts using that cable.

I know audio / video equipment has taught us that cables don't actually matter that much but in this case it seems like they do.

Use a quality Apple (or quality aftermarket) cable rated for the wattage you want and your slow charging iPad Pro issues might just go away like mine did.

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iPad Pro discharges even when plugged in

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