iPad Air 5 poor battery life

Hello Hadrielsfury,

For difficulties with your battery life, you'll want to take the following steps:

1. Update to the latest software, including your apps
2. Optimize your settings
3. Enable Low Power Mode
4. View Battery Usage information

This resource has more details on each of those steps: Batteries - Maximizing Performance

Should you continue to face difficulties with your battery life after taking those steps, you'll want to reach out to Apple Support so they can look into this further: Contact Apple Support

Take care.

Maybe this will help someone else, in my case it turned out to be a bad sensor in the ipad air that caused the battery to drain very fast. I think it was the internal barometer. The diagnostic tool at the Apple store was able to find. Anyhow, a good test to see is even turning off wifi and not having the screen turned on - the ipad would still use up most of the battery in a day. For a frame of reference, a new ipad air 5th gen should be able to go multiple days with normal use - hours of browsing, watching videos etc..

Hopefully this helps someone else. I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I was getting about 5 or 6 hours use from my 2022 iPad Air. Performing a forced restart (or sometimes referred to as a hard reset) improved the battery life for me. I now get about 9 to 10 hours use. I updated to the latest iPadOS (16.1) prior to doing the reset.

An Apple support article explaining how to do this is available here.

Force restart iPad – Apple Support (AU)

Apple_Aaron wrote:

Let's check to see if the battery is degraded. Go to Settings->Battery->Battery Health. What is the maximum capacity on that screen and also do you have optimized charging on?

The battery health feature is not available on iPad. This feature is exclusive to iOS for iPhone. iOS/iPadOS for iPad has never had the Battery Health feature - most likely because iPad batteries are both considerably larger and have a much longer service life. 

An iPad battery is rated to maintain at least 80% of its initial capacity after 1000 full charge/discharge cycles - whereas an iPhone is rated to have 80% of initial capacity after 500 full cycles.

There are software packages available that can access battery cycle count. Popular choices for Mac are Coconut Battery and iMazing - whereas iMazing is available for PC.

https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

https://imazing.com/

I have the exact same issue. Upgraded from my iPad Air 3. The battery on the iPad Air 5 was draining quite fast, 49% down within 2.5 hours.... Apple support advised updating your iPad as this fixes the battery drain issue. I will test this out once updated.

CzarVRT wrote:

I have the latest software and have tried all the steps mentioned but ipar air 5 battery life is terrible.. have to charge atleast twice a day where as my ipad air 3 used to last entire day comfortably with my usage..

If you are experiencing difficulties with your iPad battery holding charge, you might be best advised to first have your iPad tested. 

If you directly contact Apple Support - and explain your problem - you can request a remote battery diagnostic. The tests will confirm the status of your battery - and other elements of your iPad’s health.

Alternatively, a visit to the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store would provide opportunity for your iPad to be similarly tested by the Apple technicians - after which you can explore your available options.

You can contact Apple Support using the Contact Support link at top-right of this page. You can also initiate a support case using the excellent Apple Support App; if not already installed on your iPad, the App can be downloaded from the App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/apple-support/id1130498044

Fixed battery drain on iPad Air 5

settings/general/reset/reset all settings

Now as good battery life as my old ipad!

will need many personal changes of preferences re done, but battery great now

takes only 5 mins

I was told to go to settings /gen/reset/reset all settings

it was from a contributor to this forum and my new iPad air5 has been great since, normal battery life.

you’ll have to adjust some things back to the way you had set them.

Let's check to see if the battery is degraded. Go to Settings->Battery->Battery Health. What is the maximum capacity on that screen and also do you have optimized charging on?

This was my issue too. I was quite surprised since I just bought my Air 5 a few days ago but the battery doesn’t last even up to 5 hours. Though after optimizing my settings, I found that what helped me save the battery the most was turning off automatic app updates (other than turning off background app refresh and mail push)

So I have used the “new” iPad for 5 days. The first 4 days it performed the same as the one I exchanged. Meaning the battery was completely discharged after 3-4 hours of reading. Last night I turned the screen brightness down just a bit and today after 4 hours of reading the battery is at 75%, so pretty good. I hope the performance continues…

Whatever is going on with this generation and battery life seems to be related to the screen. However I haven’t been able to get Apple to acknowledge that this is a known problem or what the real issue is.

Try checking if automatic app updates is enabled. This drains the battery even on standby, which was the case for me.

Hello! I was also having this problem, and reset all settings and now my battery is lasting just fine. Hopefully that works for you!

Let me add that in this iPad battery life comparison between the iPad Mini, base iPad, iPad Air 5 and the 2 iPad Pro versions, the new M1 iPad Air 5 recorded the worst battery life, shutting down about 3 hours sooner than the cheapest base iPad. Disappointing.

https://youtu.be/Tsk920m3Fu8