iPad Air charging VERY slowly, sometimes "not charging" entirely.

I have brand new iPad air 32g wifi only since Nov 11. I am having painfully slow charging using charger that came with device. For example last night plugged in at 76% and after 8 hours was only at 86%. Approx 1 % per hour seems like something is wrong. This is with device in standby with smart case closed and lightning bolt showing it is receiving power. Interesting side note, my commute is 1 hour and I plugged in to original apple car charger for iPhone 5 and I get almost 10% in one hour. Go figure. It seems there may be an issue with the wall charger power converter block. In any case this is unacceptable. I am shocked apple has not addressed this issue. I can appreciate, and do, the extremely long battery life but the charging should not be equal or 1-5% per hour which is what it seems to be for me. I am trying different charging scenarios each night so when I return to apple store there will be very detailed problem report and no debate when I return or possibly exchange.

You should all be aware, the iPad Air charging brick is 12 watts not 10 watts (as old iPads used) or 5 watts (iPhones and iPods). Make sure you aren't trying to use an older large brick!

Hope this helps. Fixed all the issues we had in our school district.

I bought mine at Best Buy and found out yesterday that the little 1" square cube AC adapter that came with mine is not the correct charger. The rep said the larger adapter is what is supposed to come with it and it is 12 watt which is ~ 1.5-2" square but only ~ 1: thick, and the AC prongs disconnect...

The charger that actually came with my iPad Air is only ~ 1" square. I am starting to think maybe Apple packaged a bunch of iPad Air's with the wrong charger adapter. I am waiting for the battery life to go down so that I can try it with a 12 watt adapter to see what the difference is.

The wattage rating is printed on one side of the charger. Actually, the largest text on the brick, 12W should be plainly visible. If it says 10W, you have the wrong brick.

Hope this helps.

The charging with the 12 watt adapter was a success! It charged 18-20% per hour. Who else got the little adapter, which is like a small 1" square cube?

TylerBowen, yes I bought the 12 watt to make sure. I do have a 10 watt from a previous iPad and it did not work when tried a week or so ago.

I too posted previously about a perceived charging issue; and as an update, it was resolved by ensuring that I used the correct charging brick - that is, the one that clearly states it outputs 12 watts. Apologies for causing alarm or confusion, yet Apple shares in that. How difficult is it to let the world know that we should not be using the smaller charging bricks that output 5 watts?

Related however, I would like to know how Apple (or anyone who has done it) measures its claimed "10-hour" battery life for the Air. Even when I turn off, turn down various applications/brightness, I don't get anywhere near 10 hours - it's closer to 4-5. I have read reviews where the reviewer "tested" the battery life, but there isn't a description of how that test was conducted.

They do let the world know. And I and others have said elsewhere and in this thread that you must use the appropriate charger. Granted, at least here I cannot see that someone mentioned 5W vs. 12W so maybe that caused confusion.

As for batter life, it depends on what you do with the iPad and what apps you use. Obviously cranking up the CPU with power-hungry apps and turning up the screen brightness are going to cause increased power use. And so will using WiFi or a cellular connection which both consume a lot of power. iOS 7 also has many more background processes running than iOS 6 had which is probably more to blame than your iPad.

There are plenty of respected tech sites that have performed battery-life tests that you can find online.

I must live in a different world. To "let the world know" implies large bold text somewhere in the product description on-line or elsewhere - not coming from dweebs like me and you posting on these kinds of Forums.

If there are "plenty" of respected tech sites - perhaps you can enlighten all of us by providing a link to just one?

Well I am using the correct 12W charging adapter and it's still slow. Last night I plugged it in around 11pm and it had 24% charge. When I checked at 7am it was at 99%. That's pretty slow.

Maybe you do because I can't remember the last time you got a printed manual with anything electronic? What I don't understand is why are you being snippy with someone trying to help you?

As for review sites, a quick Google search gave me these:

http://www.zdnet.com/apple-ipad-air-review-thin-light-and-fast-but-expensive-700 0023043/

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/29/ipad-air-review/

http://reviews.cnet.com/apple-ipad-air/

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/29/ipad-air-review/

http://allthingsd.com/20131029/speed-and-power-packed-into-a-thin-ipad-air/

Does that qualify as plenty? If not there are more if you want to look.

This is likely a different issue. Some have reported that their iPads show a max of 99%. It's likely you reached that capacity long before you checked it at 7AM.

The small 5 watt brick does not state the wattage on it and comes with two model numbers; A1385 which is for an iPad and A1265 which is for a iPhone or iPod.

The large 10 & 12 watt bricks state the wattage but do not have a model number!

The Apple iPad user guide applicable to ALL models discusses charging on page 35 & 36. Please take a look and tell me what charger YOU would use based on the information provided.

http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1595/en_US/ipad_user_guide.pdf#page 35

It should note that when I had Apple tele support on the phone last week not once did they ask how I was charging my iPad.

I have only had one instance of short battery life. I use my iPad for Mail, web, and a lot of reading. I keep the screen brightness at ~50% for better reading.

If you have a short battery life and have not done so, do a complete back up to iCloud, hook your iPad via USB to a computer with iTunes, do a complete reset wiping all data, when setting it back up be sure to select Restore from Back Up. Note that there was an update that came with this when I did the same. This update did not previously show as available even when I manually checked for an update.

Then use only the 12watt charger and see if that improves the situation.

My battery life seems pretty good. I was on a 5-6 hour flight the other day and pretty much watched back to back episodes of a TV series for at least 5 of those hours and it was around 50% by the time I got off the plane. Mine is a plain wireless iPad, not the 3G so that could be the major factor. I know when I turn off 3G on my iPhone the battery lasts for days instead of hours.

Totally normal. The ipad 4 and 5 take 9-10 hrs to charge from 0-100 under no load (about 10% / hr) and will drain on power on heavy use. The 12w charger isn't enough. I bought a Y adaptor and injected 5v 5a. My ipad air charges in 6 hrs and never drains

Apple needs to make a 16-20w charger