Apple iPad Air 2 battery life test: shorter battery life despite Apple’s claims

Apple has gained a lot of bragging rights with the iPad Air 2: it’s the world’s thinnest tablet, and at that - one of the lightest ones. Notably, it achieves all of this without compromising on performance, as the Air 2 features a massively powerful, tri-core processor.

However, you can’t just avoid the laws of physics and having a thinner and lighter device like the iPad Air 2 does mean that something had to give. Unfortunately for many, in Apple’s new tablet this compromise is the battery size. The new iPad Air 2 comes with a 7340mAh battery, nearly 17% smaller than the 8820mAh juicer on last year’s iPad Air.

As much as we all like to believe in miracles (especially with the increasingly chilly and Christmas-y weather), our iPad Air 2 battery life test score shows that smaller size in this case does mean shorter actual battery life, and we are not really witnessing a miracle here.

The new tablet scored 7 hours and 27 minutes on our battery life test, a full hour and 11 minutes less than its predecessor. This is roughly in line with the decrease in battery capacity - 17% decrease in capacity results in a nearly 14% drop in battery life on our test. Let us also remind you that we test all devices under identical conditions: the display is calibrated at 200 nits, and all run a script that simulates average use, running non-stop, without any screen off time. Take a look at how the new iPad Air 2 ranks compared to its peers right below:



We should also say that we were particularly curious to run our own tests, as Apple claims that despite the change in battery capacity, the new iPad Air 2 does not make a compromise and does not have ‘shorter battery life’. Here is the company’s official statement, found on the Performance page for the Air 2: