The new iPad Pro and iPad Air sport familiar battery life figures despite power-sipping chips

When Apple announced the new M4 iPad Air and a revamped M2 iPad Air, including the all-new 13-inch display option, the company didn't make a big deal about the battery life that buyers can expect from either one. Apple did however note that the M4 chip is more power efficient than the previous-generation M-series chips, but that was as far as things got. So it's perhaps interesting that Apple's published battery life for the new iPads is essentially the same as it has been for years.

As MacRumors points out, Apple says that the new iPads both manage the same 10 hours of battery life that the company has been advertising for years, and that's notable given the fact that both of these tablets now have better, more power-efficient chips than the models that they replaced. It's notable that the new chips are also faster of course, so there's a trade-off to be made there.

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The new M4 chip is built on a second-generation 3nm manufacturing process which means that it's more power efficient than even the M3 that came before it. It also has six efficiency cores which is two more than the M2 that was in the 2022 iPad Pro that this new model replaces. The tandem OLED display is also thought to be more energy efficient, all things that might have been expected to allow Apple to save some battery life and increase performance.

However, one likely reason for the similar battery figures is the similar, or smaller, battery when compared to the previous models. The 13-inch iPad Pro is thinner than the 12.9-inch iPad Pro that it replaces, so has a slightly smaller battery - 38.99-watt-hour battery, down from 40.88-watt-hours. The 11-inch tablet actually increased its battery capacity slightly to 28.93-watt hours, up slightly from the 28.6-watt-hour battery of the previous generation.