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Battery life is of key importance for any tablet because the it's designed for work and multimedia experiences. It needs to run all day for me to use it more than my laptop.
The good news is that the iPad Pro 9.7 has excellent battery life that has lasted me 24 hours with steady use. Apple says constant battering will give out 10 hours of power and that check out.
It contains a 27.5Wh battery, but I found it to last longer than the iPad Air 2, which has a 27.6Wh battery. Clearly that newer A9X processor now only works overtime when it has to, but is also generally more efficient.
Running our battery life test that plays a HD video for 90 minutes at full brightness, I found that a full battery diminished only by 22%. It was at 78% by the end of the looped video. That edges out the iPad Air 2, which dropped 26%, leaving me with 76%. The iPad Pro 12.9, with its bigger screen but bigger battery trade-off, sank 28% to 72%.
However, the newer iPad Pro 10.5 has it beat with just an 18% drop, despite the larger screen.
When it came to charging the batteries, the iPad Pro 9.7 took 3 hours and 50 minutes to recharge, while the iPad Air 2 was at full capacity in 3 hours and 30 minutes. Both were at about 17% after 30 minutes before the iPad Air 2 started pulling away with the victory.
The iPad Pro 9.7 isn't slow to charge, but it could have used Apple's new fast-charging feature that is so far exclusive to the bigger iPad Pro 12.9. The company sells a Lightning-to-USB C cable that provides a quick charging boost for its big 38.5Wh battery.
