I've had the iPad 3 for about three months now. The battery life is nowhere near what I expected it to be although I do run the iPad on full brightness.
For example today, just browsing and typing quite a few emails etc- no streaming, no music , no video - the battery has gone from 100% to 60% in under 3 hours. (it went from 60% to 57% just while auto dictating and typing this post).
I took it to Apple a few weeks ago, who simply restored it to its original settings which hasn't made any difference.

I am going to fully charge the iPad and then download and watch a HD movie -something I have not done before - and make a note of the battery charge at the end of the movie.
I assume Apple would have some template of how much charge should be lost in watching a full HD movie on full screen brightness?
Any other test suggestions that I can take the results of to Apple?

That's your problem right there. Full brightness will kill the battery quicker. Do you really need it on full brightness all the time? Especially if you're indoors and under office lighting. The 10 hour benchmark from Apple's testing is based on the defaults. If I remember correctly, the default is half on the brightness.

There's a possibility that your battery is faulty, but my thoughts are that having the brightness on full will drain the battery quicker, whatever you're doing.

The reason for the fat battery is to power the hot high wattage screen.

Dim the screen and 15 hours is possible.

It's not that great in my using environment when not on full brightness.
I've read up on Apple forums and it does seem very variable. Some people are running it constantly on full brightness with quite long battery life. Certainly far longer than I'm able to get.

8.5 watts screen, a 2 watt or so SOC.

That would mean 4 hours on maximum brightness.

Will also likely depend on how you're interacting with it. If you're playing games where you're constantly touching or interacting with the touch screen, that would keep the screen active and so use battery. If you're just watching a movie but not touching the screen, it would likely be better, and if you use it for music with the screen off, you'll get much longer.

your results are consistent with about 8 hour usage.

the screen is by far the biggest use of power. your results are consistent with the advertising.

Lower the brightness and you'll see a massive difference. I lose about 1% every 7 minutes with fairly high brightness browsing the Internet. Lose battery quite fast playing games but that's to be expected.

Interesting, thank you. I'd assumed emails and browsing were lower users of battery life than streaming movies, music or iplayer.
I now have the settings on about 80% as any lower and I'm battling to see clearly.
Thanks everyone

When the iPad is charged is it meant to be on 100% for AGES? I've been browsing the Internet and using Spotify with 20% brightness and the indicator said 100% for about 40 minutes now it's back to the -1% every 6/7 minutes. I use a battery app which says the battery is on 95% but the app only ever shows an amount of 0 or 5.

Maybe that's what you should be asking Apple about about ?
You shouldn't really need to run on a full brightness setting to view the screen comfortably..I don't.

I use my iPad on about 45% brightness and the battery loses about 10% each hour which keeps in line with Apple's 10 hour battery life promise.

I couldn't use my iPad on full brightness, it is far too bright!!

There is a free battery app which might help a little Among other things it tells you how much time there is remaining on various functions. My battery is on 70% at the moment, which will allow 5.5 hours Youtube, 28 hours audio, 2 hours video recording.

Does anyone know when you should charge the ipad, how low should you let the battery get etc. Also this may seem dumb but say if I've been using an app when I click off it is it still running in the background, does that wear the battery down? Thanks

Its suposed to do that, its to keep your battery healthy.

It charges fully, then discharges the battery a bit then charges again. Apple released a statement on it because it was confusing people lol

That sounds about right according to benchmarks here http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/03...ng-vs-battery/

Max brightness - 5.8 hours
Middle (default) brightness - 11.6 hours

I have my brightness set to auto and manage 2 days of usage between charges typically watching a lot of on demand video and general internet browsing.

Thanks, have downloaded one called Battery HD which looks useful. Was this the one, as see there are others?
I have lowered the screen res again and Bluetooth is always off (won't sync with my old mobile anyhow ) and really do mostly use the iPad for browsing and email. Don't play games. Haven't yet watched a movie on it.

It is a bit strange that the battery needs recharging so often, and also that it takes quite a few hours to charge it. You will see from the battery app that the quickest way to run the battery down is to use it as a satnav.

My satnav is about an eighth the size of the Ipad and its battery lasts longer than the app says that the battery will last in the Ipad.

I must say though that I rather expected it. It is advertised as lasting 8 hours, so the real surprise is that actually it nearly does.

My friend keeps his in a charging stand constantly when he is not using it. I will be interested to see if it needs replacing sooner than mine.

I used an iPad 3 all day at work and battery was still at about 40% by the end of the day (this is at middle brightness).

It's not the satnav that uses loads of power its the screen, the reason it takes so long to charge is because it has such a big battery to power that screen.

I've had my iPad3 for 3 months.
I use it most of the day, probably in total not for, say, three hours.
I get about 14 hours.
My brightness is about 40% auto which I find quite adequate.
Seeing this topic, I just tried full brightness and it literally eats up the battery, as said above.

Good questions, I'd like to know as well.
Apple recommend that you run it down completely and then charge to 100% at least twice a month.
This, apparently, preserves battery life.
Overnight when my iPad3 goes into lock,it loses 1% to 3%.

Some of the Windows tablets have been advertised with a 20 hour battery life

With lithium batteries it doesn't matter. The reason Apple tell you to drain it totally once a month is so it calibrates the battery monitor to give you a more accurate reading on the percentage.

From personal experience I did this on my iPhone 3G and it killed the battery... So I think I will live without an accurate battery monitor lol.

price for pay for such a lush screen, try going to a ipad/ipad2 after using one for a while and you'll gladly put up with the longer charging time and less use.