Tom's Guide ran the new iPad mini through its standard battery test, which involves continuous web browsing over Wi-Fi with the display set to 150 nits of brightness, and the device achieved much better battery life than Apple advertises.
According to the review, the iPad mini 8 lasted for 14 hours and 24 minutes in this test, up from 10 hours and 36 minutes for the iPad mini 7.
Tom's Guide said it typically performs the battery test three times to get an average time, but it only had time for a single run for this review. However, their review said they suspect the final results will be similar to the first run.
This is an interesting finding, as Apple does not advertise longer battery life for the new iPad mini, with its tech specs showing "up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi" for both the iPad mini 7 and iPad mini 8. The new model does have Apple's more power efficient C2 modem for cellular connectivity, but Tom's Guide's test used Wi-Fi.
We will have to see if further tests support this finding, but longer battery life may be an unadvertised benefit of the new iPad mini. The new model actually has a slightly smaller battery compared to the previous model, but power efficiency gains could come from the A20 Pro chip and the OLED display when showing darker content.
The new iPad mini launches on Friday, with U.S. pricing starting at $699. Earlier today, we shared our own hands-on look at the device.
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