4

Recently I bought Apple Pencil (1 with lightning charger) for my iPad Air 3. My question is relating to the life span of this pencil. I use it about 5 hour a day usually.

Do we know how many years I could expect my pencil to work?

bmike
  • 235,889
neelkanth
  • 159

4 Answers4

6

The pencil should last several years if you're careful with it. The two ways it will fail are physical damage and eventual consumption of the batteries. One way you won’t get long life out of a pencil is if you don’t use it and keep it charged monthly.

  • Avoid hard drops to the hard floor.
  • Avoid never charging it or letting the battery go totally flat

Things you can fix are overuse, the tips wear out in a year or so of moderate to heavy use. Apple sells replacement tips for your pencil at 4 tips for $19. Apple also offers battery service for $30.

This link will describe how to tell if tip is worn. You may want to check it out.

bmike
  • 235,889
Natsfan
  • 14,185
  • The pencil should last several years. Can you cite any reference that comments on the battery life span of Apple Pencil? – Nimesh Neema Aug 10 '20 at 17:07
  • no, I can't. I searched on the lifetime of apple pencil and one site had people writing that they have the original pencil and are still using it. The best I can do is try my search again and make a reference if i find the site again. i'll try. – Natsfan Aug 10 '20 at 17:11
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/ipad/comments/9erd6c/apple_pencil_life_expectancy/ – Natsfan Aug 10 '20 at 17:17
  • https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7656996 – Natsfan Aug 10 '20 at 17:17
  • Anecdotally, We’re not seeing the original ones we bought fail yet so 2015 to... who knows for a reasonable life span could be normal. Hard to tell without excellent / complete service data on all failure modes and rates. Too small a sample size and your data will be skewed. Mine is too small to generalize so I’m not answering yet. – bmike Aug 10 '20 at 17:35
  • 2
    I wrote an answer re: Magic Mouse life expectancy and it's based on the lifespan of a lithium ion battery being 3-5 years. The link is there as an authoritative reference @NimeshNeema. It should apply here as well. – Allan Aug 10 '20 at 18:18
  • 1
    i learned recently that Apple will replace the batteries for $30. So that should extend the life of the pencil. – Natsfan Aug 10 '20 at 18:31
  • Forgive the large edits. I wanted to address two failure modes of batteries and get the service options out of the comments and into the answer. Let me know if you prefer I make a new answer to cover all this. – bmike Feb 02 '21 at 11:31
1

If you don't charge it every few weeks, the answer is less than a year. They don't tell you this, but i bought one, never used it, and it is dead. I threw away my money. You have to keep charging it or it dies.

Josh Daley
  • 19
  • 1
    Did you ask Apple to service the batteries if they died prematurely? – bmike Feb 02 '21 at 11:29
  • That sounds like a faulty unit. We've got several Apple Pencils bought in 2015 that have seen only very occasional usage (i.e. not being charged for weeks or months at a time), and they're still working. – jksoegaard Feb 02 '21 at 17:34
  • Very true @jksoegaard most people have anecdotal evidence and of course some fraction of shipped units have warranty claims as some specific units could fail at any time in the “normal distribution” of eventual failures. – bmike Feb 04 '21 at 19:29
  • Hey,... by the time I knew what happened and figured out why, it was 4 years old and way past warranty. Should I call them anyway? – Josh Daley Feb 04 '21 at 22:02
  • Any lithium-ion based battery may die once it is deeply discharged and it can even be dangerous (see: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/164178). Deep discharging happens when you leave a completely discharged battery pack without any charge for too long. When you plan to store devices, including Apple Pencil, for longer periods, charge them to ~50-60% and check from time to time. – herrbischoff Jul 20 '22 at 09:19
1

My only lasted about 15 months. I used it every now and then to draw on procreate, I always kept it charged attached to my iPad and last week I leaved it in my car glove box(like many other times) along with my iPad then when I tried using it it was dead, unresponsive. I never let it die it was as always attached to the iPad fully charged. My guess is that it will only last the warranty period like many products,now I’m looking for a cheaper alternative before I drop another $130.

Manuel DeJesus Garcia
  • 11
-2

I bought the apple pencil in 2019, and it worked great back that time. Then 2020 happened and I did not have the opportunity to use it for about 10 months. Now, when the classes are resuming I see the pencil is dead. The only option available is to buy a new one; as another user said you need to keep charging it. It seems nothing more than an expensive toy!

newtoncodes
  • 1
  • This is a failure mode we can all expect. Lithium batteries can fail before their design life and also fail when they discharge deeply and thirdly fail due to too many recharge cycles. The pencil is an incredible tool, but I suppose it’s expensive if you don’t get value from it. Some toys are known to be very expensive - yachts, cars, motorcycles. I suppose everyone gets their bar for expensive. If yours is $100, you might get some down votes but the part about batteries should be mentioned since that’s just chemistry and physics. – bmike Feb 02 '21 at 10:55
  • @bmike What makes you think that only US customers buy apple products? With the price of apple pencil in my place I can get a decent smartphone (just to give you some price comparison since you seem too obsessed with my last statement). And having to buy two such overly priced products, within a span of two and half years, sounds unreasonable to me. Apple Support said they don't repair it, so buying a new one is the only option. – newtoncodes Feb 04 '21 at 11:38
  • I don't think that - just was trying to ease your entry to the site. Pricing questions are off limits, so your answer seemed likely to get down votes. Sorry if my comment didn't help you out. It would have been nice for Apple Support to mention the battery service - even if it's not in your budget, options are nice to have. – bmike Feb 04 '21 at 12:38