I have purchased a refurbished iPad. It is from a Apple-certified repair shop, but I understand this is not the same as Apple refurbished.
On a MacBook with an internal battery, I can see in System Information that the battery still has its own firmware and serial number. Is it similar for iOS devices? Does the device know if the battery has been replaced and will this reset battery stats such as loadcycles?
The battery appears to have ~200 loadcycles and only 80% capacity, indicating it is not in good condition.
However, I have noticed that the charge level regularly goes above 100% when finishing the charge, which might make sense if the charging firmware was "surprised" by a new battery.
My Google-fu was unable to find any battery benchmarks for the iPad 4. (Retina iPad 2012), which I might use to compare the battery's actual performance. I get about 15 hours of screen on time, which seems good.