The iPad mini 7 was suddenly announced earlier this week, surprising us all. And another surprise: One of the major upgrades isn’t as powerful as we thought.
The iPad mini 7’s biggest hardware update from 2021 over the still-superior iPad mini 6 is the use of the A17 Pro chip (first introduced in last year’s iPhone 15 Pro) instead of the older model’s A15 silicon. While there’s no doubt this is a good upgrade, it has since been revealed that the iPad mini’s chip isn’t as powerful as the iPhone 15 Pro’s version.
If you visit the specs page for the new iPad mini on Apple’s site, under the “chips” section you’ll see that the A17 Pro includes 6 CPU cores, 5 GPU cores, and 16 NPU cores. Masu. However, the A17 Pro chip in the iPhone 15 Pro offers six GPU cores instead. This means that the A17 Pro inside the iPad mini still has six GPU cores, but one of them is permanently turned off. You should certainly benchmark your new iPad, but this can affect the performance of games and other demanding apps.
This process, known as “chip binning,” is something Apple frequently does with its chips, as it allows the same silicon to offer lower performance levels by disabling cores. For example, the M3 chip used in the MacBook Air has two fewer GPU cores than the version used in the base 14-inch MacBook Pro, despite being otherwise the same chip.
Importantly, this small downgrade to the A17 Pro doesn’t prevent the iPad mini from accessing Apple Intelligence, another big upgrade compared to the last iPad mini. This feature isn’t yet in iPadOS 18, but is expected to be rolled out by the end of this month.
There are several other ways Apple is updating the iPad mini for 2024. The new model supports Apple Pencil Pro, doubles the default storage to 128GB, increases RAM from 4GB to 8GB, and comes in new blue and purple color options. Pricing is the same as the previous iPad mini launch, starting at $499/£499/AU$799.
Anyone who wants to buy an iPad mini for themselves can pre-order it now and will be able to purchase it in open sale starting October 23rd. If you are still not sure whether to buy or not, please contact us immediately for Apple review. The newest and smallest iPad.
