iPad mini 7 Is Outfitted With A Less Powerful Version Of The A17 Pro With Fewer Graphics Cores, Hinting At The Use Of Chip-Binning From Apple Once Again

Apple delivered one of the biggest surprises of 2024 by unveiling the iPad mini 7, and where everyone thought that the compact tablet would be outfitted with at least an A18 Pro, the company went ahead and used last year’s A17 Pro that powered the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. However, a closer look at the specifications reveals that the A17 Pro present in the device is not the same as what Apple unveiled in 2023, revealing that the Cupertino firm has once again resorted to chip-binning to save up on component costs.

A17 Pro running in the iPad mini 7 features a 5-core GPU but retains the same CPU and Neural Engine core count as last year’s release

Three years have passed since Apple introduced the successor to the iPad mini 6, and when it finally arrived, it flaunted nearly the same design as the older model, but this time, with various hardware upgrades. One of the most notable changes was a jump from the A15 Bionic to the A17 Pro, meaning that the iPad mini 7 will deliver an impressive compute and graphics performance uplift. However, this particular SoC will be slower than the part present in last year’s ‘Pro’ models, at least when we compare the graphics side of things.

We say this because when we opened up the ‘Tech Specs’ section of the iPad mini 7, the A17 Pro was revealed to feature the same 6-core CPU and 16-core Neural Engine but a 5-core GPU. For those who do not know, the A17 Pro that launched last year arrived with a 6-core GPU, suggesting that Apple likely had some ‘bad batch’ of chipsets that it decided to re-purpose for the iPad mini 7. The less powerful A17 Pro batch likely cost less to mass produce, and for Apple, it may have been too expensive to use the A18 Pro in the portable tablet.

Then again, this might not be the only difference that we come across that is not mentioned in the ‘Tech Specs’ section of the iPad mini 7 because, with the iPad mini 6, we noticed that the latter’s A15 Bionic was actually operating at lower clock speeds than the chipset featured in the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max, despite sporting the same 5-core GPU. This difference resulted in the A14 Bionic beating it in some tests, much to the disappointment of those who upgraded. Let us see if we find more differences in the iPad mini 7 when some benchmarks are run, so stay tuned.