Early benchmark tests for the recently announced iPad mini 7 show it’s around 30% faster than its predecessor, and perhaps a bit more. This is a detail that might help anyone wavering on the new tablet make up their mind.
The same tests indicate that iPad has 8GB of RAM — an expected increase.
Apple A17 Pro boosts iPad mini 7 performance
iPad mini 7 won’t reach consumers until next Wednesday. It was announced on October 15, with one of the major upgrades being the move to an Apple A17 Pro — the earlier model uses an A15.
Apple promised that the change would bring a 30% boost in CPU performance. The first Geekbench 6 benchmark scores indicate that there’ll be a significant increase in performance — in the ballpark with Apple’s promise.
The initial scores range fairly widely, which isn’t unusual. The best result is a 6938 Multi-Core Score and a 2844 Single-Core Score. That indicates a 29% performance gain for multi-core and 34% for single-core.
Primate Labs Geekbench 6 attempts to test real-world performance. It times the processor as it handles tasks like data compression, image processing and machine learning.
To get even more technical, the Apple A17 Pro uses two high-speed CPU cores for when performance is needed and four when saving power is more important.
The design of the chip includes six GPU cores, but the version in the iPad mini 7 has only 5 functional ones. This decreases the cost of the component — these are chips that had a single GPU core fail QA testing, so they couldn’t be used in the iPhone 15 Pro series.
2X RAM
A side benefit of the Geekbench app is that it reveals how much RAM a device has, a specification Apple doesn’t mention for its tablets. This means we now have confirmation that the iPad mini 7 includes 8 GB of RAM. The previous version has half that.
The improvement is almost certainly to allow the new tablet to handle Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI-powered features that are coming soon to iPhone and Mac along with other iPad models. Apple hasn’t announced the RAM requirements for the new features, but no iPhone or iPad with less than 8GB of RAM supports them.
Apple Intelligence tools can fix users’ grammar and repair images, as well as generate pictures based on user instructions. The capabilities will grow over time.
The base model for the tablet also has double the shortage capacity of the sixth-generation model, now starting at 128GB. But that has nothing to do with AI.
Preorder iPad mini 7 today
While Apple has not yet released the iPad mini 7, it’s taking preorders now. The cost starts at $499, just like its predecessor. A version with built-in 5G as well as Wi-Fi starts at $649.
Buy it from: Apple
The actual iPad mini 7 release date is Wednesday, October 23. That’s when it’ll reach stores and start arriving on the doorsteps of those who place pre-orders.
