The new iPad mini has the A17 Pro chip, supports Apple Intelligence

After a long wait, Apple revamped the iPad Mini with the A17 Pro chipset and a few other upgrades.

The star of the show will be the upgrade from the A15 Bionic chip used in the iPhone 13 generation to the A17 Pro chip, which powered the iPhone 15 Pro last year. That means this chip supports Apple’s AAA gaming ambitions and Apple Intelligence. Apple’s press release says that it delivers a 25 percent jump in GPU performance compared to the previous iPad mini, so gaming, in general, should be improved. However, the A17 Pro could just barely run AAA games in my testing, so I’d guess that the mini will be better for regular iOS games compared to AAA titles like Assassins Creed Mirage, but I haven’t tested it, so I can’t say for sure.

The iPad mini colours are blue, space grey, purple and starlight.

Beyond the new chip, Apple has upgraded some of the software behind the rear camera to include the smart HDR 4 algorithm, which is the same one used in the iPhone 14 series. That means that you should be able to take brighter photos than the previous mini, but it would give you control over the photographic styles like the new iPhone 16 series of phones. The new mini still has a 12-megapixel sensor as well, and it’s unclear if the sensor has been changed or just the software behind it.

Other improvements include a Wifi 6E modem for faster Wi-Fi connectivity, a faster USB-C port that supports USB3 speeds of 10GB/s, and support for the Apple Pencil Pro and its interesting hover mechanic. It also appears that this version of the mini will only work with eSIM cards and will forgo a physical SIM card slot.

The new A17 Pro iPad mini is up for pre-orders today and starts at $679 CAD with 128GB of storage. That is higher than the $649 price of the older mini, but that model started with 64GB of storage so it’s an okay tradeoff in my mind.