What You Need to Know About the A17 Pro!

I’ve always had the impression that Apple doesn’t love the iPad mini.

It was last properly updated in 2021 – yet this time around with the latest refresh it could fairly be argued they couldn’t even be bothered to raid the parts bin.

On the face of it, little has changed – there is still no OLED display, M series chip or even ProMotion. So has the iPad mini A17 Pro (yes, that is its full name!) been given anything more than a lick of fresh paint?

iPad mini in the hand

The iPad mini looks like an iPhone Pro Max on steroids! They are getting ever so close in the size stakes. Rounding up and down a little, the Pro Max has a 7-inch screen and the iPad mini has an 8-inch display and they are only separated by about 50 grams in weight too.

Both have that now Apple signature squared-off boxy look to them – although the mini could take a lesson or two from the slim bezels of its phone counterpart.

The screen is something I’ll be coming back to later on – but the screen on this tablet is exactly the same as the previous model. It’s the identical backlit Liquid Retina LCD display with just 500 nits of brightness from before and is shamefully still only a 60Hz refresh rate display panel.

If the demon that was jelly-scrolling was something you were wondering about – well, from what I can tell, there are no signs of it. I think that was fixed sometime last year in a software update. Put it this way, you’ll notice the dim display and refresh rate before you’ll notice the jelly scrolling!

Getting ready

For some reason, Apple forever keeps their cards close to their chest when it comes to the discussion of RAM.

Given that we’ve been told that the minimum requirement to run Apple Intelligence is 8GB I guess we have to assume that that is what we have. And make no mistake about it, wherever you look Apple is not backward in coming forward to let you know this iPad mini is Apple Intelligence ready – whatever that means at this point!

Spec-wise entry-level storage now starts at 128GB (which is what I chose) but you can still order it with either 256GB or 512GB of storage.

The majority of improvements to the tablet this time around would fall under that generic ’iterative’ tab or if you were being kind they could be considered quality-of-life improvements. For instance, the transfer speeds have doubled from 5Gb/s to 10Gb/s and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are also snappier as well.

The Pencil Pro works on this version of the iPad mini which is handy (well for me at least!) and also means that Apple has been able to tidy up the selection of pencils on the website – now there are only two options.

All cellular models are now eSIM only and I had no charger in my box – only a braided USB-C cable. I thought that was worldwide, but it turns out that in the U.S. Apple does supply a charging brick. But here is one of those Apple anomalies – you get a brick with a $500 iPad, but not a $2000 iPhone Pro Max…go figure!

The confusion continues

Continuing that theme of Apple oddities is the flash!

On here you’ll get True Tone Flash yet on the more expensive iPad Air you won’t! The Air is basically last year’s iPad Pro and yet no True Tone Flash.

Sometimes Apple confuses me.

We still have no Face ID and the cameras are unchanged from the last version as well. Now if Apple marketing were proofreading this piece they’d be quick to mention that the cameras both front and rear now feature HDR 4.

That is supposed to make your pics more vivid and detailed. Even if that is the case all I’d say is don’t be that person who takes photos with an iPad! Have some decency! The actual hardware though is untouched – still being the same 12MP cameras that were found on the previous model.

Oh, one last point about the cameras – the front-facing camera is still in the wrong position on the short edge. Why Apple – just why?

The question of Multitasking is never far from the surface when it comes to any iPad story. There is no Stage Manager option on the small tablet but you do get Slide Over and Split View.

I don’t use Stage Manager on the iPad Pro – I find it counterintuitive but I love Split View and use it nearly all the time. I find it fits the 8-inch layout of the mini perfectly and is totally usable.

Ready & waiting

With the release of this iPad Apple can now say that all new devices are AI-ready – well nearly!

All Macs, iPhones (including next year’s rumoured SE model) and iPads are AI-ready. I think the base iPad may be the only one yet to be updated – but other than that only the Watches and HomePods are yet to catch up. The HomePods I believe run on the same CPU as the watches so maybe they’ll be updated in one clean swoop. HomePods in particular are crying out to be smart Siri ready.

The choice of chip in this iPad mini was odd and caught almost everyone out. You’re probably aware that they’ve gone with a binned version of the chip from last year’s iPhone 15 Pro. Apart from losing one GPU core (down from 6 to 5), it’s the same chip.

As to why no M series chip – that’s simple – price and thermals. But why no A18 chip either? Well, that comes back to performance once again. Recall those improved transfer speeds I mentioned…well, if they’d gone for the A18 those speeds would have taken a big step backwards.

If you look at the specs of this year’s 16 and 16 Plus you’ll notice that the port is locked to a transfer speed of 480Mb/s and Apple didn’t want to be seen to be downgrading. I think they’ll have enough other flak to fight without that being added to the list as well.

The best guess has to be that Apple had a ton of imperfect chips last year, so rather than simply getting rid of them they put them carefully to one side with this refresh in mind. You have to admit that it does sound a very Tim Cook way of working, right?

Maybe that’s the only reason the iPad mini was updated at all rather than retired!

I don’t think it’s a given that the iPad mini will be on a three-year cycle and this may be the last hurrah for the tiny tablet. There could be a unit somewhere in the world with these things stacked high – and when they sell out…that will be the end. The iPad mini may be no more!

There were production and manufacturing issues with the 3nm chips from Apple’s partner, TMSC which is why we’ve seen such a quick rollout of M4 Apple silicon. The iPad Pro for instance sidestepped the M3 chip altogether and jumped directly to M4. The same is likely to be true for the Mac mini as well. The 3nm platform proved not to be as energy efficient or performant as had been hoped for so has been routinely replaced at speed.

Who is it for?

Don’t buy this iPad mini expecting it to dazzle you with Apple Intelligence.

This device like all other new Apple devices is AI-ready – but the AI ain’t ready for it yet! We will be getting some minor features soon but all the headline-making ones won’t be ready until sometime next year.

The glowing-edged, clever and intelligent Siri is a tidy way off yet as is Visual Look Up and Genmoji. As a stopgap, all we’ll get before the year’s out is the raft of summary tools, Clean Up and the writing tools.

The rollout of Apple Intelligence is testing the patience and sanity of us all – let’s just hope that when it does finally arrive it’s the bees-knees! It had better bloody be! Even now as we wait though the word coming out from Apple HQ is not promising. It seems Siri is still dumb in comparison to ChatGPT – some 25%-30% slower at answering basic questions (well basic for ChatGPT that is!) Not the news we needed to hear.

I’m sure that this little iPad mini will handle AI perfectly well – but for now, this tablet is best suited as a household device or for young kids, commuters and maybe grandparents. It’s a simple, small easy-to-use tablet which doesn’t need to be over thought about. Take it at face value and it’s actually not too bad.

I’ve had loads of parents reach out telling me how kids love this iPad and I guess from a parent’s point of view if the inevitable happens at least it’s not a fortune to replace.

The big issue

For me, the biggest flaw has to be with the display though.

Apple has pushed this thing as a gaming device – but can anyone really game on a 60Hz panel with no ProMotion? I’m no gamer, but I’d imagine a speedy refresh rate & FPS would be pretty important!

Not only that but it’s just not bright enough – not just for gaming, but for average day-to-day stuff. I know I’ve been spoiled rotten by my iPad Pro and 16 Pro Max but for Apple to sell us short with such an outdated, underperforming panel in 2024 is a crime. None of Apple’s devices are bargain basement, centre aisle items now are they? We deserve to be treated with a bit more respect.

I’m going to spend the next few days using mine now and getting hands-on with it, but for the moment the feeling is one of being underwhelmed.

But, I want to leave you with a question…

Let’s say Apple had given us the choice of an iPad Pro – the same size but one that had an M series chip, slim bezels and a bright OLED display – would that have tempted you?

I’m asking for a friend…