Retina iPad Mini Has 1.3 GHz A7 Processor With 5X The Performance of the Original Mini
Apple's new Retina iPad mini includes the same 64-bit A7 chip used in the iPad Air and the iPhone 5s, which offers significantly better performance than the A5 chip found in the original iPad mini.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Retina iPad mini is the third device to carry Apple's 64-bit A7 — alongside the iPhone 5s and the iPad Air — and it breaks the original mini's pattern of launching on older silicon, having shipped with the A5. Per the confirmed details, the new model runs the A7 at 1.3 GHz and delivers roughly five times the original mini's performance.
Launch-day interest was unusually broad: the story was picked up the same day by 9to5Mac, The Verge, TechCrunch, BGR, Cult of Mac, Ubergizmo, PadGadget and others, with The Verge noting the $399 starting price and 9to5Mac reporting that the initial Apple Store rollout was exclusive to Personal Pickup — a sign of tight early inventory.
First-order effects
- Buyers of the $399 mini get the same 64-bit A7 as the iPad Air and iPhone 5s, a roughly fivefold jump over the original mini's A5.
- By putting the A7 in all three devices at once, Apple has eliminated the spec gap between its small tablet and its flagships at launch.
Second-order effects
- With Apple Store stock limited to Personal Pickup at launch, early demand routes through in-store channels rather than online ordering, shaping how quickly the device reaches buyers.
- Developers gain a single 64-bit A7 target spanning iPhone and both iPad sizes, which accelerates the retirement of code paths tuned to the older A5 generation.
Third-order effects
- If each fall's A-chip lands across every current device simultaneously, iPad generations will be defined by the silicon calendar rather than by staggered specs between models.
- A $399 small tablet running flagship silicon sets an internal benchmark: vendors can no longer position their compact devices as the underpowered, cheaper tier of their own lineups.
The trend: Apple is standardizing each year's A-series chip across the iPhone and every iPad size at once, making silicon parity — not screen-size-tiered specs — the organizing principle of its tablet line.