During the iPhone 6s event, Apple not only announced two new iPhone models, it also unveiled a larger iPad Pro, and also quietly refreshed its iPad mini lineup by introducing iPad mini 4. It was widely expected that the device would be a smaller version of the iPad Air 2, the device actually features an Apple A8 processor and not the A8X as found inside the iPad Air 2.
Now a new report from ArsTechnica reveals that the new iPad mini 4 actually packs some key differences from the previous devices featuring the A8 processor. Early benchmarks of this iPad mini refresh show that the Apple A8 processor inside the iPad mini 4 is clocked at 1.5GHz, which is faster than the same A8 processor inside the iPhone 6 and the 6 Plus that is clocked at 1.4GHz. The device also contains a 2GB of RAM to make the Split screen experience smoother.
The report indicates that while the increase in clock speed adds up to the overall performance of the new iPad mini, the new device is still inferior in speed than the iPad Air 2.
Having a whole extra CPU core makes the 1.5GHz A8X in the iPad Air 2 about 50% faster than the Mini 4, but we’re still looking at a 20-or-so percent improvement over the old Mini 2 and Mini 3. That extra RAM will be good for more than just Split View multitasking, too—2GB iDevices need to eject things from memory less often, cutting down on the amount of tab reloading that Safari does and generally reducing wait times when switching between different tabs and apps.
The benchmark charts of the iPad mini 4 Geekbench results has been posted below that clearly show that the iPad Air 2 outperforms the new iPad Mini 4 by huge margins. However, the new iPad mini does perform better than the last generation iPad mini model.