Performance
Once upon a time, all of Apple’s iPad models came with CPUs that were roughly equivalent to the iPhones of the same era. This changed with the fifth-generation iPad in 2017, which only boasted the two-year-old A9 chip found in the 2015 iPhone 6s. The trend continued with the sixth-generation iPad getting the 2017-era A10 chip from the iPhone 7.
Although you might expect that to mean that this year’s seventh-gen model would include the A11, that’s actually not the case. In fact, there’s been no processor bump at all, the the seventh-generation iPad still features the same A10 Fusion chip as its predecessor.
While the A10 is no slouch, it’s still two generations behind the A12 Bionic found in Apple’s newest iPad Air, which is also just a notch below the slightly-enhanced A12X that the current iPad Pro models use.