Apple A17 Pro phones: benchmarks, gaming & which to buy

What the Apple A17 Pro is

The A17 Pro (2023) was Apple's first 3 nm chip and powered only two phones: the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Geekbench 6 numbers — about 2,970 single-core and 7,600 multi-core — remain competitive with 2025-era Android flagships; single-core performance in particular still leads the field two generations later. AnTuTu scores around 1.47 million, lower than contemporary Snapdragons largely due to GPU peak-power tuning, not sustained performance.

Gaming and GPU

The Pro-class GPU added hardware ray tracing and mesh shading, and Apple famously ported console titles (Resident Evil Village, Death Stranding) to run natively. Our gaming score for A17 Pro phones lands around 45–55/100 depending on thermal envelope — the 15 Pro's smaller body throttles sooner than the Pro Max. For emulation enthusiasts, this is still the strongest single-core platform money can buy used.

USB-C and Pro features

The A17 Pro generation is also the one that brought USB-C to the iPhone (USB 3 speeds on the Pro models only), the Action Button, and ProRes video over the 48 MP main camera with log recording. If you shoot video, this generation is where the iPhone became a credible cinema camera.

Phones that ship with it

Buying advice

Used iPhone 15 Pro units typically trade in the $500–575 band in 2026 (128 GB–1 TB). With iOS support for years to come (Apple historically supports Pro chips 6–7 years), the A17 Pro is a safe long-haul buy: it will run everything through at least 2029. If you do not need the telephoto or the titanium body, the iPhone 15 on the A16 is roughly $150 cheaper with 90% of the experience; if you want the latest, step up to the A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro Max.