Apple to add vapor chamber cooling to iPad Pro with M6 in 2027

Apple is planning to add a vapor chamber cooling system to the next iPad Pro, accompanying a new M6 chip and expected to arrive as part of the tablet's next update cycle in 2027, according to reporting by Mark Gurman. The change would bring a liquidbased heat-spreading technology to Apple's thinnest pro tablet in order to improve sustained performance during demanding tasks.

Vapor chambers move heat away from processors and other hot components more quickly than traditional solid heatsinks. Apple first introduced the technology in its iPhone 17 Pro models, where it reduced thermal build-up during intensive use. The current iPad Pro generation adopted an improved copper heatsink with the M4 chip, but Apple appears to be pursuing the vapor chamber to further limit throttling when running resource intensive workloads such as gaming, video editing and emerging AI applications.

Gurman wrote that the planned iPad Pro update will pair the vapor chamber with an M6 system on chip, which is expected to be built on a 2 nanometer process. Apple typically follows an approximately 18 month cadence for iPad Pro refreshes, and that timetable would point to a spring 2027 release for the M6...