Why vapor chamber cooling could transform the iPad Pro M6

Apple appears to be gearing up for a meaningful step in the evolution of its tablets. According to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the upcoming iPad Pro M6 is set to become the company’s first tablet to use a vapor chamber cooling system, a technology already employed in the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Until now, Apple has steered clear of such solutions, favoring graphene heat spreaders and using the aluminum chassis as a heat sink. In practice, that approach has proved less than ideal. The iPad Pro M5 is a case in point: thermal limits prevent the M5 chip from running at full tilt, which likely explains why the tablet ships with a pared-back CPU configuration—nine cores instead of the 10 found in the M5 MacBook Pro.

Bringing a vapor chamber to the iPad Pro M6 should significantly improve heat dissipation and stabilize performance under sustained workloads, whether that is demanding AAA games or professional graphics tasks. More efficient cooling could also let Apple enable more CPU cores or raise clock speeds without pushing the device into thermal discomfort. If so, the tablet would finally be able to show what Apple silicon can consistently deliver in this form factor.

The open question is how this will affect the tablet’s design. Apple has long chased extreme thinness for the iPad Pro, often describing the lineup as the most powerful and thinnest computers it has ever made. If the rumor holds, the company may need to slightly increase the chassis thickness to unlock better thermals. Nothing is official yet, but if the reports pan out, the iPad Pro M6 could become the most powerful and better-balanced tablet in Apple’s history—a trade worth making if it turns peak speed into sustained performance.