Hot iPads are a different kind of problem than hot phones. iPads are more often caseless, since many users keep them at home, and they often rest directly on a user’s lap. An iPad is also huge compared to a phone, and the Pro version is often used in processor-intensive ways—such as for music recording, gaming, and onboard AI apps, all of which can be slowed down for safety when that powerful M5 starts pulsating with heat.
But cutting-edge vapor cooling looks like it’s coming to the rescue. According to Mark Gurman, the Apple leaks guy at Bloomberg, a vapor chamber for the iPad Pro is now “on the company’s road map.”
Heat became a major problem for the iPad’s sibling the iPhone back in 2023, probably brought on by the switch from stainless steel to titanium for the device’s frame. It was rumored that the heat was so bad, even those weird people who use their iPhones caseless had to case up when they got iPhone 15s, not to protect their investments from damage, but instead as one would use an oven mitt—to spare their fingers from getting seared.
Apple evidently heard the ensuing user complaints, and brought vapor chambers to the iPhone 17. The cooling from that change to the iPhone’s guts, along with the relocation of the processor for similar reasons, was flagged in Gizmodo’s iPhone 17 review as a selling point.
And now, according to Gurman, iPad Pros should be getting vapor chambers in fairly short order too.
Apple didn’t invent these. Samsung phones, for instance, could boast vapor chambers all the way back in 2019. But Apple’s version of this system—a nearly empty gap sandwiched between two paper thin wafers of metal—is a fascinating piece of tech ingenuity all the same. They contain literal water, which literally boils inside your device in order to help dissipate heat.
Gurman notes that the product cycle for the iPad Pro is currently 18 months, meaning an updated device with advanced cooling should be in users’ delicate hands in spring of 2027.
