After the OLED iPad mini launch in Canada, Apple’s remaining tablet refreshes look set for the first half of next year. A new report points to an OLED iPad Air and a faster iPad Pro with vapour-chamber cooling as the next big steps on that roadmap.
That timing would leave shoppers with a long wait if they skipped the mini and hoped the Air or Pro would follow before Christmas. It also keeps the iPad lineup staggered, with the mini carrying OLED first while the larger models get their turn in 2027.
The outlook comes according to Mark Gurman’s Sunday Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, which maps the next wave of iPad updates into the first half of next year unless a model slips.
Gurman says the next iPad Air is expected to move to an OLED display. That would close a long-running gap with the iPad Pro and the new mini, both of which already use self-lit panels for deeper blacks and higher contrast than traditional LCD.
Supply chatter around that shift is not brand new. An earlier report said Apple was looking beyond Samsung for OLED iPad Air panels, which underscored how carefully the company has staged the Air’s screen upgrade.
Pricing for a future OLED Air has not been detailed in the latest newsletter. Canadian buyers should still expect a jump over today’s LCD Air once the new panel lands, based on how Apple handled the mini’s OLED move, though exact dollars are not in this report.
On the Pro side, Gurman expects the next refresh to pair a move to the M6 chip with vapour-chamber cooling. The cooling change is meant to help the thin tablet hold higher performance for longer during games and heavy on-device AI work, instead of throttling as quickly when heat builds up.
That vapour-chamber idea has been floating around for a while. A previous Gurman note already flagged vapour-chamber cooling for a future iPad Pro as a way to keep sustained performance up in Apple’s thinnest Pro slate.
Shoppers comparing sizes and screens today can still lean on the current lineup, including the brand-new mini, while they wait. A separate new-versus-old iPad mini breakdown for Canada covers what changed in the model that just arrived, which remains the only fresh iPad shipping from this fall’s wave.
Unless a project gets pushed back, Gurman believes the remaining iPad updates land only in the first half of next year. Recaps of the same newsletter also mention an entry-level iPad refresh in that window, so the Air and Pro would not be the only tablets on Apple’s 2027 calendar.
None of this has been confirmed by Apple, and chip details beyond the reported M6 Pro move are still thin in public write-ups. Treat the OLED Air panel, the Pro cooling change, and the first-half timing as reported plans rather than locked launch dates.
Are you holding out for an OLED iPad Air next year, or is the new mini already enough tablet for now?
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