iPad Pro M5 tipped to land next year – but not until long after the iPad 11 and the next iPad Air

iPad Pro 13-inch with M4 chip on a wooden table
The iPad Pro 13-inch (2024) (Image credit: Future)

2025 could be a big year for iPads, as it now sounds like Apple might have refreshes for three models planned, namely the iPad Pro, iPad Air, and the base iPad.

This is all according to Mark Gurman, who recently claimed that we’d see the iPad 11 and a new iPad Air in the spring (meaning sometime between late March and late June), alongside the iPhone SE 4, and in his latest newsletter for Bloomberg he said the same again.

This time though Gurman added that the iPad 11 will apparently have roughly the same design as the iPad 10.9 (2022), but that it will get a speed boost – one that we imagine will also allow it to support Apple Intelligence.

In any case, these two tablets will be landing before too long if Gurman is right, but if you’re holding out for a new iPad Pro then you might be waiting quite a lot longer, as in the same article Gurman said he doesn’t expect this to land until either late 2025 or early 2026.

When it does, it will probably come running a new M5 chipset, but Gurman doesn’t expect other major changes, since the design of the current model is only around six months old.

iPad Pro 13-inch with M4 chip on a wooden table

The iPad Pro (2024) is still quite new (Image credit: Future)

Mostly small upgrades

So while 2025 might be a big year in terms of the number of new iPads we see, it doesn’t sound like these new models will be massive upgrades on the current ones.

As such, you can probably safely buy the iPad Pro (2024) right now, since it’s likely still quite a wait for the next one, and possibly with only a new chipset to show for it. It might be worth waiting for the next iPad Air, since that could arrive in the first half of 2025, but the iPad Air (2024) is still fairly new, so again, we might not see many upgrades.

The most worthwhile of these products could be the iPad 11, since unlike the latest Air and Pro models, the iPad 10.9 (2022) doesn’t support Apple Intelligence, so even if this upcoming model does just have a new chipset, it could open up a whole new world of features.

As ever we’d take these claims with a pinch of salt anyway, but Gurman has a good track record, so there’s every chance these release timings will pan out.

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James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.

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