Good piece here from Jason Snell, and I have to say, I get exactly where he's coming from.

I tried to do the iPad-only thing, and was evangelical about it for a good year or so, but in the end got tired of having to figure out workarounds when iPadOS got in the way, trying to do things I knew a Mac could do without complaint. iPads are cool and all, but ultimately they're not (to me) an essential device.

Which left me thinking about whether or not I could justify even the price of the cheapest model. And I can't. Not any more.

Mostly for me it comes down to the gulf between what I see an iPad being capable of, and what Apple envision it to be. To my mind, if it has the same processor as a MacBook Air, then it should be able to run macOS as well as a MacBook Air does. But Apple is more concerned about product lines eating into each other's profits than it is about making a great device that can do anything.

At a stretch, I might consider an iPad mini to use for browsing the web, reading articles and such, but despite how hard I railed against people claiming that iPad was only a device for media consumption, I kinda agree with them now.