Coming into early 2024, I was ready for some change. The first Snapdragon X-based PCs running Windows 11 on Arm—now called Copilot+ PCs—were due by mid-year. Chromebook Plus devices were making that platform interesting, and I was curious to see—still am—what Snapdragon X-based Chromebooks might look like. Apple was kicking ass with its M3-based MacBook Air. And there was a wild card in iPad if Apple would just remove the shackles and let this platform embrace traditional productivity workloads.

Of these, the Snapdragon X-based PCs were most interesting to me. But with months until they’d be ready, I decided to get a MacBook Air, with the assumption that I’d later buy an equivalent Snapdragon X-based Surface Laptop. And then I did just that: I preordered a Surface Laptop 7th Generation, as it’s called, as soon as I could, and while it arrived here on the June 18 launch date, I just started using it a week ago because I was away.

Both are wonderful computers. The Mac wins points for its superior battery life, silent operation, and a more complete collection of native apps. And the Surface comes out ahead for using Windows 11, which I prefer, and for otherwise providing a very MacBook Air-like experience. These systems are definitely comparable, as I had hoped.

But in roughly the same time frame during which Microsoft announced and then released the first Copilot+ PCs, something else happened: Apple announced new iPad Pros and iPad Airs ahead of its WWDC conference, triggering hopes that it would finally unleash these devices as true laptop replacements, and then it utterly failed to deliver on that promise: Instead, the next iPadOS will focus on other capabilities, including, of course, Apple Intelligence.

That’s a shame. While some seem to think that the iPad should run macOS or at least offer macOS app compatibility, I’ve long seen a different future for Pro-level iPads, one that doesn’t change the look and feel of the system but instead adds more sophisticated functionality for those who wish to create content on these devices. I still believe this is possible, and will happen. Just not this year, apparently.

The new iPad Pro and iPad Air models were interesting to me regardless, but they would have been more so had Apple added more system-level content creation functionality to iPadOS. Each comes in 11- and 13-inch versions, the first time this option has been made available on the Air. The iPad Pro models are the first Apple devices to use an M4 chip, though its power is wasted here because of the limitations in iPadOS. And the Airs now utilize an M2 chip, a step up from its M1-based predecessor and the A14 Bionic in my 4th generation iPad Air.

I really like my iPad Air: It has an elegant form factor with a USB-C connector, and I was happy to get away from Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector; today, only our Apple TV 4K’s remote uses Lightning. But it’s also getting up there: The battery life is declining down over time, and I’ve had to reset it repeatedly to address recurring performance issues. That device will be four years old this September, an eon in device lifecycles, and I had been eyeing possible upgrades for many months. If the Pixel Tablet had made any sense at all, I would likely have gone in that direction. But it does not. And I tried twice.

So the new iPad Pro and iPad Air models were of interest.

They’re both expensive, the Pro versions wickedly so, and that’s always a problem. But with some discretionary funds in PayPal from the books and a growing Apple gift card balance thanks to me trading in my kids’ old iPhone 12 Pros and the Apple Watch Series 8 I stopped using, I figured I could make something work. Plus, I’d trade in the 4th gen iPad Air too.

The direction I’d take was based on what Apple announced at WWDC: If the company seemed serious about letting the iPad Pro, in particular, compete with laptops for traditional productivity tasks, I most likely would have gotten the bigger iPad Pro. But it did not do that, as noted. So it was time for Plan B.

By this point, of course, we were in Mexico and wouldn’t come home until the end of June. And so I would occasionally visit Apple.com, configure various iPad Pro and iPad Air models, compare the price with how much money I had in my PayPal and Apple gift card balance, and what Apple said they’d give me on trade. And I’d wait. Because it didn’t make sense to order anything until we were about to come home at the earliest. There was no reason for another expensive device to be sitting in Pennsylvania waiting for my return.

(Random side-note: Apple doesn’t let you use PayPal and Apple gift card balances in the same order.  I was able to work around this, but it’s a weird limitation.)

Honestly, the extra time was good: It gave me the chance to mull over the options and consider how I’d really use the thing and what I might want to test in time. And on the note, my iPad usage has been mostly about reading, which I do each day, morning and night, and sometimes in between, via various apps. And then a bit of video and other app time, mostly when traveling. The base 64 GB of storage in my 4th gen iPad Air was long sufficient, but I’d had storage issues testing the iPadOS 18 betas, and the new devices have higher base storage amounts, so that was going to change regardless.

Given my usage, and Apple’s lack of interest in making the iPad a serious productivity tool, I might have considered a new iPad mini had Apple also announced such a thing back in May. But it did not, and I’m not getting an out-of-date A-series iPad with just 64 GB of base storage in 2024. The 11-inch display on the 4th gen Air is just fine, but I was curious about going 13 inches for two reasons: The possibility that it could be used as a secondary display with a Mac or PC while traveling (since I’ll have it with me regardless) and the possibility that I might want to test its productivity functionality with an integrated keyboard case despite Apple’s hedging.

This put the iPad Pro out of contention: A base 13-inch iPad Pro (with 256 GB of storage) costs a staggering $1200, a lot of money for what is essentially an e-reader with a couple of what-if scenarios, not to mention a waste of money given how pointless the M4 chip is in an iPad. A base 13-inch iPad Air (with 128 GB), meanwhile, is “just” $750, still a lot of money, but a $450 (!) savings over the Pro, and an amount I could cover with what I had. And so I went with that, a 128 GB iPad Air in Starlight (matching my MacBook Air) with a sage (a light olive color) Smart Folio (a horrific $100 additional cost).

The only semi-disappointment here is that Apple just updated its Magic Keyboard for the new iPad Pro to be more Mac-like, with an aluminum palm rest, larger touchpad, and new row of function keys. But that peripheral does not work with an iPad Air. Those iPads still use the old Magic Keyboard, with its smaller touchpad and no function keys. Of course, these add-ons are ridiculously expensive, too, at $329. (Why the older iPad Air-compatible keyboard didn’t get a price cut is unclear.) But even if I do go in this direction in a moment of weakness, I’ll almost certainly get a Logitech Combo Touch keyboard case instead of the Apple one. They seem better and cost less. But it’s not a priority right now: I’m a bit busy with Copilot+ PC this summer.

For now, I’m just using the 13-inch iPad Air as I did my last iPad, for reading in the morning and at night mostly. Thanks to the additional storage, I’ve added a set of apps I otherwise would not have, like Facebook, Instagram, iA Writer, and Google Drive, and I’ve left some just-in-case in-box apps like iMovie and Pages on there as well. But for the most part, it’s just a bigger iPad. Whether it’s “too big” for this use is an interesting question. But I do prefer larger displays as I get older. I like it.

I’m curious that you can’t just connect the iPad Air to a Mac or PC with a USB-C cable and use it as a wired external display, but that’s almost certainly Apple’s doing. You can, of course, use the iPad Air (like other iPads) as a wireless display with the Mac, and that works wonderfully. And I do have a Luna Display dongle that lets you use an iPad as a wireless display for a Windows PC. But there’s no way this thing will work with Windows 11 on Arm. I assume. Ironic that I’m just now making that shift.

I’ll figure something out.

At some point, I’ll put the iPadOS 18 beta on there, too. I have installed this beta on the older iPad Air, but it’s really buggy, and so I don’t see a need to do that yet. (I’ve installed the latest Apple betas on my iPhone 15 Pro Max and MacBook Air as well.) And after that, who knows?