Feel sorry for the one brand fanboys that are being forced to buy two devices, a dinosaur clamshell MacBook with no touch nor pen input and an iPad that's gimped by an OS originally for iPods. Getting a Surface Pro 8 to replace both.
I have used a 2-in-1 for years in my school, and I am honestly not a fan of the form factor. Maybe it's an issue specific to the HP Elitex2 (and not representative of said device in general), but the pandemic really laid its limitations bare for everyone to see. Sure, it's thin and light, and perhaps in a normal year, it would have sufficed for the web browsing and document editing that most teachers do, but battery life was never fantastic to begin with, and the combination of its thin form factor and the processor being right underneath the display meant heat dissipation was an issue, resulting in numerous issues of flickering displays and bloated batteries as we increasingly transitioned to zoom.
I am sure there are people for whom said device is a perfect fit for their needs, and I do hope you get good mileage out of your Surface Pro 8, but it's just not for me. Yes, I do need to manage two separate devices, but this also means that each device is free to be the purest expression of their individual form factors. My 11" iPad Pro is especially great for classroom teaching and couch surfing and I have been putting it through its paces the last week preparing screencasts and managing online lessons with my students.
So I sweat a little more lugging an additional device to work, but once there, I am able to use my devices on my terms, without being bogged down by one form factor having to make concessions for the other (eg: a 13" surface pro would also mean a 13" tablet, and I returned my 12.9" iPad Pro precisely because I didn't want a tablet that big).
And with the exception of my 27" iMac, I am happy to report that my M1 MBA is working great (the long battery life is especially handy for letting my tank a day of zoom meetings without having to plug in to charge; the same cannot be said for my AirPods though), and I look forward to the day when I can finally excise all traces of Intel from my house.
So you needn't feel sorry for me. 😊