MacBook Air or iPad w/ Magic Keyboard?

[Mikael H]

Extremely first-world problem, I’ll be the first to admit, but please hear me out:
My first-gen 9.7” iPad Pro is really showing its age now, and I’m thinking about how to proceed from here.

I have a 16” MacBook Pro that’s almost always docked to a display. It is technically a laptop, but it’s a bit cumbersome to use as a sofa surfing device, and I’m frankly too much of a coward to bring it along for vacations.

An okayish iPad Air with a Magic Keyboard and a base-level MacBook Air are sufficiently similarly priced that I’m interested in some input from folks who might have used both, to hear some pros and cons.

My use case would mainly be browsing the web, writing, very light photo management/editing. The benefit of the Mac of course is that it’s a real multi-purpose computer and can provide me a proper devops environment, while the iPad excels for reading and pure media consumption but quickly becomes limiting when actually being creative.

- What device do you bring along on multi-day trips or vacations?
- Is a MacBook Air reasonably comfortable in a sofa or bed?
- (for people with international keyboard layouts): Do the weird key sizes on the right side of the Magic Keyboard hamper typing speed?

 

[tstafford]

I had the same choice to make recently and ended up with a base model M2 MBA. Came down to three things for me:
1) weight - the MBA is lighter than an iPad Pro w/ keyboard. I wanted maximum portability because I regularly walk long distances with the machine on my back
2) price - the MBA was cheaper. I got it at BBY for $999
3) macOS - there are still times I find that iOS can't do certain things. And when that happens it drives me nuts. I don't feel like I can travel w/o a laptop. Wish it was different, but it's not

The things I think I lost by this choice - battery life (although the MBA is excellent, I would guess I'd get more out of the iPad Pro), screen (the MBA screen is okay not great, iPad Pro is surely better), downloads (not being able to download content to services like Hulu and Netflix for flights is a loss).

At the end of the day the deciding factor was the OS. I want macOS and it's kind of just that.

 

[ggx12]

I would say the iPad is more complementary to your current set up given that you already own a 16" MBP. You can use it on the go but also next to your laptop If you like the iPad experience and want to use it with and without MK (e.g. with the pencil), get the iPad. It will be more than enough to do light computing on holidays (think of it as a very fancy chromebook). there are great writing and photo editing apps available.

If you want a real computer (MacOS) or will use the iPad always attached to the keyboard, then it might be better to have a MBA.