Good luck. $799/999 (especially the $200 more for under 2 inches more screen) for the base models are already too high as starting prices as is. Without a keyboard even.
They're getting to the cost of a full laptop (and over) with competitive speed, which makes it a non-starter for most when it can't do everything a full laptop can. The choice would be an easy one for most people looking in that price range.
The base ipad and Air are still relatively good deals for the price, but the Pros are making less sense vs a laptop if they go up any.
I agree completely. I bought into the hype of "laptop replacement" and purchased last years iPad Pro 12.9 cellular 256gig. I bought the Magic Keyboard and Apple Pen 2 and sold my old 9.7" iPad Pro. After the sale my cost came to something like $1700.
I thought the final piece of the puzzle to productivity for me was when they added trackpad and mouse support and the ability to use external drives. I do a fair amount of Lightroom/Photoshop work and thought the higher resolution color accurate display would be great. Biggest problem there is that I copied my entire library (imported by PC) onto a hard drive that was NTFS format and the iPad doesn't read NTFS or any format except Exfat formatted by a MAC. Once I got that resolved I plugged a drive in, tried the import feature in lightroom and the IOS version only reads the parent directory. I have over 30,000 photos in over 1000 subdirectories. Further, the mouse support is really awkward to me and trackpads are awkward period. I'm sure there are some artists that find it to be great but I sure don't.
Other apps are also still very limited as well, even many of them direct ports from the iPhone that don't support landscape mode necessary for a keyboard. I guess that is why they are called "Apps" instead of applications. Apples solution is that I should contact the developers.
Yet they continue to sell their keyboards for up to $350 each. And once the Magic Keyboard is added the weight is 3 lbs. and is very top heavy, I can only uses it on my lap if I am very, careful because if I lean forward it tries to fall off and is so rigid I am sure even a short fall will damage it. Don't even think about getting this rig without Applecare.
As a consumption device it is great, I love the sound that is on a par with a very decent stereo system. And the front camera is superior to any PC for web meeting although even there the functionality of Zoom, google meetings, MS teams etc. is short. And it is great for movies and TV. So I'm keeping it as a second device for entertainment. Mostly I use it for reading, watching video when I'm using my Lenovo Yoga for work.
So I ended up biting the bullet and buying A Lenovo Yoga C940 with a 4k HDR touchscreen, soundbar with Dolby Atmos, 16 gig memory, 1 TB SSD and built in pen ($1495, $149 WW onsite warranty upgrade). It does everything the IPad Pro does (except the pen is better but I don't use it) and weighs less at 2.98 lbs. I almost sold the iPad Pro at a big loss but decided it was good for playing Monopoly.
