I use iCloud. That said, iCloud’s useless when internet is down/unavailable/too slow. Heck, just driving along California freeways, cellular often craps out making streaming video impossible (too many pauses).
When I first bought a 32GB iPad 2 more than a decade ago, I realized it was super awesome for manga/comics and that I needed an iPad with 512GB-1TB storage (had a 12TB unRAID server back then). I’ve been upgrading to max storage almost every release (skipped the 2018/2020 due to cost/not good enough value). I now have a 20TB NAS (planning on upgrading to 40TB so I could backup my 4K Blu-rays) but on the iPad, 1TB remains comfortable.