I’m probably going to get the 12.9” model. I’m a lecturer and it’ll be very useful for my teaching. Not so much for research where I’m working with stuff like Matlab and OpenFOAM and specialist Windows software for laboratory instruments.

Currently I use my Mac and occasionally sidecar with an old 10.5” iPad Pro so I can annotate my mirrored slides while I go. It works but is awkward. When using a projector over HDMI it’s energy intensive so I need to bring along my Mac’s power brick. Often the display scaling from connecting to the room projector will offset my pencil position, the order you connect stuff seems to matter.

I teach a combination of slides and Jupyter notebooks so I need to verify that everything works as expected.

I could try to use a lightning to HDMI adapter and leave the Mac in my office, but I’m also interested in the LiDAR scanner for some research activities.

I also find the iPad great for bringing along to meetings and labs where you want to sketch stuff out, you can email the result to a student after.

I find it a useful tool for class prep also.

So it’s not a replacement for my laptop, but it’ll help me with a significant part of my day to day activities.