Tablet vs Laptop for Work in 2025: The Line Has Blurred, But It Hasn't Disappeared

I write for a living. I edit photos as a hobby. I do occasional video work. For six months I used only the iPad Pro M4 with the Magic Keyboard for everything, by choice, to see if the 'iPad as laptop replacement' narrative had finally caught up to the hardware capability. Here is my honest report.

What Worked Perfectly

Writing in any app — Google Docs, iA Writer, Ulysses. Email and calendar management. Photo editing in Lightroom Mobile and Darkroom. Reading and annotating documents. Video calls. Presentations. FaceTime. Apple Pencil sketching and note-taking. This covered probably 70% of what I actually do on a computer on any given day.

What Was Frustrating

File management across apps required more deliberate thought than on macOS. The browser — even Safari, which is genuinely excellent on iPad — occasionally ran into sites that didn't render quite right in tablet mode. External drive support is better than it was but still finicky. Running two apps side-by-side is Stage Manager's forte; running four apps in a genuinely desktop-like layout still requires more workarounds than it should.

The Honest Bottom Line

If your work is primarily writing, communication, and creative tasks in apps that have good iPad versions: yes, the iPad Pro can replace your laptop, and in some ways — like handwriting notes and the display quality — it's a better experience. If your work involves specific Mac software, command-line tools, or complex file workflows: no, the iPad Pro cannot replace your laptop yet. The hardware is ready. The software constraints still define what's possible.