For pen input, the iPad (display, stylus/digitizer, software) is better than anything you could buy for 50x the price a decade ago. For me, it’s not as good a general-purpose computer as a 10-year-old laptop, but it’s also not really supposed to be. There’s room in the world for more than one vision of computing to exist side by side.
I’m sure there are some customers / use cases where those differences aren’t a deal-breaker. Personally I really appreciate it. I have been very impressed with the iPad pen input. It’s clear their hardware and software engineers collaborated closely to make a really impressive device and experience. (Again, as long as you mainly are using pen input.)
It’s possible there’s other software out there that does a better job than Microsoft’s first party stuff or the couple of third-party apps I tried.
Think of it like a notebook/scrapbook with pens/markers that doesn’t take any consumables, takes up less space in a bag, allows undo/redo, and makes sharing the products digitally a snap.
Works best when used alongside a laptop, rather than as a replacement, at least for me. I certainly wouldn’t want to write code on it full time.