This is my story too. I am not in the Apple ecosystem (I use mostly Linux) and don't really buy tech gadgets (e.g. I use an old phone), but I got a cheap iPad for a long trip where I wanted a map with a long battery, expecting to not really use it much more than that. I have ended up using it a ton.

My activities are similar to the above, primarily consumption. I have been reading books on it despite having a kindle (I maintain my "no gadgets" position above -- it was a gift) because it is so convenient to be able to switch between a book and other iPad activities, like looking up something online.

I'll add that the screen is great, the battery lasts forever, and (as a programmer) I really appreciate the high software quality.

"Watching TV/movies while traveling (you can do it on a flight on a laptop, but it's hard in an airplane seat -- this is so much easier)"

I have a Macbook Air and even with that, doing anything on an airplane seat is a gigantic PITA. The iPad is a breeze. I wanted to upgrade to the 11 inch but now will upgrade to the 10.5. Definitely worth it, just for travel.

That's really not my experience. Since I always take notes when watching videos, I find being without my keyboard an absolute pain. I tried once to bring both my laptop and my tablet out on a short trip. I just used the tablet for an hour throughout the whole trip before I decided to just use the laptop for everything. It's much more productive, especially with window managers such as xmonad.

Also when I'm on my tablet browsing news etc., time flies by really quickly without me having got a lot of things done. IMO if you're using an electronic device, you should aim for maximum productivity. Otherwise it's easy to engage yourself in low-quality activities without paying much attention.

Similar story here. I won my first iPad in a office raffle. I was going to sell it since I figured I'd never use it, but my kids screamed bloody murder so I kept it and I found that I used it all the time, especially for reading documents and news.

Which 3D anatomy app do you recommend?

I use Complete Anatomy, free install/preview.

The full content is ~$45 downloadable, but if you sign up without buying, you'll eventually get some promos in your e-mail -- I wound up buying it all for $10 during a back-to-school discount.

CompleteAnatomy

Why iPad and not any other android based tablet? My goes, you get more useful apps on iPad? But android shouldn't be that far.... Anything else.

In my experience -- I've owned two -- the android tablets all have the same flaw. Beyond the super-cheap build quality, android can't conserve battery while sleeping. I can leave my now-4 y/o ipad in my backpack for a week and it will lose perhaps 10%. My androids would be dead. Hence I never use them.

Oh, and because no-one uses android tablets, no one makes good apps for them. eg the nice pdf readers -- I use GoodReader -- are all ios.

Other than Amazon Fire's which are uber-cheap with terrible specs and no access to Google Play Android tablets sadly aren't a thing anymore.

What do you use for pdf annotation and citation management? I really like hosting my own data with zotero+webdav, but there basically is no interface. On the flip side, Mendeley has a ton of features, and works+looks great, but hosting is paid.

Mendeley also encrypts your PDFs so that you can't access them with other software.

Depending on what you want for PDF Annotation, Readdle's PDF Expert (as close to full-fledged Acrobat as you're likely to get on the iPad) or the intriguingly weird LiquidText are good options.

https://pdfexpert.com/ios https://www.liquidtext.net

It's worth getting over LiquidText's initial weirdness. I downloaded it and then didn't use it for half a year, but when I gave it a go with some PDFs I was reading, I was hooked.

Grabbing parts of a book out into the workspace is easy, and then you can quickly review your workspace of highlights and notes later for a refresher. Also, viewing two places in a single PDF is as easy as tapping and holding on two highlights in the workspace.

Liquid Text is one of the cleverest apps I have ever used. And PDF Expert also rules

I don't think there is a single good app that handles both. Mendeley has its own issues aside from being paid, and the PDF viewer feels subpar compared to even Preview. I have zotero just push new files to a dropbox folder and that can be accessed everywhere.

if you’re using Zotero check out Papership which is a pretty good iPad client. I haven’t run into a missing feature yet.

Also would recommend, if you want paid hosting, pay for a Zotero account with extra storage (run an academic group at George Mason University, aka the good guys). Don’t give money to Mendeley which is owned by Elsevier (definitely the bad guys).

Out of curiosity, what do you use for PDF annotation?

Not the OP here. I’m an outlier, I’ve been using ‚Devon Think‘ for many years and have multiple Databases of PDF to read and markup and other content syncing between multiple devices.

Is devonthink a good option for storing, searching and organizing plaintext? I often make a note while pn computer and save it within a dropbox folder. I have no good way of accessing these quickly on ipad and have wondered if devonthink would solve it.

I used to be a Goodreader user but I like PDF Expert better now. I'd recommend anything Readdle puts out, frankly.

Not the OP, but on my recent trip, I used Apple Books.

The big advantage for me was that I could visit travel websites with lists of things to do, save website as PDF, made annotations of places I wanted to visit.

It synced seamlessly across all my devices along with annotations. I annotated on my iPad at the hotel, and traveled with my iPhone.

Notability is really nice for PDF annotation but not great for reading since it occasionally forgets your position in a book (although there is a bookmark feature). It’s very well optimized: I have over 500 notes in it, some over 1000 pages.

I use Goodreader (but I'm not the one you're asking). It works pretty well for me and syncs with a lot of services.