Why I now love big tablets

I’ve never been a large-screen guy. Given the choice, my SIM is usually in a flip phone like the Motorola Razr Plus or living as an eSIM in one of Apple’s smaller iPhones. You know — something that fits comfortably in a pocket for a long day away from my desk. I’ll reach for a Pixel 8 Pro or a Galaxy S24 Ultra when I need to, often for its camera chops, but it’s never my first choice. And yet, I can’t help but find myself drawn to big tablets — the bigger, the better.

Right now, I’m carrying around the 13-inch iPad Air (2024) and forgetting what life was like without a tablet of this size. If you’re not sure whether Apple’s 13-inch slate or any other tablet that’s a little bit bigger than the norm is right for you, here are a few things I’ve been using mine for.

The first and most obvious use for a large tablet is that it’s like a large TV — it has so much room for activities. Or, at least, the one activity you choose has so much room to spread out. Now that I’m into a busy summer of travel (both for work and much-needed time away from work), I don’t have much time to flop down in front of my TV to catch up on, well, anything, but it doesn’t take long to download shows to my tablet so I can watch them on a plane or train to my destination.

Streaming on a big tablet is a bit of a no-brainer — a larger screen means it’s easier to catch tiny details in the dimly lit House of the Dragon or get a good look at space bugs in The Acolyte. And sure, you could download the same content to a smaller, cheaper tablet, but with the way that letterboxing eats into space above and below your show, it’s not much better than watching on your phone. On a 13-inch Liquid Retina display like the newly-enlarged sixth-generation iPad Air, however, there’s plenty of room.

That’s not to say that streaming on the largest iPad Air is a perfect experience, but the main hiccup comes down to Apple’s choice of aspect ratio. The 13-inch slate has an almost-square 4:3 ratio, which is plenty comfortable for day-to-day use but doesn’t really match what most modern movies and shows are shot in. As a result, even Apple’s largest tablet has to battle letterboxing above and below shows — you just still have more show left in the middle.

What’s left in the middle, though, looks excellent. Apple’s Liquid Retina display is about as good as an LCD panel can look, and its P3 wide color gamut adds just enough saturation to colors like reds and greens. It’s bright enough for most indoor situations, including planes and trains (and automobiles, I guess), though the 600 nits of peak brightness doesn’t get you very far when viewed in direct sunlight.

I’ve also come to appreciate the iPad Air’s stereo speaker setup. I recently moved and haven’t had the chance to set my TV back up yet, so I’ve been relying on the iPad in its place. While I’d never come close to full volume using the tablet in public, the sound is nice and punchy in my own home, and I haven’t noticed any distortion, even during the loud dragon battles in House of the Dragon.

Just be ready to buy a few accessories to make your large tablet experience more comfortable. You’ll probably want a folding stand — holding a tablet this big gets old after a one-hour episode of anything. I’d also recommend a trusty pair of Bluetooth headphones, as the headphone jack is gone and won’t be coming back. Both will make your life easier, but don’t be surprised when you spend a bit more than you anticipated.

Another benefit of the extra real estate on a large tablet is more space to keep up with friends and family. I’m pretty geographically removed from many of my friends from college at this point, but we’re all able to keep in touch over video calls. Sure, there are times when I’ll take a video call on my phone if I’m on the go — I only have the Wi-Fi version of the iPad Air — but I’ve come to appreciate how much space each of my friends gets when spread across the 13-inch display.

Those faces don’t necessarily have to be live, either. I find it much easier to multitask on a large display, even if Apple’s approach to multitasking on the iPad could still use more than a bit of work. I’m involved in several run clubs throughout Baltimore, each with its own group chat and schedule, and the larger iPad is by far the easiest way to keep everything straight.

Some apps, like GroupMe, allow you to open multiple chats within a single instance of the app, while others, like, unfortunately, Messages, require you to open two unbalanced versions of the app to follow two texts at one time. Granted, this is where something like Apple’s Stage Manager comes in handy — essentially giving your iPad a more desktop-like feel — but there is a bit of a learning curve for the reworked floating window interface.

I’d probably still give Android tablets like the excellent Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Plus an edge when multitasking, but only because the windows are easier to navigate and split evenly. Both operating systems still offer desktop-like toolbars across the bottom edge for easy access to apps, but I think the overall controls are smoother on Android.

Also, as a dedicated apartment dweller, I can probably count the number of times I’ve picked up a newspaper in the last three years. It’s not because I don’t like them — I grew up reading the comics and doing the New York Times crossword puzzle most mornings over breakfast — but there’s no good way to get a paper to my front door. So, instead, I’ve adopted a 13-inch panel as my newspaper of the future.

Interestingly enough, I wouldn’t say I like the idea of a tablet this large acting as an e-reader and replacing a paperback book in my backpack. Sure, I know I could carry more books than I could ever read and not add any weight to the overall package, but I appreciate the feeling of a book and the turning of actual pages too much. On the other hand, newspapers are primed to be replaced by tablets.

Yes, you’ll probably wind up paying a subscription fee — The Athletic has become my sports section, and The New York Times has, well, remained my puzzle section — but there’s more access to content at the tip of your fingers. I can wake up in the morning, read over scores from the previous night, and fail while playing Connections, just like a digital version of my childhood.

And sure, you could once again do all of this on your phone, but I prefer to keep a different set of apps on each of my devices. My iPad has news, games, and streaming, while my phone has social media and active apps like Strava. Strangely enough, it puts my mind in a good place in the morning before I inevitably corrupt it with a stream of Instagram Reels from my friends.

Now that I’ve run through three things I do with my large tablet let’s talk about one thing I don’t: use it as a laptop replacement. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of people use large tablets for that very purpose, and with an M2 chip inside my iPad Air, I could probably do the same, but the touch-based iPadOS doesn’t always fit nicely into my workflow. Navigating Android Authority’s WordPress backend is a challenge with anything but a mouse and keyboard, and I prefer the precision of my trackpad when editing photos in Lightroom much more than if I tried to use an Apple Pencil.

That said, the 13-inch iPad Air rocks as a sidekick — er, Sidecar — to my MacBook Air. If you’ve ever owned an iPad and a MacBook before, you probably already know how easy it is to connect the two as primary and secondary displays, but it’s worth mentioning again how convenient the feature is. Simply keep your iPad within close proximity of your MacBook, and you can easily send windows back and forth, essentially adding a mouse and keyboard to your large tablet.

In practice, I end up with my WordPress and Asana windows on my MacBook, while my iPad Air holds down both Slack and an extra Safari window for notes and research. But, unlike a more permanent secondary display, Sidecar is completely wireless, meaning I can easily slot my laptop, tablet, and tablet stand into my backpack for work on the go.

As you can probably tell, I really like the 13-inch iPad Air and other big tablets (and I cannot lie). It goes against everything I usually stand for in devices, as I typically like to go smaller, but it just works so well. It’s taken over from my TV (temporarily), replaced my newspaper (permanently), and found a way to make my 15-inch MacBook Air feel even bigger — which isn’t easy to do. And that’s all without trying to be an artist and wield the Apple Pencil. It has all the makings of a pro-level tablet without the iPad Pro price.

Of course, the 13-inch iPad Air isn’t the only large tablet out there — it’s just the easiest one to recommend from Apple. If you’re interested in an alternative, though, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S9 Plus ($999 at Amazon) is about as close as they come — not to mention it’s one of the best Android tablets ever. It’s a little smaller than the iPad Air at 12.4 inches, but it has a powerful processor in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy and already comes with an S Pen in the box. Samsung’s mid-size tablet (yes, there’s one bigger) does almost everything that the iPad Air does, just through an Android lens.

It does a few things better, too. The Galaxy Tab S9 Plus has a narrower 16:10 aspect ratio, which means streaming movies and shows come with less letterboxing above and below. It also has the slightly smoother approach to multitasking that I mentioned above, with apps that are much easier to drag and drop. Samsung’s approach to linking your tablet and laptop, called DeX, isn’t as seamless as Sidecar, but it’s easier to connect the devices without them sitting side by side. And yet, I’ll be keeping my iPad Air.

Ultimately, you might decide you don’t need a large tablet. You can technically do all of these things on a smaller tablet or your phone — I just think that they’re better when you give them the room to breathe and stretch out. I’m still a small phone guy, but the iPad Air opened my eyes to the power of big tablets.