Do you want an iPad Pro? Or a MacBook? Apple’s been sanding down the wall between those two for years, and iPadOS 26 (the update that finally let apps float around in windows) knocked out most of what was left standing. Now the choice has gotten harder.
Plenty of shoppers who spent the year torn between tablet and laptop face a stranger matchup, because the iPhone Duo folds a 7.6-inch screen into a body the size of a passport. Feeling stuck between them makes sense. The iPad Pro with M5 promises Apple’s most capable slate, tandem OLED and laptop-grade silicon included. The Duo serves as a tablet you never have to remember to pack.
For anyone who uses their iPad Pro as a casual media device, the Duo can replace both the tablet and the phone in your pocket. It’s only the power users—the video editors and digital artists—who need to stick with Apple’s Pro hardware.
Lights off, couch, a film queued up. In that scene I’d pick the iPad Pro’s 13-inch tandem OLED over the Duo’s inner screen every time, and Apple’s 1,000-nit full-screen rating is the least of my reasons (the inky blacks and sheer size do more of the work).
I prefer the Duo’s 7.6-inch display. That matte coating gets rid of harsh reflections and hides the crease remarkably well. You do trade off a fraction of color pop, and Apple’s 3,000-nit screen beats it in blinding sunlight, but for reading books, the Duo comes out ahead hands down.
Easy win for the iPad Pro here. Resizable windows turned the M5 model into a pocket-less little Mac, and a monitor plugged in through its lone USB-C port becomes a second desk at up to 120 Hz. One port on a tablet this pricey still bugs me.
Throwing a Bluetooth keyboard on the Duo makes quick work of administrative tasks like replying to emails while scanning your day’s schedule. Just don’t expect the foldable phone to replace a work rig—without iPad app compatibility, serious video editing or report writing is out of the question.
Short round. The USB-C Pencil coming to the Duo later this year can’t sense pressure. Fine for scribbling in a PDF’s margins. A bad joke for shading. The iPad Pro gets the Pencil Pro, squeeze gestures and all.
My colleagues at Gadget Flow have heard me beg for a folding iPhone for years. Consider my bias declared. An 11-inch iPad Pro is 5.3mm thin and it still wants a bag. Gadgets that want a bag stay home most days. Apple claims up to 24 hours of mixed use across both Duo screens, a figure I’ll trust once someone outside Cupertino has drained one.
Playing Call of Duty on an iPhone 15 Pro sometimes feels cramped. However, I don’t want to carry an iPad everywhere just to get a decent view of the map.I just want a screen that expands to 7.6 inches and slides back into my pocket when the match ends.
No contest. Duo.
Buy a Duo and you’ve bought your next phone, compromises included. No telephoto made it in. Zoom stops at a 2x crop from the 48MP main sensor, and that stings anyone who shoots a kid’s match from the stands. Face ID is gone as well, swapped for a fingerprint reader in the side button, and the camera hidden under the inner screen makes for soft video calls.
Related: iPhone Duo vs. Surface Duo
The iPad Pro has a quirk too. Hold it upright and your right hand tends to cover the landscape Face ID camera. Annoying, sure, but it asks you to surrender nothing from the phone you already own. Point to the iPad.
Look, $2,000 is a lot of money, but I want you to consider what you’re replacing. An iPhone 18 Pro and an 11-inch iPad Pro together will cost you $2,398 today. Ever since Apple jacked up iPad Pro prices by two hundred bucks in June over RAM costs, the old $999 starting price is history. If the Duo lets you leave both at home, you walk away $400 richer.
Money is the easy part. Patience is harder. Duo preorders opened on October 16, and within about half an hour ship dates had drifted to late January. Apple calls the demand “nothing short of extraordinary.” And I. trust the Cupertino giant. I’d add that the company chose to open orders in more than 70 countries at once with scarce stock. Wait until late January, and you could be just three months away from a second-generation Duo, assuming Apple sticks to an annual refresh.
The owner of an expensive Netflix screen. I suspect a lot of iPad Pros never leave a nightstand, and an M5 is far more chip than a streaming habit will ever stress, especially with iPadOS still keeping it on a leash (no Mac apps, installs only from the App Store). A fold covers bedtime scrolling just as well and goes to work with you the next morning.
iPad mini owners have even less to lose. The Duo’s inner panel comes close to the mini’s 8.3 inches.
Then there’s me. A MacBook Air already handles my writing. An iPad Pro would duplicate a computer I own. The Duo quietly answers that opening laptop question by stepping around it.
Illustrators can stop at the Pencil round. Final Cut editors need the windows and the monitor support, period. I’d also send anyone attached to the telephoto on an iPhone 18 Pro this way, because adding an iPad Pro costs them nothing photographic.
People without a laptop belong here too. For anyone using an iPad Pro as their only computer, a phone OS on a 7.6-inch screen would be a downgrade felt every working day.
I’d rather have the Duo in my pocket than an iPad sitting at home, assuming the tablet comes out for Netflix, reading, and the occasional game. At $1,999, the foldable costs less than an iPhone 18 Pro and an 11-inch iPad Pro bought together.
Related: Best tablets for watching movies: Experience every detail like Roger Ebert would
Anyone who spends hours drawing on an iPad should think twice before switching. I can’t see myself choosing a 7.6-inch canvas over a proper tablet just because the smaller one folds shut. I’d wait for a few months of owner reports before trusting the Duo with that much money.