@TheOracle - I deduce from your detailed post above that you'd take the Samsung Tab S7 over the iPad Pro?
I'm sitting here with a 2017 iPad Pro 12.9 which I've had for a couple of years, and have always liked, but never really truly loved, and an old T460 laptop that I keep around just for stuff the iPad can't do, or is crap at (surprisingly, for me, web browsing is still not up to snuff though I've not installed iOS 14 yet).
I've been fancying a device that could consolidate, and the way you describe it, this one machine would probably do everything these two do, as well as possibly having a better screen than either (the iPad is suffering from white spots now). Quite probably more likely to be subject to a discount too I would guess?!
Also, although I like the look of the Pixel 5, the new Snapdragon S20 FE is looking a bit more tempting at this point, especially with some money off.
Yes, it's bloody brilliant, and works really well with both my windows 10 PC and my now Samsung Galaxy S20 5G (which I got brand new for £499). Using both together has a very ios like feel to it, especially since they sync phone calls and text messages between each other.
In fact, how my adventure started out was wanting a cheap netflix tablet so I bought the new 2020 Samsung A7. To be fair, for the money it was ok, but I wasn't happy with the fuzzy wallpaper thing so I sent it back. It was nippy(ish). Anyway, that lead to a load of research into these samsung tabs, and I ended up picking up a brand new Tab S6 for £440 off ebay. It was the 8gb/256gb. It's fantastic, so much so, that I ended up buying an S7 and an S7+ a few days later. The S7 will be my daughters christmas present (it's got an LCD screen), and the S7+ has replaced the mrs ipad pro.
Horses for courses and all that.
iPad Pro 2020 12.9" & Keyboard = £1,318
Samsung S7+ & Keyboard - £100 Very code = £899 (plus you get the pen in the box!)
The S7+ has a glorious 120hz HDR OLED screen and amazing quad AKG speakers with atmos. It trounces the ipad for media playback. Where it really comes into its own though is as a laptop replacement. Prior to me ever using dex, I thought it was one of those features these companies bang on about, when in reality it's crap. It's not, dex is brilliant.
If you haven't used it, you press a button and it changes to a different launcher which makes it look like a proper desktop machine. Very linux like. You can plug keyboards, mice, monitors, printers, hdds in and basically use it as a laptop. You can of course do all of those things without dex, but dex just makes it look more like a computer. The keyboard case is both good and bad. The keyboard can be pulled off, leaving the kickstand at the back (like a surface pro), which is good.....but the bad bit is that the keyboard sits flat on the table. It's not that bad to be honest, I'm being really picky, but they could have given it a little incline.
It's just better for our use. Torrents work lol (flud app is great), the remote desktop app from Microsoft works with a mouse plugged in, the samsung apps are also really good. The files and notes app are actually really useful. The ipad ones are ok, but as you say, it's still missing something. I still felt like there was a wall inbetween me and the work I was trying to do.
We're really happy with it. The kids have been using it all week for their school homework and have gotten on fine. Don't know if you like colouring, but the colouring apps on ipad are all subscription based and get really expensive. Samsung gives you an app called pen-up which is free social colouring. Kids love it!
People say android tablets are crap because none of the apps are tablet optimized. That's true most of the time, but we just use the chrome browser instead. Samsung and Google apps are all ok.....it's just all the others lol