u/Calm-Inevitable3341

hey folks, I have a lot of nostalgia for GalCiv from the 1 & 2 days (I loved playing 1, when 2 came out my PC sucked too much to play it… lol)

anyway recently it all came back to me (in the meantime I’ve been playing stuff like SotSE, Stellaris and Endless Space 2) and I wanna try out galciv again. My question for you is, should I go back to 1, 2 or jump into the current game? I guess my primary motivation is the nostalgia hit, but from what I can see a lot of the original identity has been retained by the later games (at least visually).

Anyone care to share their experience with a small battery EV (50kwh or under) as their primary/only vehicle? I'm looking at Twingo Etech (25kwh), ID.Polo (37kwh) and ID.3 (50kwh) to serve as my only vehicle. My regular needs are 30km return trip daily commute, 120km return trip every second weekend or so. I understand that longer distance vacations (300-500km) on the 25 and 37 are likely to be a hard sell - nevertheless I'd gladly hear how it went from anyone who has attempted something like that.

I'm making this post because 6 months ago I was unsure about buying an iPad and I was desperately looking for any and all information here and elsewhere that would help me make my decision. My goal with this post is to provide useful information for folks in the same situation (on the fence about getting an iPad) based on my 6 months of ownership.

What I bought the iPad for (expectations)

I relied on my trusty 13' M1 MBA for many years, but last autumn I upgraded to a 15' M4 MBA because I felt I needed more screen real-estate on the go. At the same time, the 15' laptop was noticeably heavier and less practical to just take along "anywhere," plus I knew from experience that note-taking on a laptop just doesn't work well for me.

Use case

Thus I started to look into an iPad as a lighter device that I could just throw into my bag and not really feel it's there for when I'm not sure I need the larger laptop, but I do want a bigger screen than my base iPhone. In addition, the primary use cases I had for the iPad were note-taking and document annotation/review (while the laptop works fine for the latter, the former is a non-starter). As a bonus, I would be using the iPad for Procreate, Lightroom and general browsing/media consumption.

Form factor

I spent quite some time agonizing over the form factor (11' vs 13'). Ultimately I landed on the 11' because my overall priority was portability, plus the added screen real-estate on the 13' was only noticeable for productivity, not media - given my intended use case, I did not feel that the weight/portability tradeoff was worth it.

Model

I settled on the iPad Pro M5 for a couple of reasons. The biggest reason was battery life - after seeing comparisons tests, I was shocked by how far behind the iPad, and especially the Air, were behind the Pro (especially since I had chosen the 11' form factor. I did look for used options of the M4 Pro, but being in Europe there simply weren't any that made sense (the price difference between the used M4 and a new M5 was simply too small to be worth the tradeoff).

Accessories

In terms of accessories, I went with the Pencil Pro and the Moft Dynamic Folio case. I decided against the Magic Keyboard since the 11' size keyboard is way too small for me to type comfortably, plus if I needed a "laptop replacement" I would just bring my laptop instead.

Outcomes

Overall I am satisfied with my purchase, but I was more or less negatively surprised by quite a few things.

Use cases

My iPad M5 Pro has definitely delivered on the most important reason I got it - the note-taking and annotation use cases. Along with the Pencil Pro and the abundance of excellent note-taking software to choose from, I simply cannot imagine a better device for this purpose. As someone who has never before taken notes on an iPad, I was able to use it to take notes in class the very next day after receiving it, with virtually no practice or preparation needed - the seamlessness of the experience was frankly shocking.

When it comes to annotation, I've primarily done it on my laptop before. And while it functions completely fine there (and the physical keyboard may even give it an edge in very specific cases), reviewing documents with the iPad and Pencil feels much more fluid and much less tiring overall, allowing me to be more productive.

I can't say too much about Procreate, since I'm terrible at drawing and I haven't gotten around to seriously starting to learn it yet.

Lightroom has worked well and it makes for a nice change of pace to be able to review and edit photos on the couch rather than on the PC at the desk. That said, being an 11' form factor the screen size simply doesn't lend itself to photo editing, especially for longer periods. In addition, it takes some effort to integrate your workflow between the Lightroom Cloud services and Lightroom (Classic) on PC. While the touch/pencil interface does make certain tasks in Lightroom much more convenient (masking, etc.), I would say that I would personally not buy an iPad if my primary use case for it was serious photo editing.

General browsing/media consumption was where my jaw hit the floor when I realized just how much worse this device felt than I expected it to. First of all, yes, the screen is gorgeous and watching 4k video on it feels great. But at the same time, the only time I would want to do that on the iPad rather than a TV or a Laptop is lying down - and in this scenario, I found even the 11' iPad to be too heavy and too ergonomically impractical to really enjoy using it for this purpose (removing it from the case is imperative for this to reduce weight, but even that does nothing for ergonomics). Ironically, the iPad made me realize that if I wanted a bigger screen to browse/watch videos in bed, I would much rather just get a bigger iPhone instead.

General experience

The battery life has been more than sufficient for me, but at the same time I'm still often surprised by how quickly the battery can drain. I can say with 100% certainty that the battery life alone would be a deal-breaker for me with any non-Pro iPad. Any Macbook is in an entirely different league here.

The iPad's digital keyboard was a huge disappointment as well. The absence of swipe-typing which I've relied on for many years on my phones is simply not available on Apple's iPad keyboard (I'm not interested in 3rd party solutions for privacy reasons). Typing text on my iPad feels slow and awkward compared both to my iPhone and my Macbook. I highly recommend using a physical bluetooth keyboard if putting down a large amount of text on the iPad is a regular occurrence for you.

Outside of lying down and holding the iPad up above your head, the portability and usability has been great. Even with the Moft case attached, I can barely feel the weight of the device in my bag. Speaking of the Moft case, I can't recommend it enough - there are lighter cases out there, but even those aren't light enough that you would want to keep them on the iPad when weight matters. At the same time, the Moft offers amazing versatility in how exactly you want to position your iPad in any given scenario - it has met my expectations and then some.

One of the uses for the iPad I imagined before purchase was also serving as a screen-extension for my Macbook. Outside of trying it out one time, I've simply not needed this function yet. In virtually every scenario I've come across I'd rather just keep the iPad as the iPad, not as a second monitor. I would say that the people who can actually make use of this feature already know that they need it - if you're not sure, you likely don't.

The App catalogue experience on the iPad is a two-edged sword. Many excellent iPhone apps don't have iPad variants (or the iPad variants are just terrible), so don't expect that any given app you love on your iPhone will be even better on an iPad's bigger screen. I would say that on average, iPhone apps are superior to iPad versions - but there are exceptions and those exceptions may very well tip the scales for you. It certainly pays to research iPad versions of apps you love ahead of time to ensure that they actually exist and/or are worth using.

Conclusion

Ultimately, what sets the iPad apart and worth the additional investment in my eyes is the Pencil. If your primary use cases involve the Pencil, then the iPad brings something truly unique to the table and that's what you're really paying for with this device - the rest of it is just a bonus. If you don't have any Pencil use cases, or your only Pencil use case is "oh maybe I'll learn to draw in my free time", then I would say that an iPad is generally a bad investment.

Be very aware of your battery life requirements and choose your model accordingly. Personally I would say that this is the most important differentiating factor between iPad models of the same size by far, much more than screen or speaker quality. While the screen on the Pro is gorgeous, once you put a protector over it the difference gets a lot smaller. And I can't say that I've found the speakers to be particularly impressive. The only significant advantage I would point out is that on the Pro, using it in darkness puts a lot less strain on your eyes because the screen just gets that much darker.

For my personal use cases, I'm glad I got the iPad as part of my overall setup, but I definitely recognize that on a tight budget, getting an iPad (especially a Pro) just doesn't make sense. If anything, my experiences with the 15' MBA + 11' iPad Pro these past 6 months just made me appreciate what an absolutely incredible machine my 13' M1 MBA was on its own - for a budget-minded setup, a 13' MBA accompanied by good old paper & pencil just can't be beat in my opinion.

Thanks for reading! Happy to answer any questions or clarify anything written if folks are interested.

Im using Safari with adblocker for general use (both Mac and iOS), Brave exclusively for youtube (both Mac and iOS) and Firefox with containers for ”toxic” stuff like google, microsoft, ebay, amazon, etc.

I’ve been using this setup for around 6 months now and it seems to work pretty well for me. Anyone have any thoughts on this setup or their own setup they want to share? Always looking for ways to optimize and simplify