can a new 13” iPad Air M2 with iPad OS 18.1 replace an iMac or MacBook?

+2 or 3 on "Depends on what you use it for." When I travel I used to take an older MacBook Air that I did an Excel spreadsheet on daily, very much overkill for the MBA. However I upgraded to a 2024 M2 based iPad Air this year and instead of using Excel when I travel I just used Numbers (it works fine on Excel docs) to edit the spreadsheet and it worked just fine on several trips.

So, assess what your needs are to see what apps you use on the old computer and see if:

A) The same apps for Mac OS are available for IOS or

B) Substitutes apps like what I did for Excel/Numbers

We cannot make that decision for you, you need to yourself.

lazanne13 wrote:

I have just bought an iPad Air M2 iPadOS18.1 1TB with magic keyboard and wondered if it can replace my iMac 21.5” purchased January 2018?

An ipad can only run apps you can get from Apple's app store. So it can't replace an imac if you require apps that are obtained from other sources. I would not recommend it for university level education, for example.

High-end iPad Pro hardware is now very close to low-end Mac hardware, and there are serious apps that run on the iPad. So I wouldn't dismiss an iPad as a toy that is completely unsuitable for content creation.

At the same time, it's fair to say that in most cases, the Mac is still the better choice for content creation. The iPad is more geared towards content consumption.

Since you already own both the iMac and the M2 iPad Air, you are in a position to experiment and determine which uses each is best for.

Depends on your usage. If you use only apps from the App Store and use it for things like typewriting and such it might can, but if your demands are higher, it might not. I use an iPad Pro and a Mac, I cannot go without my Mac just yet

Depends on what you use it for.