Xiaomi Pad 6

Bigger than the phone, smaller than the laptop. The Pad 6 is Xiaomi's 11-inch Android tablet — Snapdragon 870, 144Hz display, official keyboard case and stylus available as accessories, the whole bundle priced well below the equivalent iPad-with-Pencil-and-Magic-Keyboard setup. Bought for the role neither device covers: comfortable to read or write on for an hour without committing to a workstation posture.

Light browsing, drafting in markdown, reading long-form, occasional video — the work that doesn't need the laptop's compute and doesn't fit a phone's screen. The keyboard case turns it into a credible portable typewriter for travel days when the A15's weight and battery life don't justify themselves. No editing happens here — the colour pipeline lives on the desktop and the laptop only.

The stylus is the open potential. Drawing is a skill that lives on the long list of things the kit could support that the kit hasn't yet been pushed toward, and the Pad 6 is the device where that would happen if it does. The keyboard handles the work it's already doing; the stylus is reserved for whenever that lane opens up.