The short version: Only a handful of iPad apps change how much work you get done, and most of them are boring, unglamorous, and not the ones getting hyped on social media. Notability, Ulysses, GoodNotes, Ferrite, and the built in Files app with a proper folder structure will do more for your output than any new AI app you download this month. The iPad is brilliant for reading, marking up, recording, and quick creation, but if you’re treating it as a full laptop replacement for heavy, multi window work, you’re fighting the device instead of using it.
I tried running my whole business from an iPad for six weeks. Here’s what held up
Back in 2023 I gave myself a rule for a work trip to Tel Aviv: no laptop, iPad Pro only, for six weeks. Partly to travel lighter, partly because I was curious whether all the “iPad is a real computer now” talk was true. I had the 12.9 inch iPad Pro, a Magic Keyboard, and an Apple Pencil, which together set me back close to £1,600 at the time.
Some of it worked brilliantly. Marking up a client proposal on a plane with the Pencil, no laptop lid, no fan noise, felt quicker than doing the same thing on my MacBook. Recording a podcast intro in a hotel room with a lightweight app instead of hauling a full audio setup was a relief. But by week three I was emailing myself files from client portals because the Files app couldn’t handle a folder structure the way macOS Finder can, and I was switching between two apps constantly because Split View on an 11 inch screen is cramped and on the 12.9 inch it’s fine but still not the same as three real windows open on a 27 inch monitor.
That’s the part most iPad enthusiasm skips over: for short, focused tasks the iPad wins on comfort and battery life. For anything involving juggling six tabs, a spreadsheet, an email client, and a video call at once, it loses to a laptop every time. If your job is mostly writing, reading, marking up documents, or recording, buy the iPad and don’t look back. If your job is spreadsheets, complex design software, or heavy multitasking, the iPad is a nice second screen, not your main machine.
The note taking and writing apps worth paying for
This is where the iPad earns its keep, because handwriting with the Apple Pencil combined with searchable text is something no laptop does.
- GoodNotes (roughly £8.99 as a one off purchase, or a small annual subscription for the newer version) is what I use for client meeting notes. The handwriting recognition search is good enough that I can find a scribbled note from eight months ago by typing one word.
- Notability switched to a subscription model a few years back, around £11.99 a year, which annoyed a lot of long time users, myself included. It’s still worth it if you record audio while you write, because it syncs your notes to the exact second of the recording, which is handy in interviews or workshops.
- Ulysses (about £5.99 a month or £39.99 a year) is the writing app I draft blog posts in when I’m away from my desk. It’s distraction free, syncs cleanly across devices, and doesn’t try to be a project management tool as well, which is exactly why it works.
Apple Notes is fine for shopping lists. For anything you’ll need to search, reference, or build on months later, one of the three above earns its price within the first week.
Audio and video: the underrated iPad strength
Nobody talks about this enough, but the iPad is one of the best small devices for content creation, and I mean that in the practical sense, not the influencer sense.
Ferrite Recording Studio (around £8.99, or free with limits) is a proper multi track audio editor that fits in a bag. I’ve cut whole podcast episodes on it while sat in an airport lounge. It’s not as deep as desktop editors, but for cutting umms, adding an intro, and exporting a clean MP3, it does the job faster than opening a laptop.
For video, CapCut and LumaFusion (a one off £24.99 or so) both work well on iPad for short form content, and if you’re building out a bigger content pipeline it’s worth reading through this breakdown of content creator tools worth trying before you commit budget to any one app. If your work leans more toward proper video production rather than quick social clips, you’ll outgrow the iPad fast, and it’s worth comparing what desktop software like Premiere Pro and Premiere Rush offer in this look at Adobe’s video editing options for small business.
File management: the uncomfortable bit nobody warns you about
Here’s the part that gets glossed over in most “best iPad apps for work” lists: the Files app, even after several iPadOS updates, still isn’t a real substitute for how you’re used to working on a computer. There’s no proper terminal, external drive support is patchy depending on the app, and some client portals and older CMS platforms simply don’t render correctly in Safari on iPad, forcing you into a desktop site request that half breaks the layout anyway.
I lost two hours in that six week experiment trying to upload a large video file to a client’s WeTransfer link because the connection kept timing out in the background app, something that would have taken ninety seconds on a laptop. The fix, eventually, was using the Files app with iCloud Drive set as my default and forcing myself to build a proper folder structure (Clients, By Year, By Project) rather than relying on “Recents”, which is where most people’s iPad file chaos comes from.
If you’re going to use an iPad for real client work, spend twenty minutes on day one setting up folders. It sounds dull. It saves you hours later.
Task and project management: keep it simple
Things 3 (a one off purchase, around £54.99 for the iPad version, which shocks people the first time they see the price) is the closest thing to a perfect task app I’ve used, and I say that as someone who has tried Todoist, Asana, and Notion on iPad extensively. The reason it works is that it’s built for the iPad’s touch and gesture system rather than ported from a web app, so swiping tasks between lists feels natural.
Notion is fine but sluggish on older iPads, and if your team already lives in it for desktop work, the iPad version is a companion, not your main interface. Trello’s iPad app is one of the better ported apps out there if your team is visual and card based rather than list based.
Whatever you choose, the deeper shift worth paying attention to is how AI is folding into these tools without most people noticing. It’s worth reading how AI powered productivity tools help small business owners save time, because several of the apps above now have AI summarising and tagging features quietly built in that most users never turn on.
Where AI tools on iPad save time versus where they’re a gimmick
I want to be blunt here because this is where a lot of “best iPad apps” content turns into an advert. Voice to text on iPad, through the built in dictation or apps like Otter, is useful; I use it to turn a five minute voice memo recorded while walking into a rough blog draft I then clean up in Ulysses. That’s a real time saver, probably twenty to thirty minutes per post.
What isn’t worth it: most of the “AI iPad productivity app” downloads flooding the App Store right now are wrappers around ChatGPT with a subscription fee attached, offering nothing you don’t already get from the free ChatGPT app or Apple’s own on device tools. Before you pay for any app with “AI” in the name, check whether it’s doing something the free version of ChatGPT, Claude, or Apple Intelligence already does on your device. Nine times out of ten it isn’t. If you want a broader sense of which AI tools earn back hours rather than minutes, this piece on how AI powered productivity tools save hours each week, not just minutes is a fair place to start comparing.
What I’d put on a new work iPad, in order
- Files app, set up, with iCloud Drive as default, before you install anything else.
- GoodNotes or Notability, pick one, don’t run both.
- Ulysses if you write for a living, Apple Notes if you don’t.
- Ferrite if you touch audio at all, even occasionally.
- Things 3 or Trello, matched to how your brain already organises tasks, not the other way round.
- Your calendar and email apps set to open in Split View by default, since that’s the pairing you’ll use most.
That’s six apps. I’d resist the urge to add a seventh “productivity” app before you’ve used those six for a month, because the biggest time waster on any iPad isn’t a missing app, it’s the constant swapping between five apps that all promise to do the same thing.
Frequently asked questions
Is an iPad good enough to replace a laptop for work?
For focused tasks like writing, reading, marking up documents, and recording audio, yes. For heavy multitasking, complex spreadsheets, or software that needs multiple real windows open at once, no, and pretending otherwise just slows you down.
Which iPad apps are worth paying for rather than using the free version?
GoodNotes or Notability for handwritten notes with search, Ulysses for serious writing, Ferrite for audio editing, and Things 3 for task management are the four most people end up paying for and keep using past the first month.
Do I need the Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard, or can I get away with just the iPad?
If your work involves marking up documents, sketching ideas, or handwritten notes, the Pencil earns its roughly £129 cost quickly. The Magic Keyboard at around £299 to £349 is worth it if you’ll type for more than an hour a day; otherwise a cheaper third party keyboard case does the job.
Are AI productivity apps on the App Store worth paying for?
Most aren’t. A large share of them are subscription wrappers around free tools like ChatGPT or Apple’s built in dictation and Apple Intelligence features, offering little you don’t already have on the device for free.
