I think that tablets are the most interesting of all the current styles of personal computers because unlike smartphones and notebooks there is no widely accepted use case for them. Opponents of tablets say they are not needed because either one can use a large screen smartphone or a light weight notebook for ho/wever one may use a tablet.

The opponents make a valid point if one settles on the most widely understood use case of the tablet as a media consumption device. Honestly, up until this year the most successful tablet, Apple’s iPad, was probably most used by people to watch video than anything else even if the iPad can do much more. Apple has sold many iPads despite it being labeled as only a media consumption device.

Apple clearly believes the iPad is useful for much more than watching video and the changes it has made to the software in iPad OS 26 are intended for people who want to do more. The latest changes to the iPad software is Apple’s claim that the tablet can be the most utilitarian personal computer because it has the hardware and software capable of performing all personal computing use cases. I think iPad OS 26 is the latest evidence for why tablets are so interesting.

You might think that the iPads are the only tablets that exist, but that is far from the truth. True, if you look at Apple’s primary competitor, Google, you find a very underwhelming Pixel tablet in their store. What you might not know is that there are many other tablets available that run Google’s Android, and in particular there are interesting e-ink tablets from Remarkable, Boox, Viwoods, and more.

The majority of all personal computers, be they notebooks, smartphones, and tablets have a backlit LCD or OLED display. E-ink is a reflective display technology with no backlight intended to mimic paper, which is why it is used in the Kindle eReaders so that eBooks look like paper books.

E-ink displays have a lower refresh rate than LCD and OLED, and when they first became available in 2004 there was a very noticeable refresh of the display as one changed pages. Today, the technology has improved such that the refresh of text is instantaneous though still too slow for video.

E-ink tablets are optimized for reading and writing. The Remarkable tablet was not the first e-ink tablet but it was the first to appear to a broad consumer market. Remarkable focuses on replicating the experience of writing on a paper pad while taking full advantage of technology. If Remarkable is on the “most specialized” end of the e-ink tablet spectrum then Boox is on the “most general” end by providing access to all the apps in Google’s store while also providing the same, feels like paper, writing experience of the Remarkable.

Other e-ink tablet companies provide products that fall toward one end of the spectrum or the other. For example, Supernote is most like Remarkable in mainly providing a writing experience whereas Viwoods is more like Boox because it provides the Google Play app store. None of the different e-ink tablets are exactly the same, unlike the different model iPads or for that matter “traditional” tablets running Android, and it is these different ideas about how an e-ink tablet works and does that I find so appealing and further evidence of why tablets are interesting.

If you are interested in seeing what I am describing, I recommend you watch some YouTube video reviews of the different products produced by Jeffrey Moss and Kit Betts-Master.

The final way that tablets are interesting is in foldable phones. Now, the name implies that these foldables are smartphones, but I think foldables are better thought of as tablets that fold in to a smartphone size rather than as a phone that folds out to a tablet size. My reasoning is simple, one does not spend the money nor carry the additional weight if they don’t want the larger display that requires application tablet UI design for the best experience.

Foldables will never be small or light enough to replace smartphones. As evidence I point to the new iPhone Air, which I claim is about as thin and lite a smartphone as one can get, plainly a foldable of two iPhone Airs is larger than one iPhone Air.

The screen size that a a foldable folds out to will always be larger than the largest size smartphone because there is a point at which, and I will say it is 7-inches, that screen turns the device from a smartphone to a tablet. Some people might put a 7-inch tablet in a front or back pant pocket but not the majority, and “pocket-ability” may be the defining trait of a smartphone.

In my opinion what Apple has done with iPad OS 26 and the different available e-ink tablets alone make tablets the most interesting of the personal computer styles, but foldables seal the deal. Apple may release their own foldable in the upcoming year and they may even call their foldable an iPhone, but may be, just maybe, they will call it the iPad Mini or the iPad foldable. Regardless, I recommend thinking of Apple’s foldable more like an iPad rather than an iPhone.

Smartphones and notebooks are proven, users now have entrenched expectations about them and therefore they will stay the same while improving over time. Tablets are not yet completely defined and there are many companies with different ideas about what one can do with a tablet. Perhaps some time soon the clear use case for tablets will be settled, in the mean time I think they are what to watch for changes in personal computing.