Portrait or landscape - if your use is dominated by looking at the screen and/or situations where it can't set it down (to use the KB), then the iPad is better.

Assuming the software you need supports iPad, etc.

Am I the only person who manually rotates a laptop screen to portrait, then holds it like a book to use thus?

Quite possibly!

That sounds interesting, I might give it a go, but how do you rotate the screen, I can't see an option for it for the built in MacBook screen?

It's a setting in Settings:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/rotate-the-image-on...

I believe that is only applicable for external displays, and I don't see the rotation option on my M1 MacBook Air, even if I Ctrl+Command click

Doesn't the Option key work for this?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255072447?sortBy=rank

FWIW, it's easier to rotate the view in something like Acrobat, and then you don't have issues w/ the cursor direction.

Cheers, opening System Settings and then Option clicking Displays, did the trick and showed the rotation option for the built in display. It's mostly PDFs I'd be reading so might try the PDF reader option, as yeah, navigation using the trackpad after the screen rotates is challenging.

Edit: Just tried rotation in the built in MacOS Preview app, (Command+R or Command+L) and works really well. You do have to set the View to Single Page, and rotate each page separately (it does remember which pages were rotated), but other than that it's great.

No, you’re not the only person. I use it to read news, blogs & hckrnews. Probably more than 2h per day. Often in an IKEA bamboo Bergenes, which I have several laying around the house, upside down with a usb-c cord charging it till 80%.

Nope

I had a similar view, then I realized I was not the target user. My kids love playing Minecraft on the iPad. Great little device for entertainment.