I prefer a laptop while away from home. Yes, you can check email, pay bills, check bank balance and other things with an tablet or phone.
One thing I find that I need a laptop for is TV. Sometimes you get to your accommodation and find that they have only basic cable or no cable TV at all. They have internet - I won't book it unless they do. The last place we stayed at in HI was like that. Laptop to the rescue. I downloaded the shows we wanted to watch onto the laptop and then onto a USB drive. Newer TVs will read a USB drive and now you can watch your program. Older TVs without a USB port probably have a HDMI port, so you can attach the TV as a secondary monitor to the laptop to watch your program.
As for Macs. I bought Fran a MacBook Pro. Elegant machine. A couple of months ago, Apple kept bugging her to update to Big Sur. After the update, the machine told her that the version of MS Office installed was incompatible with Big Sur.
I deleted MS Office and installed Libre Office; she hasn't really noticed the difference.
