Bite the bullet and go to the closest Apple Store and get a MacBook or MacBook Pro. You will never regret it. Period.
You’ll hear from all sorts of people now, that Mac is a cult etc. I was a PC only guy for many years and just got tired off all the Windows BS!
Get a Mac, they just work!!
My advice?
Get both; a tablet and a laptop.
For the price of an iPad, you can get a good $200 tablet, and with the remaining $300-$600, you can get a pretty good laptop. Best of both worlds for the price of an overpriced iPad which is really a media consumption device with productivity as an afterthought. With a tablet you can have the media you want, and with your laptop, you can have it all in one neat single package. The tablet can be used when you want your media to be portable, and the laptop can be used for media consumption and for productivity, and you’ll still have the complete computer experience in your hands.
If your budget is for less than $500, then the iPad is out of the question, but you can still get a very portable and lightweight laptop computer that can do it all and much better than any tablet and without having to get any separate attachments, like you’d have to do with a tablet.