As far as screen size goes, my iPad is about the same size as my 11" Air was, though not widescreen. And the keyboard's small, but Apple has prior art there too and you can get a bigger iPad if you really want to (though, sure, it costs more).
It's not a laptop, no--but that's also not inherently a bad thing. If you need what a laptop can do, sure. I have a 32GB M1 Max for a reason. But more and more it seems obvious to me that the median computer user doesn't need that, and the affordances from overlap with their more accustomed part of the ecosystem (their phone) are strong and pretty valuable.