ah, got it. I also use my laptop with a 24" 4K monitor, keyboard & mouse and find smaller screens difficult to do much work on. I use my 12.9 Pro on a stand, elevated about 4-5" above the desk top.
If the iPad supported full aspect ratio on a monitor, do you think you would use it more?
I have tried many setups. Had the IPP9.7 when it was released in 2016, connected it to an external monitor and keyboard, but obvs there was no mouse support back then. Tried and tried, couldn’t get it to work for me. Then iPadOS 13.4 brought mouse support, connected my IPad Air 3 to a mouse and monitor, but the pointer implementation is OK...but not for full time work IMHO. Great to use for quickly pointing to something as my iPad is my secondary device under my external monitor (Logitech mouse and keyboard that can switch to both work laptop and iPad), but even if full aspect ratio were to be implemented, the pointer doesn’t do it for me.
I have come to realise that the iPad is a tablet, a great one, but a tablet. And a Mac is a Mac, and is the machine to use for desktop work. Maybe that will change in the future, but for now, That’s what works best for me.
No doubt I‘ll keep trying to use the iPad more and more in my workflow, its just so damn cool!