I had the same question when coming to optometry school. I chose to just stick with my laptop bc thats has worked for me in the past, I was worried about the limited functionality of an iPad, and didn't want to spend the extra money if I didnt have to.
After half a semester in school I was tired of the limitations of my laptop and decided to get an ipad as well. Some professor will have slides with diagrams that they lecture about and its extremely helpful to be able to draw an arrow to things! Also, I didnt not realize how much math there would be in optometry school. Regardless of what school, optics is extremely math based, and a few other classes may also have math based problem sets you need to write out. I was originally using paper and doing practice problems that way.
Now with my ipad I never have to carry paper! There are many apps that I could use that have notebooks I can take handwritten notes on. I still use my laptop and use my ipad as my all in one notebook of notes, homework, lab manuals, and ebooks! I know many people who do not use their laptop at all anymore. I still find it useful, as it does have complete functionality of a laptop but the newer versions of the ipad may?