I do unfortunately rely on it every day. However apples refurb shop usually has good deals and also the education store sometimes lets u bundle a pencil for free. This is an m1 11in pro, id def consider the 13 tho and i occasionally wish i got the 13 but i love the portability of the 11in. I wouldn’t go any other chip besides the M series chips as the new iPadOS is a lot more demanding but the new multi tasking is such a QOL bump for me using it as my primary school device
It’s definitely hard to justify it for just note taking. I have the keyboard case so I use it for typed assignments, research/general web browsing among other things. I’ve gone entire weeks doing my nursing schoolwork strictly on my iPad, and only pull out the laptop for exams (sometimes the iPad is funky with those) and occasionally I’ll use my gaming setup for the peripherals on the iPad/ pc for the stupid amount of ram it has enabling me to have some tweaker level million tab research project