When I first chose my own computer, in 2000, I chose it off of specifications.
A Dell computer tower (heavy) A dvd drive, a separate cd-rw writer. 40 MB hard drive, Windows ME, rambus ram, intel Pentium 4, Windows ME. It ended up not being such a good computer. I didn’t buy a new screen, because I didn’t know how important it was to have a good flat panel at the time. Windows ME was a short lived operating system, and eventually I had to replace it. The memory was too expensive to upgrade. And it being heavy, I was moving around quite a bit when I had the computer, was a real pain. It started very slow and shut down slow. And noisy(not including the nice speakers that came with it)
My latest computer a MacBook Air has a completely different set of specifications. The screen a 13 inch is probably similar to the viewable screen size of the used monitor that I had with the (old dell computer) but a little easier on the eyes, much thiner, and of course much lighter. My upgraded iMac and macbook air have no spinning hard drives. No optical drives (except for the superdrive I pulled from the iMac and used a usb to sata converter cable for it to work with either the MacBook Air or iMac) It super fast and does what I need it to do – watch video, communicating with others, listening to music, calculating, book keeping and record management, browsing the web, photo, and video management. Your list may differ from mine what you need want or need to do with your computer or device and that can change over time as new uses are available.
That is the main thing with a computer, tablet, or smart phone ( or most other things) it does what you need it to do. And fast is a good thing too. Also, that you aren’t hurt while using it. You don’t want to be moving around heavy things. I chose a notebook versus a tablet, simply because it is a little easier on my neck and eyes.