I have an iPad and absolutely love it for consuming, but not creating, things. It's great for reading e-mails or watching videos, or playing solitare or video chattting. For your eyesight, it is excellent, the display is high quality (the new ipad apparently has an even higher quality display, perhaps among the best in the world) and everything that is text or an image can almost always be magnified.
But the keyboard is not great for typing and the camera is poor. It's not a device for creating media, it's a device for consuming media.