Hey all,
I'm going to be travelling while I do a little work. Most of this I'll be writing on Joplin. I'm a pretty minimalist traveller and was thinking of taking my iPad and a keyboard on which to work. Do you think the iOS version would handle being the main tool? My options are:
This is a difficult question to answer in the abstract, but I would encourage you to go with your first option. As a fellow minimalist traveler, I can say that I have relied entirely upon an iPad and Joplin on travel on numerous occasions--and nearly everything I do professionally involves writing in some form or another. I recently had to switch back to carrying a MacBook Pro while traveling, because of a specific non-writing need. I did not find the presence of the laptop made my writing easier or better than when I had traveled with just the iPad. While on an iPad, some might miss the Joplin plugins available on a laptop. For myself, I find that the plugins I do use are not essential to my workflow.
Great. That's what I needed to know. Many thanks. 
Glad I could help.
If it's just about editing and not storage and sync (which is Joplin's job after all) Drafts will do as well. Joplin's mobile editor has become better and better over time, but in terms of usability it can't quite compete with Bear, Drafts and the like.