The Balearics share one sea, one flight bank and one season — May, June, September, October, with August flagged across the group for prices and crowds, and the water crossing the comfort threshold in mid-June before peaking at 25–26°C in September. What they don't share is personality. Three islands, three answers, and the right one is obvious within a paragraph of honest description.

Mallorca: the complete one

Mallorca is the only Balearic that works as a full destination rather than a beach with services: Palma is a genuinely great Mediterranean city (patios, La Seu, the Santa Catalina food scene), the UNESCO Tramuntana mountains carry the 1912 wooden train and villages like Deià, and the beach inventory runs two hundred deep — from Es Trenc's Caribbean impersonation to coves you'll have alone in June. The package-holiday reputation belongs to a few specific bays you simply don't book. Trade-off: scale — it rewards a car and a week; a three-day sample feels like a trailer. Pick it for: almost everyone, honestly — city-plus-island trips, cyclists, families, food people.

Ibiza: the double identity

Ibiza runs two islands in parallel — the world's best clubbing economy (priced plainly in our guide: €40–80 doors, €300 beach-club days) and, twenty minutes north, a pine-and-cove Balearic of hippy markets and the Mediterranean's best sunsets. Both are real; the booking decides which you get. Trade-off: peak-season costs land on everything including the quiet version, and August is the island at its least likeable. Pick it for: the scene, obviously — or, in June or late September, the other Ibiza, which remains one of the loveliest islands in Spain.

Menorca: the calm one

Menorca — no full guide yet, said honestly, but the destination page carries the live forecast — is the family answer and proud of it: a UNESCO biosphere island where building restraint held, with the group's gentlest, clearest coves (the Cala Macarella–Turqueta arc), two handsome harbour towns (Maó and Ciutadella) and a fraction of its siblings' nightlife by design. The September warm-sea trick works especially well here (the month guide lists it). Trade-off: if you bore easily, you'll bore here — which is precisely the product. Pick it for: young families, couples who've done the loud islands, anyone optimising for water quality per euro.

Formentera: the asterisk

The fourth Balearic has no airport, which is its entire character: 30 minutes by ferry from Ibiza, rented bicycles, and at Ses Illetes the closest thing the Mediterranean does to Caribbean water. Do it as the day trip from Ibiza on the 09:00 boat — or overnight to have the sandbars at dawn, which is the connoisseur's version.

The quick matrix

Want a city and an island → Mallorca. Want the scene (or its quiet shadow-twin) → Ibiza. Want calm coves and a buggy-friendly pace → Menorca. Want the best water for one day → Formentera by ferry. June or September for all four; the June-versus-September piece settles which end of summer suits you.