Disagree. Permanently airgapped wallets are easy to use. Making a transaction from my airgapped wallets takes me less than a minute longer than doing so from a desktop hot wallet - create transaction on watch only wallet, display QR code, scan QR code to airgapped device, sign transaction, display QR code, scan QR back to live device, broadcast. I can spend any fraction of coin I like, and after I've spent, my airgapped wallet is still fine to be used again and again. With a paper wallet I have to spend everything in it at once, and then create a brand new paper wallet from scratch afterwards. I'd say paper wallets are the least convenient of all.
In addition to the good advice above about offline devices, you also need to use an offline, preferably "dumb" printer, which doesn't have WiFi and doesn't store a history of files it has printed in its memory.
There is a list of good security precautions for paper wallets here:
https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/#securityFor a new user who has never used Bitcoin before (or barely knows about it), isn't it easier to start out with a paper wallet and then moving on to an airgapped one? The latter sounds more complex to be used. I'm only talking from a new user's perspective, not from ours.