OnePlus Pad: Stepping Into Unfamiliar Territory With a Premium Android Tablet

On this week’s orbital, we discuss OnePlus’ first tablet, what makes it so different and the competition that it will be up against.

Written by Sheldon Pinto, Edited by Siddharth Suvarna | Updated: 3 May 2023 18:37 IST

The OnePlus Pad runs OxygenOS which has been optimised for its large display

OnePlus Tab is a brand-new product from the Chinese smartphone brand and the company decided to take a big and bold step launching a premium tablet. This puts its rather premium-looking OnePlus Pad up against offerings from Samsung, Lenovo, and even Apple. We aren't sure if this is the first of many Android-powered tablets to come, but OnePlus has instilled some confidence in buyers by announcing three new accessories to enhance its tablet experience. While we aren't done testing the OnePlus Pad just yet, we have noticed a few details, some of which are positives and some negatives.

On this week's episode of the Gadgets 360 podcast Orbital, host and Reviewer Pranav Hegde talks to Senior Reviewer, Sheldon Pinto (myself) about my impressions about the OnePlus Pad so far. We discussed everything from its pricing, to its design, its new accessories, and a bit about the competition as well.

We start off with pricing, and our attention immediately goes to the lack of cellular connectivity, which OnePlus has missed out on. The tablet is available in just one model and it offers everything one would expect from a premium tablet save for cellular connectivity, making hotspot tethering the only way to stay connected on the move.

The OnePlus Pad's design is definitely its selling point. Apart from being sleek, its design is very unique and those thick antenna lines do remind us of some older iPhone models as well. The centre-mounted camera on the back surely adds a unique touch.

Also interesting is the OnePlus Pad's 11.61-inch LCD display that offers a 144Hz adaptive screen refresh rate, but at the same time has a rather low 144Hz touch sampling rate, which may not be good for gamers. There are also some other minor issues with the display that we delve into apart from its odd 7:5 display aspect ratio.

The tablet has a MediaTek Dimensity 9000 SoC and our review unit comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. OnePlus seems to have optimised its software well, but not just in terms of smoothness, but also in terms of tablet-friendly features.

Battery life from the 9,510mAh cell seems solid so far, but we have yet to test out the tablet's capability in both work and casual modes. We also discuss how our experience has been with the OnePlus Magnetic Keyboard case and its tiny trackpad before checking out the competition that includes Apple's new iPad 2022 as it also comes with similar accessories that are priced a bit higher.

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