OnePlus has had a pretty busy Mobile World Congress, with a number of announcements made throughout the show.
The company not only revealed a OnePlus 11 Concept device, but it also confirmed we would see a foldable smartphone later this year, whilst also showing off the OnePlus Pad for the first time since it was announced at the beginning of February.
You can read all about the OnePlus 11 Concept in our separate feature, but here we are focusing on the OnePlus’ first tablet – the OnePlus Pad. These are our initial impressions. Spoiler alert – we like it a lot.
Lovely design
- 258.03 x 189.41 x 6.54mm
- 552g
- Halo Green
The OnePlus Pad has a lovely, premium design and it’s a little different from your average slabs too. The slim aluminum build has what the company calls a stylized metal back with a “Star Orbit” pattern.
Essentially this is how it is choosing to describe the machined circular lines that surround the large camera lens that sits in the center of the back of the device. It’s this element that makes its design a little different to your average Android tablet – and Apple’s iPads too.
The camera lens is nice and prominent on the rear, making it a distinguishable feature. The edges of the tablet itself meanwhile, are predominantly rounded, with softly curved corners and the overall design is lovely. There is a magnetic strip on the top right corner though, allowing you to attach and charge the stylus and this is flat rather than rounded. The tablet itself is relatively light too – lighter than the Lenovo Duet 3i and Apple’s iPad Pro 12.9, making it nice and easy to handle.
There are uniformed bezels around the display – more on that in a minute – and there is a separate stylus and folio case, like the iPad offers and the Lenovo Duet 3i. The keyboard is lovely to type on based on our brief experience with it and the trackpad that sits below the keyboard is responsive too, as is the stylus.
A connector is positioned on the bottom edge of the OnePlus Pad, allowing it to reassuringly snap into the folio case, while there’s a power button on the top edge, though it doesn’t have a fingerprint sensor built into it. Instead, this tablet has Face Unlock, or you can use a passcode.
A camera lens is centralized at the top of the display – in landscape mode – like the iPad (10th generation), making it more useful for video calls, while on the right edge you’ll find the volume rocker. There’s also a USB-C port for charging and audio. The top and bottom edges when in landscape mode are where you’ll find the speakers.
There’s only one color option – Halo Green – but it’s a great color so we’re ok with that. It’s not too in your face – more like a subtle green hue and it’s designed to match the green color of the OnePlus 11 5G and the OnePlus Buds Pro 2 so if you’re a OnePlus fan and green has been your color of choice for those other devices, you’ll have a great matching collection.
Display
- 11.61-inch LCD display
- 2800 x 2000 pixel resolution, 296ppi
- 7:5 aspect ratio
The OnePlus Pad has an 11.61-inch LCD display with a resolution of 2800 x 2000 pixels, which delivers a pixel density of 296ppi. That’s pretty standard for a tablet, whether Android or iOS, though Samsung’s tablets have AMOLED displays rather than LCD.
The OnePlus Pad appeared to offer plenty of detail though, along with decent brightness – it maxes out at 500nits which is a little higher than the Lenovo Duet 3i – and there’s good viewing angles too based on our initial experience. Colors seemed to be vibrant and punchy too.
The screen has a slightly different aspect ratio to the norm at 7:5, which is designed to be similar to a piece of A4 paper and it works really well. The screen to body ratio is just over 88 percent so the bezels are lovely and slim and they look great.
There’s an adaptive 144Hz refresh rate on board too, as well as a 120Hz or 144Hz touch sampling rate.
hardware and features
- MediaTek Dimension 9000 CPUs
- ARM G710 MC10 GPUs
- 8GB RAM/128GB storage
Under the hood of the OnePlus Pad is a MediaTek Dimensity 9000 CPU and ARM G710 MC10 GPU, supported by 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. You won’t find a microSD slot so there’s no storage expansion.
A 9510mAh battery powers the OnePlus Pad, which is claimed to last for one month in standby, or 12 hours playing video. It also supports 67W SuperVOOC fast charging, which although isn’t the fastest speeds offered by this technology, it’s still pretty quick for a tablet.
Elsewhere on the hardware front, the OnePlus Pad supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3. The rear camera is a 13-megapixel snapper, supporting 4K recording up to 30fps, while the front camera is an 8-megapixel sensor supporting 1080p recording at 30fps.
In terms of software, the OnePlus Pad runs on Android 13 with OxygenOS 13.1, though the software has been optimized for tablets so it’s not exactly the same as what you would find on your OnePlus phone.
There are some clever features on board too, such as a two finger swipe down from the center of the display when in landscape mode to enter a split view mode. You have to have a compatible app already open but as you swipe your fingers down, a line appears on the screen, which is a nice touch. You can then select another app to open alongside the first app and work across both.
The OnePlus Pad will also allow you to transfer data from your OnePlus phone to the tablet.
We of course couldn’t test the performance or the battery of the OnePlus Pad during our brief amount of time with it but we will be sure to do this when we come to review it in full in the coming months.
First impressions
The OnePlus Pad is a lovely slim and slender tablet that has something a little bit different in terms of design compared to other Android tablets.
It delivers a premium build quality and there’s some great features on board, while the keyboard on the folio case is great to type on from what we could tell so far.
We will bring you are full review of the OnePlus Pad over the next couple of months, but for now, we’re impressed by this lovely slab.
