OnePlus surprised the world back in February when it announced its first tablet, the OnePlus Pad. With things having been quiet since then, it was fun to finally try out some of the first samples of the new slate at Mobile World Congress.
My time with the tablet was brief, but OnePlus' mix of features cribbed from existing tablet makers plus some of its own touches has made for a compelling potential new competitor to the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab.
There's still no pricing given by OnePlus, and only a vague April launch date to boot. But if you're currently tablet shopping, it may be worth waiting a few weeks to see what this tablet is capable of in real-life testing.
OnePlus Pad: Design and display
To get the basics out of the way, the OnePlus Tab is an 11.6-inch device sporting a 7:5 aspect ratio display, which is unusually square for a tablet (iPads are 4:3 for instance). OnePlus has apparently done this with the aim of making the Pad similar in ratio to that of an open book, which it claims is convenient for reading and working.
OnePlus has managed to have its cake and eat it too with the edges of the tablet. On three sides you get a lovely ergonomic, curved edge, quite unlike the flat-sided iPads and Galaxy Tabs. On the top side though, there's a cutout with a flat edge, perfectly sized to magnetically attach and charge a stylus. It's a weird asymmetrical look but it is a quite practical choice.
The display has some OnePlus flair in the form of promised 10-bit color support and 500-nit max brightness. I couldn't test these exactly on the ground in Barcelona but it was certainly easy to read the tablet even under the bright venue lighting, and everything on the display looked crisp and bright.
You also get a 144Hz refresh rate, which should in theory be a little smoother than the already delightfully buttery 120Hz refresh rates you see on the Galaxy Tab S8 series or the iPad Pro.
Beyond the display, we see the aluminum body in the single available color: Halo Green. It's handsome in this color, but it's odd we didn't get a black option too, like we see with OnePlus' phones such as the recently released OnePlus 11.
At 10.1 x 7.4 x 0.2 inches (258.03 x 189.41 x 6.54mm) thick and weighing 1.2 pounds (552 grams), the OnePlus Pad is taller and wider than a 10.9-inch iPad or iPad Air, but a fair bit heavier, too.
OnePlus Pad: Battery and charging
That extra heft may be due to the chunky 9,510 mAh battery, which can allegedly survive up to 12.4 hours of video playback, according to OnePlus' own testing.
When power does eventually run out, you can gas it back up with a 67W charging brick that apparently fills the tablet up in 80 minutes. That's much faster than any iPad, and even faster than the 45W charging of the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra.
OnePlus Pad: Cameras
On the optics front, you get an 8MP front camera and a 13MP rear camera. The front sensor's mounted on the display's long side, which needs to be the standard for all tablets already since this is how you'll use the selfie camera most often.
The OnePlus Pad's camera also has its own version of Apple's Center Stage called Limelight, which keeps you in frame as you move around in front of the tablet while on a video call.
The back camera looks a little odd, with it being housed in a black circle that sticks out both figuratively and literally from the back of the tablet. It's not as prominent as it looks in the images on OnePlus' website, but it's not going to lie flat for you whatever you do unless you get the case to go with it (as you can see above).
OnePlus Pad: Accessories
You can see the ways that OnePlus has taken leads from the iPad and Galaxy Tab families with its accessories. It's launching with a magnetic keyboard/trackpad case, and a stylus, the OnePlus Stylo, allowing it to function both as an art tool and a pseudo-laptop.
The Stylo seems to be an excellent stylus too, using a solid tip like an Apple Pencil and offering only 2ms of latency according to the specs. It feelt good to write and doodle with, with no feeling of disconnect between my pen strokes and the marks on the digital page.
OnePlus Pad: Performance
Running all of these activities is a Dimensity 9000 chip with up to 12GB RAM. That's the same chip that we've found perfectly capable in the Oppo Find N2 Flip, although we can't imagine it'll put up much of a fight against an iPad Air with its M1 chip, or an iPad Pro with the latest M2 chip.
Even still, it's got enough oomph to enable options like dual-app multi-tasking, enabled with a simple two-finger swipe gesture. It lets you use the full breadth of the display to show two more normally-proportioned vertical apps side-by-side. There's also snappy hot-spotting when connected with a OnePlus phone, and interoperability between tablet and phone apps, similar to other leading tablets.
OnePlus Pad: Outlook
The OnePlus Pad is doing some unusual things with the tablet form factor, which appeal because of their novelty at the very least. The squarer shape and other unusual design flourishes have quickly established the identity of OnePlus' tablet line, while a responsive stylus and a useful keyboard cover, promising performance, battery life and charging speeds and other bells and whistles help mark it out as different from Apple and Samsung slades down to its silicon bones.
All OnePlus needs is an attractive price to start stealing sales from Samsung's Galaxy Tabs, and maybe even convert the odd iPad user who find Apple's slates just aren't for them. We'll save our final judgement on whether it's managed that for April.
