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Android tablets are sad.
Samsung essentially makesall the good ones, and Android has never really been great for tablets.
It’s no secret that Apple dominates the tablet market.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
InQ4 2022, about half of all tablets shipped wereiPads.
Samsung accounted for around 17%, while Amazon came in at 5.4%.
That’s the landscape OnePlus has to work in.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
People already don’t love Android tablets, and OnePlus is not a household name.
Can the OnePlus Pad change any of that?
I’ve been using the OnePlus Pad for three weeks.
Joe Fedewa / How-To Geek
OnePlus provided the tablet, keyboard cover, and stylus to us.
Hardware and Design: Making Green Look Good
The OnePlus Pad immediately feels like a high-quality tablet.
The tablet has a solid, balanced weight to it, and the metal back feels nice.
Joe Fedewa / How-To Geek
There’s really not much to the actual design of the OnePlus Pad.
It’s your basic thin, flat slab with rounded corners and edges.
The biggest design feature is the round camera bump on the back.
Joe Fedewa / How-To Geek
The front of the tablet is all about the display.
I don’t think I’d want the bezels to be much smaller than this.
The 11.6-inch display has an unusual aspect ratio of 7:5.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
The screen size works well for multitasking and using apps in both orientations.
Speaking of the display, it should be mentioned that 11.6 inches is pretty big.
It’s a good size for productivity and drawing, but a little cumbersome for chilling on the couch.
The display looks great, by the way.
It’s an LCD screen, but it looks just as good as any OLED screen I’ve used.
With a resolution of 2000 x 2800, it’s a sharp image for the size of the tablet.
The OnePlus Pad is an attractive piece of hardware that feels great to hold.
This is not some cheap, plastic-y Amazon Fire tablet.
The OnePlus Pad has the fit and finish to rival an iPad or Samsung’s top Galaxy Tab.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
And that’s saying something.
For a tablet of this size, a keyboard makes a lot of sense.
11.6 inches is practically a laptop screen size, after all.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
The most annoying problem with the keyboard is the tablet’s inability to detect when it’s attached.
I had to re-attach/detach it to fix the problem.
One minor complaint I have with the keyboard is the layout.
Hannah Stryker / How-To Geek
Let’s talk about maybe my favorite part of the OnePlus Pad experience: the “Stylo” stylus.
It magnetically attaches to the side of the tablet for storage and charging, which I very much appreciate.
There’s nothing worse than an accessory that’s easy to lose and cumbersome to keep charged.
I have to admit I greatly enjoyed using the Stylo with the OnePlus Pad.
OnePlus did a good job with all three.
The stylus seems to track well, and the lag is imperceptible to me in real-time.
The pressure sensitivity worked well in the drawing apps I tried, too.
The Keyboard Cover and Stylo do not come with the OnePlus Pad.
They’ll set you back $149 and $99, respectively.
Both accessories are nice, but the Stylo is the star of the show, in my opinion.
This is my first experience with OxygenOS, and I’ve been mostly happy with it.
I tend to preferAndroid skinsthat don’t drastically alter how Android looks and works.
OxygenOS is somewhere between Google’s Pixel UI andSamsung’s One UI.
OxygenOS has a slide-out “Smart Sidebar” similar toSamsung’s “Edge Panel” feature.
This is a feature that makes a lot of sense for a tablet.
Multitasking is a big deal on a tablet.
it’s possible for you to only have two apps in split-screen mode, though.
That being said, the combination of split screen and floating windows is great for multitasking.
My biggest gripe with the software is how it works with the keyboard cover.
I find myself wanting things to work more like Windows or macOS when I’m using the physical keyboard.
So many of the littlekeyboard and mouse shortcutsyou’re used to just don’t work with Android.
For example, something as simple as using the trackpad todrag to select textisn’t possible.
Using a trackpad with Android works more like a remote-controlled finger than a mouse.
The OnePlus Tab does an okay job with this.
Software is very important for a tablet, especially one with a keyboard cover and stylus.
It has to be much more than just a phone interface on a larger screen.
Android seems to be getting better for tablets, and OnePlus has included some nice tablet-focused features as well.
OnePlus hasn’t had the best track record with software support, so this is great to hear.
However, we will have to wait and see if they stick to it.
Cameras: Present
The OnePlus Pad has cameras on the front and back, and they function.
That’s about all you’re gonna wanna know about them.
Technically speaking, the rear camera is 13MP, and the front camera is 8MP.
The photos are remarkably generic looking, but again, this is a tablet.
I’m not expecting smartphone-quality photos from a tablet camera.
It just needs to be there for times when I can’t use my phone.
The most important camera on a tablet is the front-facing camera.
I never felt like I was waiting for apps to load or resume.
Battery life is also great, if not better than the performance.
In the three weeks I’ve been using the tablet, I only had to charge it up once.
You either want to splurge on an iPad or get by with something cheap, like anAmazon Fire tablet.
The OnePlus Pad is a powerful and long-lasting tablet.
I had no complaints in this area.
Should You Buy the OnePlus Pad?
Now for the ultimate question—is theOnePlus Padworth buying?
That question comes down to two factors: price and operating system.
Price-wise, the OnePlus Pad is pretty competitive.
Yet the OnePlus Pad has specs that rival those more expensive tablets.
However, it gets closer when you factor in the accessories.
The whole package—tablet, keyboard cover, and stylus—will set you back $730.
The operating system might be a bigger deal, though.
Most of the apps I use on a daily basis work well on the larger screen.
For a first attempt at a tablet, OnePlus starts on the right foot.
