Design and Craftsmanship: A Statement in Metal and Minimalism
The moment you unbox the OnePlus Pad, its design philosophy is immediately apparent. This is not another generic, plastic-feeling slate. OnePlus has applied its “burdenless” design principle from its smartphones to create a tablet that feels both premium and remarkably balanced in the hand. The entire chassis is crafted from a single piece of aluminum, providing a seamless, rigid, and incredibly high-quality feel. The finishing is superb, with softly rounded edges that prevent any digging into the palms during prolonged use.
A central design pillar, and arguably the Pad’s most defining feature, is its screen aspect ratio. Unlike the skinnier 16:10 or 16:9 ratios common in the Android tablet space, the OnePlus Pad features a 7:5 ratio. This makes the device noticeably more square, akin to an A5 notebook. The immediate benefit is felt in both portrait and landscape orientations. In portrait, it feels natural for reading digital books, magazines, and browsing websites, minimizing the need for excessive scrolling. In landscape, it provides more vertical real estate for split-screen multitasking, allowing two apps to be displayed more comfortably without feeling overly cramped.
Weighing in at 552g, it has a substantial, premium heft, but the weight distribution is so even that it never feels fatiguing to hold. The center of gravity sits perfectly, whether you’re using it one-handed for reading or propping it up for media consumption. On the rear, the camera module is a prominent circular island, centrally aligned along the top edge. This is a deliberate choice, ensuring the tablet doesn’t wobble when placed flat on a surface. The “Halo Green” color option is distinctive; it’s a subtle, shimmering mint-green finish that catches the light beautifully and resists fingerprints remarkably well.
Display: The “Dazzling” 7:5 Canvas
The centerpiece of the OnePlus Pad is its 11.61-inch LCD, which OnePlus brands as a “Dazzling” display. With a resolution of 2800×2000 pixels, it results in a sharp 296 pixels per inch, making text, icons, and images look crisp and clear. The 7:5 ratio is the star here, offering a 6% larger display area compared to an 11-inch 16:10 tablet. This difference is palpable when working with documents or browsing complex web pages.
The display boasts a 144Hz refresh rate, a feature typically reserved for high-end gaming smartphones and premium tablets. This ensures exceptionally smooth scrolling through web pages and social media feeds, fluid animations when navigating the OS, and a more responsive feel overall. The variable refresh rate technology adjusts between 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 144Hz depending on the content, helping to conserve battery life when maximum smoothness isn’t required.
Brightness is rated at 500 nits, which is sufficient for comfortable indoor use and passable for brief outdoor sessions, though it can struggle under direct sunlight. Color reproduction is a strong suit. It covers a wide DCI-P3 color gamut and is factory calibrated, resulting in vibrant, accurate, and pleasing colors out of the box. It supports Dolby Vision, and when combined with the quad-speaker setup, it delivers a truly immersive video-watching experience. While it may not have the perfect blacks of an OLED panel, the LCD technology used here is top-tier, with excellent contrast and minimal backlight bleed, making it one of the best LCD tablets available.
Performance: Flagship Power Meets Software Refinement
At the heart of the OnePlus Pad is the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 chipset, a flagship-level processor built on a 4nm architecture. This is paired with a generous 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage. This hardware combination positions the Pad firmly in the high-performance category of the Android tablet market.
In real-world usage, this translates to a buttery-smooth and consistently fast experience. Apps launch instantaneously, and heavy games like Genshin Impact or Call of Duty: Mobile run at high frame rates and settings with remarkable stability. The tablet handles intensive multitasking with ease, allowing you to run two apps side-by-side with a floating video window without any discernible stutter or slowdown. The thermal management is also impressive; thanks to the large surface area and over 85,000 mm² of cooling material, the Pad remains cool to the touch even during extended gaming sessions or video editing, preventing performance throttling.
The software experience is OxygenOS 13.1, which is a clean, near-stock interpretation of Android 13. OnePlus has added thoughtful tablet-specific enhancements. The taskbar is a key feature, allowing quick access to favorite apps and a seamless drag-and-drop function for opening apps in split-screen. The two-finger swipe-down-from-top-right gesture to activate split-screen is intuitive and fast. While the Android app ecosystem for tablets still lags behind Apple’s iPadOS in terms of universally optimized apps, the situation is improving. Most major apps like Google’s suite, Microsoft Office, and popular streaming services look and work great on the 7:5 canvas.
Accessory Ecosystem: The Magic Keyboard and Stylo
A productivity-focused tablet is only as good as its accessories, and OnePlus offers two compelling options: the OnePlus Magnetic Keyboard and the OnePlus Stylo.
The Magnetic Keyboard folio case connects via a pogo pin connector, eliminating the need for Bluetooth pairing or charging. The keys offer a surprising amount of travel and tactile feedback for a folio keyboard, making long typing sessions genuinely comfortable. It includes a large trackpad that supports various multi-finger gestures, further cementing the laptop-replacement potential. The Stylo, meanwhile, is a solid, well-balanced stylus that magnetically attaches to the top of the tablet for pairing, charging, and storage. It features 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and tilt support, making it responsive and accurate for note-taking, sketching, or precise markup. With a 2ms latency, writing feels natural, with the ink appearing to flow directly from the tip.
Camera, Audio, and Battery Life
The tablet features an 8MP front and rear camera. The front-facing camera is strategically positioned on the long bezel, making it perfectly centered for video calls in landscape mode. It supports AI enhancements and provides a perfectly acceptable image for Zoom or Google Meet calls. The rear 8MP camera is serviceable for scanning documents or capturing the occasional photo, but it is, like most tablet cameras, not intended to replace a smartphone.
The audio system is a highlight. The quad-speaker setup, with two speakers on each side in landscape mode, supports Dolby Atmos. The sound is rich, detailed, and surprisingly powerful, with clear distinction between highs and mids and a respectable amount of bass for a device of this size. It creates a wide, immersive soundstage that greatly enhances movie-watching and gaming.
Powering the entire experience is a 9510mAh battery. In mixed usage involving web browsing, video streaming, document editing, and some gaming, the Pad consistently delivers a day and a half to two days of battery life. When it does need a top-up, the included 67W SuperVOOC charger is a game-changer. It can charge the massive battery from 1% to 100% in just over 80 minutes, minimizing downtime significantly.
The Competitive Landscape and Final Assessment
The OnePlus Pad enters a market segment where it competes directly with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 and the Apple iPad Air. Its primary advantages lie in its unique and highly functional 7:5 display aspect ratio, its exceptional build quality and design, the sheer performance of the Dimensity 9000 chipset, and the incredibly fast 67W charging. It carves a niche for users who prioritize a premium media consumption device that doubles as a potent productivity tool, especially for those already invested in the OnePlus ecosystem who can benefit from features like OTP Hub for seamless notification sync. While the app ecosystem remains Android’s universal challenge, the hardware and core software experience provided by the OnePlus Pad are undeniably flagship-grade, making it a compelling and sophisticated choice for anyone seeking a high-performance Android tablet.