Hands-on with OnePlus Pad, a tablet with 30-day battery life

OnePlus teased its first tablet, the OnePlus Pad, a few weeks ago, and now the Oppo subsidiary has brought it to MWC 2023 in Barcelona, Spain, for everyone to see. The OnePlus Pad is supposed to be a flagship device that competes directly against some of the best iPads and Android tablets. But one of the strangest things OnePlus chose to advertise about it is the 30-day standby time.

That’s an impressive achievement but one that doesn’t really make sense, especially for a flagship device. You probably don’t need an expensive tablet if you get to 30 days of not using the tablet. The OnePlus Pad does have impressive specs and features, including a few tricks that cater specifically to buyers who already have a OnePlus phone.

The display looks a lot like an iPad from a distance. That means an all-screen tablet design with symmetrical bezels and rounded corners. But the 11.6-inch screen features a strange 7:5 aspect ratio rather than the 4:3 ratio you expect from an iPad rival. OnePlus calls it ReadFit, and says the tablet looks more like a book that way.

The 2.5D curved glass meets an aluminum chassis painted green. The OnePlus Pad is also very thin at 6.54mm. Also, it weighs 552g. That’s slightly heavier than the 11-inch iPad Pro.

When it comes to screen specs, we’re looking at 2800 x 2000 resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, and 500 nits of brightness.

Powering the tablet is a Dimensity 9000 processor. This is a high-end System-on-Chip (SoC), but not quite the M1 equivalent of the iPad Pro and iPad Air’s M1. The processor is paired with 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage.

In actual use, the OnePlus Pad on display at MWC is quite fast and responsive when it comes to running apps and switching tasks. The tablet also works with a stylus that you can attach magnetically on the side. The OnePlus Stylo and the OnePlus Magnetic Keyboard dock are separate purchases, however.

The 9,510 mAh battery that makes possible that 30-day standby time is good for 12.4 hours of continuous video playback. But unlike other tablets, the OnePlus Pad comes with 67W SuperVooc charging. The tablet needs only 60 minutes to reach a full charge.

Another OnePlus Pad exciting feature users will love is the Omnibearing Sound Field technology. Fancy marketing wording aside, the tech does something amazing with the sound coming out of the speakers. No matter how you hold the tablet, the sound will adjust to come out the correct way.

That’s to say that whatever two speakers are on the left side will deliver the left-channel sound. The same goes for the right-sided speakers. Move between landscape and portrait, or switch the tablet around, and the speakers will adapt the sound.

The iPad comparisons in this post aren’t accidental. Some of the OnePlus Pad software features will remind many people of Apple’s Continuity system, where various devices logged into the same Apple ID work together seamlessly.

Oppo is doing something similar with OnePlus. Say you have a OnePlus 11 and OnePlus Pad tablet, and you can easily move content between the two devices. Like checking messages on the phone or editing photos and videos that were just taken on the phone. Or use the Cellular Data Sharing feature to share the phone’s 5G internet with the tablet.

As for multitasking, the OnePlus Pad can run two apps side by side, with a third one hovering on top. Similar to the iPad.

If all that sounds exciting and you can’t wait to get your hands on the OnePlus Pad, you’ll have to wait. OnePlus gave me the same generic April release estimate we saw earlier this month. The price is yet to be determined.