There aren't many brands in the Android tablet space that have carved out a niche for offering reliable and consistent tablets that can take on the likes of the Apple iPads. OnePlus is certainly among them.
With the new OnePlus Pad 3—the company's biggest and costliest tablet so far—the aim is to offer an all-in-one tablet for your entertainment and work on the go.
Though announced a while back, its price in India was announced only a few days ago.
Does it do justice to its price tag of Rs 47,999 for the base model and Rs 52,999 for the higher model? Does it have enough to go against Apple and Samsung? Let's explore:
Display and first impressions
The OnePlus Pad 3 is a slim tablet measuring under 6mm in thickness and weighing 675g. Its 13.2-inch screen (3392x2400) LCD LTPS, at a 7:5 aspect ratio display, doesn't have the slimmest bezels, but are still slim enough.
Offering refresh rates up to 144Hz, this is a fairly bright display with good colour reproduction.
I found it more than good enough to play YouTube videos at their highest resolution, as well as local media content at full resolution with good contrast and details in place (though it seems there is no HDR support for Netflix).
While some might say an OLED screen is a big miss, the fact there's no anti-flicker display feature here (that some high-end OnePlus phones have) seems odd.
The aluminium unibody back has the OnePlus logo bang in the middle, with a tweaked-up pill-shaped camera in one corner and magnetic pogo pins near the bottom.
When in landscape mode, the top-left corner has the volume buttons and the secondary mic, placed next to the power/lock key on the adjoining corner. The right side houses the USB type-C port and the primary mic. Two outlets in each side make for the 8-speaker setup. The tablet comes in Storm Blue (which I tried) and Frosty Silver colour options.
Camera
The front-facing 8MP (f/2.0) camera is okay for video calls and occasionally taking selfies if you want to, but don't expect exceptional shots.
The rear-facing 13MP (f/2.2) camera is also okay for the occasional shot if you really want to hold such a big tablet to take a photo.
Hardware
The 4-tweeters plus 4-woofers setup for audio may not be the loudest you might have heard from a tablet, but it still packs in enough depth and details to be a viable option to use it indoors.
Equipped with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset (housing a 4.32Ghz octa-core processor and Adreno 830 GPU), the Pad 3 comes with 12GB LPDDR5x RAM and 256GB UFS4.0 internal storage.
Another variant of the Pad 3 offers 16GB LPDDR5T with 512GB UFS4.0 configuration).
The tablet is powered by a 12,140mAh battery unit that can be charged using the bundled 80W SuperVOOC charger: charging it from 1 per cent to full in under 2 hours, which isn't bad for a tablet. It lasted about 12 hours of usage on a single charge.
There's still no fingerprint reader, which I would have liked here, since this is the third generation of their Pad tablets. No microSD card slot may be a bigger miss for some other people.
Performance
Performance is definitely one of this tablet's strengths. It runs on OxygenOS 15 based on Android 15 with the August security patch in place. The device handles day to performance without any troubles.
The OS now has better multitasking capabilities with up to 3 apps opened side by side. You can have, say, Discord, YouTube, and Twitter all running and refreshing at once, and you wouldn't notice any stuttering. For watching high resolution videos, checking images, editing photos too, the Pad 3 doesn't disappoint.
WiFi 6, on the other hand, is very much present and worked flawlessly throughout my usage (WiFi 7 is also supported, but no use in India, as of now).
Folio Case support
The official Pad 3 keyboard and cover combo are also decent for the price tag. The Folio Case is priced at Rs 1,699 and does a good job of protecting the tablet from scratches. However, it isn't yet officially available.
There's another downside to the Folio Case: when attached to the tablet along with the keyboard, its stand isn't very stable, and the angle it's set at may not always work for typing. The keyboard, though, has large keys and a trackpad that are quite comfortable to type on.
Verdict
All in all, the OnePlus Pad 3 comes across as a well performing tablet that is not only good for multimedia consumption, but also for a bit of multitasking, some work, some play, and getting things done on the go.
