OnePlus Pad review

Software and features

The OnePlus Pad runs on OxygenOS 13.1 atop Android 13. This is a lightly modified version of OxygenOS for the tablet form factor.

Starting with the launcher, you have the choice of having either all icons on the homescreen like the iPad or using an app drawer. Regardless, the icons are all fairly spaced out, and there is also a generous amount of padding on the sides. This tends to heavily limit the number of things you can place on the homescreen especially when it comes to widgets. You can maybe have one large widget, and suddenly there is no longer any space available for even smaller ones on the side.

Launcher

You can choose to swipe down on the homescreen to pull down the notifications. On the left side are all the toggles with controls for brightness and audio playback. On the right is where the notifications appear. While the shortcut to pull down is convenient, it conflicts with any widgets that also have scrolling elements. When you swipe down on a widget to scroll within the widget, the launcher will almost always choose to bring down the notifications instead.

OxygenOS 13.1

OnePlus has added some useful features to make multitasking easier. The split screen function can be evoked by a simple two-finger swipe down. This feature is still limited to apps that do support split screen, but most of the apps we tried did.

Another useful feature is flexible windows, which lets you open some apps in a small floating window on the side that can be minimized. Unfortunately, you can only run one such app at a time, and it also doesn't work with every app.

Features

Dual windows lets you open the same app in two different windows, but barely any app we had installed supported this feature. Lastly, the Display size feature lets you pick how apps that don't support fullscreen landscape mode properly can be displayed. This was also available for only a handful of apps, even though there were a lot more apps that this could be used for.

Unfortunately, all of this is necessary because the Android tablet experience continues to be abysmal, especially when it comes to third-party app support. Even after all these years, most Android apps do not expect to be launched on a tablet. Several apps do not work correctly in landscape mode, which is usually how you would use them on a tablet, especially when you have a keyboard attached. Several have a half-baked landscape mode, which is just an awkwardly stretched version of the portrait mode that makes poor use of space.

Many other apps will randomly switch to portrait mode for some instances; Spotify, for example, would switch to portrait orientation when you make lyrics fullscreen. Only an exceptionally small number of tested apps had a proper tablet UI that was designed to take full advantage of the wider canvas, and most of them just happen to be either OnePlus or Google's own apps.

Attaching a keyboard and trackpad to an Android tablet further exacerbates some of these issues. Most apps on the platform don't know how to work with common keyboard shortcuts that would work on a desktop or even the iPad, so they just sit there awkwardly and do nothing.

The mouse pointer also behaves weirdly in some apps and can be quite inconsistent when scrolling or highlighting text. The result of this is you often have to fall back to using the touchscreen as that is often the best way to interface with the apps, many of which are simply not designed to be used with a mouse pointer or keyboard.

Most of these issues are inherent to Android and aren't necessarily OnePlus's fault. But they significantly diminish the value of the platform as a work machine or a laptop replacement of sorts unless you really go out of your way to work around the shortcomings. As it stands now, tablet Android as a laptop replacement is pretty bad and a distant second behind iPadOS, which is vastly superior in every relevant metric. This is worth remembering before purchasing any Android tablet, not just the OnePlus Pad.

The OnePlus Pad does not feature cellular connectivity, which may be a deal breaker for some. To make up for this, OnePlus has included Cellular Data Sharing, which lets you share your OnePlus phone's cellular data by just having the phone close by and being signed into the same OnePlus account.

Multi-Screen Connect can also exploit this connection to do things like screen mirroring, content sync (clipboard, media), and app relay, which is OnePlus's version of Apple's Handoff feature. These require both the tablet and the OnePlus phone to be on OxygenOS 13.1.

Perhaps a more significant omission, one to which OnePlus has no alternative, is fingerprint scanning. The OnePlus Pad has no fingerprint scanner and has to rely on passcodes to secure the device. You can use basic face recognition to unlock your tablet, but it's not secure and cannot be used by apps like password managers to unlock. This means you are frequently entering your passcodes and passwords on the device, which can get tiring very quickly. A simple solution to this would have been to include the scanner inside the power button or literally anywhere else on the device, but OnePlus chose to forego it altogether.

Overall, the software experience on the OnePlus Pad is subpar. OnePlus has tried wherever it could to make the experience pleasant for the user, but the depressing lack of support from third-party developers continues to make the platform a hard sell for the average user who will almost always be better off with an iPad instead.

Performance

The OnePlus Pad runs on the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 MT6983 chipset, which features an 8-core CPU and Mali-G710 MC10 GPU. It is paired with a choice of 8GB or 12GB LPDDR5 memory and 128GB or 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. This depends on the region as in most American and European regions, the OnePlus Pad is only available in 8/128GB configuration. Our Indian review unit, however, had 12/256GB.

The overall CPU performance of this chip is more in line with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870, and the GPU performance is closer to Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. This shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone as Android tablets rarely get the latest and greatest chips, but one look at the competition, and you'd see that the OnePlus Pad is fairly competitive as most of its rivals are measurably worse.

Real-world performance is a bit of a mixed bag. For the most part, the OnePlus Pad feels good to use with a snappy response to all inputs. However, there is a persistent stutter while scrolling that tends to show up in all apps. It is especially noticeable while browsing, where every ad, video, and other embedded elements will cause the browser to stutter, and other times, it stutters for seemingly no reason. This doesn't seem to be a chipset issue, as there is sufficient power under the hood, but rather an optimization issue for the OS and, in many cases, the app that you are using.

Gaming performance is also lackluster if you are into modern, demanding titles. There isn't enough performance available here to power through at the native resolution at 60FPS. Some of the games we tested, including Genshin Impact and Fortnite, also struggled to run correctly on the device, with both running at extremely low resolution. The issue could be due to the non-standard resolution and aspect ratio combination of the display. And despite their low rendering resolution, they were still dropping frames.

Playing older games was a better experience. You can maintain a steady 60FPS most of the time with a few drops here and there. Most of the other games we tried didn't have any issues with the display aside from the corners being truncated due to the aggressive curvature. It would have been nice if the refresh rate could go above 60Hz, as every game we tried could only go that high due to OS restrictions.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Huawei MatePad Pro 11 (2022)
  3685
• OnePlus Pad
  3158
• Xiaomi Pad 5
  2583
• Realme Pad X
  2026
• Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
  1904
• Redmi Pad
  1852
• Oppo Pad Air
  1661
• Honor Pad 8
  1545

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Huawei MatePad Pro 11 (2022)
  901
• OnePlus Pad
  856
• Xiaomi Pad 5
  743
• Realme Pad X
  691
• Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
  615
• Redmi Pad
  554
• Oppo Pad Air
  384
• Honor Pad 8
  376

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• OnePlus Pad
  859019
• Huawei MatePad Pro 11 (2022)
  780161
• Xiaomi Pad 5
  555079
• Realme Pad X
  395824
• Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
  355430
• Redmi Pad
  319077
• Honor Pad 8
  279242
• Oppo Pad Air
  249172

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus Pad
  28
• Huawei MatePad Pro 11 (2022)
  25
• Xiaomi Pad 5
  16
• Realme Pad X
  12
• Redmi Pad
  9
• Oppo Pad Air
  5
• Honor Pad 8
  4.9

GFX Aztek ES 3.1 High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• OnePlus Pad
  40
• Huawei MatePad Pro 11 (2022)
  26
• Xiaomi Pad 5
  18
• Realme Pad X
  7.9
• Redmi Pad
  5.8
• Honor Pad 8
  3.2
• Oppo Pad Air
  3.2

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus Pad
  28
• Huawei MatePad Pro 11 (2022)
  25
• Xiaomi Pad 5
  16
• Realme Pad X
  12
• Redmi Pad
  8.3
• Oppo Pad Air
  4.9
• Honor Pad 8
  4.8

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• OnePlus Pad
  42
• Huawei MatePad Pro 11 (2022)
  29
• Xiaomi Pad 5
  19
• Realme Pad X
  8.2
• Redmi Pad
  5.5
• Honor Pad 8
  3.2
• Oppo Pad Air
  3.2

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• OnePlus Pad
  7438
• Huawei MatePad Pro 11 (2022)
  5903
• Xiaomi Pad 5
  3396
• Redmi Pad
  1242
• Realme Pad X
  1217
• Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
  1092
• Honor Pad 8
  450
• Oppo Pad Air
  450

The OnePlus Pad has good heat dissipation and thermal performance as you would expect from a large tablet. The chipset does not lose much performance over time, even during stress testing. The area between the rear camera and the power button does get a bit warm under duress, but usually, it's far enough away from where you would normally hold the device that it's not even noticeable.

CPU and graphics thermal stability testing