Oppo Pad Air review

IPS LCD panel with 1 billion colors, sortof

The display is business as usual, and it's not all that different from what the competition has to offer. The Oppo Pad Air has a 10.36-inch IPS LCD panel with 1200 x 200px resolution, which is a 5:3 aspect ratio.

We were able to measure a maximum brightness of 352 nits; there's no additional boost in brightness in bright light. So 352 nits of peak brightness might not be enough for a comfortable viewing experience outside on a bright sunny day. In terms of contrast, the Pad Air is also slightly behind the competition with a 1:1391 contrast ratio.

The display is cited as having 10bit color support, however, it's not HDR10 video compliant and the hardware only supports 8 bits with the other 2 bits realized by software.

However, the bigger issue with this screen is the prominent contrast shift when viewing the display at an angle, suggesting a low-quality IPS panel. The Realme Pad X, for instance, didn't have any contrast shifting.

As far as color accuracy is concerned, we found that the best option is to opt for the Warm color preset in Settings since the whites and grays have a strong blue tinge by default. Then again, whites and grays turn a bit green-ish, and there's no option to fine tune the color temperature to mitigate that.

Battery life

One would expect extra long battery life from a system that runs on a 7,100 mAh battery and not-so-demanding Snapdragon 680 chipset. Well, the results from our tests show a bit underwhelming endurance.

Both the web browsing and video playback scores were around the 10-hour mark, while most competitors easily push beyond 10 hours. Even the 12-inch Honor Pad 8, which features a similar 7,250 mAh battery and the same chipset, got more than 11 hours on the web browsing test.

On the other hand, those runtimes should be more than enough to get you through a full workday away from the charger, depending on the screen brightness, of course.

We don't calculate tablet endurance ratings as our formula for phones takes standby battery draw into account. Applying the same formula for tablets with their larger batteries doesn't make sense because their standby power draw is minimal, so we focus on the active screen-on tests instead.

Charging speed

Charging speed isn't one of the Pad Air's strongest suits. The 18W-rated charger restored just 25% of the 7,100 mAh battery in the first 30 minutes, while a complete charge took almost two and a half hours. That's easily the slowest charging speed among the tablets we've reviewed recently. Even the Xiaomi Redmi Pad achieved slightly better charging times with a significantly bigger 8,000 mAh battery.

30min charging test (from 0%)

Higher is better

• Apple iPad mini (2021)
  35%
• Honor Pad 8
  35%
• Realme Pad X
  30%
• Xiaomi Redmi Pad
  25%
• Oppo Pad Air
  25%
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE
  18%

Time to full charge (from 0%)

Lower is better

• Apple iPad mini (2021)
  1:57h
• Honor Pad 8
  1:57h
• Realme Pad X
  2:00h
• Xiaomi Redmi Pad
  2:21h
• Oppo Pad Air
  2:25h
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE
  3:05h

The Pad Air also supports USB OTG with reverse charging, so it's capable of charging other devices with a cable.

Speakers

The Oppo Pad Air features a total of four speakers tuned to be compliant with the Dolby Atmos standard, but to our surprise, we weren't impressed with the quality or loudness. Our test returned a somewhat underwhelming result of -28.3 LUFS of loudness, while depth was also lacking. Vocals sound decent, and overall sound clarity is okay, but the bass is virtually non-existent.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.