OnePlus Pad 2 Review: Premium Performance at an Accessible Price

OnePlus made waves last year by launching its first tablet, the ‘Pad’. The OnePlus Pad was a mid-range tablet complete with keyboard and stylus accessories, and it offered

OnePlus Pad 2 Camera Samples. Top: Primary camera, bottom: Selfie camera (tap images to expand)

 

With that said, the rear-facing camera does come with an LED flash. Together, it is good enough to capture documents and any official work. It’s good enough for capturing photos with decent detail and dynamic range in daylight, but I recommend pulling out your smartphone if you really need to shoot. The front-facing camera works fine while clicking selfies (with good edge detection) and is good enough for video-conferencing calls, provided there’s enough light where you are seated.

OnePlus Pad 2 Review Battery: A proper workhorse

• Battery capacity – 9,510mAh
• Wired charging – 67W
• Charger provided – Yes

With the same battery as before, I expected the battery life to drop a bit, given the larger display. However, thanks to the supremely better SoC that OnePlus went with this year, it did not take a bad hit, lasting an equally impressive 15 hours and 28 minutes (versus 18 hours and 10 minutes) on a single charge in our video loop test. The tablet still manages two whole work days (about 9 hours) if all you do is work on it. Big-screen gaming, which this tablet is easily capable of, will reduce its battery life to a little over a day.

Charging speeds have improved by a bit. The tablet charges 56 percent in 30 minutes and completes the charge in 1 hour and 14 minutes, much faster than its immediate competition.

OnePlus Pad 2 Verdict

While Android-powered tablets still have a long way to go before they become as useful for work as Apple’s iPads. With that said, the OnePlus Pad 2 is definitely a step closer in the right direction, even if it is not going to replace your laptop. That direction also happens to decrease the gap in OnePlus’ product ecosystem, especially with the seamless connectivity features offered this year. Minor touchpad niggles aside, Open Canvas works beautifully. And while I’m not a huge fan of the 2-piece Smart Keyboard, it does offer better use cases over the previous keyboard accessory from OnePlus.

As far as competition goes, OnePlus still offers much better hardware than the competition, with a base price of Rs. 39,999. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE+, which retails from Rs. 42,999 (8GB + 128GB) for the 12.4-inch tablet, is its primary competitor. The tablet offers an IP68 rating, which is good if that’s something that is high on your checklist. Also on offer here is cellular (5G) connectivity, but you will have to shell out Rs 54,999 for that feature. Lenovo’s compact Legion Tab is designed mainly for gamers with better performance compared to Samsung’s tablet at Rs 34,999 (8GB + 128GB).

Apart from the standalone cellular connectivity and biometric authentication, there are no real problems that stand out, making this tablet an easy recommendation for those who are looking to play some serious games on a large display and for those who plan to get work done on it as well.