OnePlus Pad 2 Review: Powerful Tablet With Big Ambitions

At a glance

Expert’s Rating

Pros

• Great performance for the price
• Comfortable, elegant design
• Good display and sound
• Excellent battery life

Cons

• Could be even faster
• Mediocre cameras
• Poor desktop mode

Our Verdict

Stylish and comfortable design, great value for money, surprisingly good screen and all-day battery. In many ways, the OnePlus Pad 2 impresses, even if it doesn’t live up to its lofty ambitions as a productivity tablet. That may come with software updates in the future, though.

Price When Reviewed

$549.99

Best Prices Today: OnePlus Pad 2

$549.99

The OnePlus Pad 2 completes the manufacturer’s range of tablets, which now spans from the affordable OnePlus Pad Go, via the original 11.6-inch OnePlus Pad to this 12-inch tablet with top performance.

It was only in early 2023 that OnePlus made its debut as a tablet manufacturer. With a quirky design, focus on comfort and its own approach to multitasking, the original Pad made a compelling case as a mixed-use tablet for the home. However, it lacked the necessary software to make it a great productivity machine.

Have things changed on this second-gen slate? Here’s our full review.

Design, Specs & Performance

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
• Strong performance
• Some AI features

Compared to the original OnePlus Pad, the Pad 2 boosts both screen size and performance, and introduces a bunch of new features.

The design of the tablet is recognizable from the original OnePlus Pad, with rounded grip-friendly edges, a solid aluminum body, and a round camera puck centrally placed near the long side at the back. The placement of the camera is a small detail that I appreciate about the design – it allows the tablet to lie firmly on a table, despite the camera body protruding a few millimeters.

Mattias Inghe

Mattias Inghe

OnePlus doesn’t hold back on the hardware, with the Pad 2 powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That’s the same flagship chipset which powers many of the best Android phones you can buy – including the OnePlus 12.

You also get 12GB of RAM and 256 GB of UFS 3.1 storage on the only configuration available.

However, according to benchmarks, performance isn’t quite as good as the best phones around. It’s held back, likely due to either limited heat dissipation or a deliberate downclocking. Performance is more in line with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 than Gen 3, though of course that’s still very fast.

OnePlus Pad 2 benchmarks

And with Gen 3 you also get other benefits, such as support for Wi-Fi 7 and a much more powerful NPU (Neural Processing Unit).

The latter helps enable a bunch of AI features within Oxygen OS, OnePlus’ skin over Android 14, from intelligent deletion of objects in photos and automatic enhancement of facial clarity, to transcribing and summarizing recorded meetings.

Other AI features are expected in a future software update, including some that are already available on the OnePlus Nord 4.

It’s not quite Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy-level breadth and quality of features yet, but OnePlus is on the right track. And of course, the Snapdragon’s NPU can be utilized by any third-party app that wants it.

The graphics aren’t running at full speed with the same gaming performance as on phones either, but that may be more due to the fact that the screen with its high resolution is reluctant to push up to high frame rates in graphic-heavy games.

Screen & Speakers

• 12-inch, 2120 x 3000 display
• 144Hz refresh rate
• Six speakers

Otherwise, the display is well suited for gaming, with up to 144Hz frame rate, large color gamut, high brightness, and support for both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. It’s not an OLED but an IPS panel, so you won’t get that ultimate contrast, but the deep blacks you usually get with OLEDs are still apparent here, and it handles different viewing angles without issue.

You also get well-balanced auto brightness, meaning visibility is good, even in sunlight. There’s also an automatic color tint, but it tends too much towards warm tones, so the image is almost sepia-toned. I switch that off and set it manually instead – it’s easy to adjust.

Mattias Inghe