Finally an iPad beater? DailyMail.com tests the OnePlus Pad

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad in 2010, it marked the beginning of nearly a decade and a half of total dominance of the tablet market for Apple.

Even the die-hard Apple heron often make an exception for the iPad, as Android competitors are often incredibly bad or mind-bogglingly expensive (I’m looking at you here, Samsung).

So the news that smartphone upstart OnePlus was making its own tablet was intriguing. OnePlus has made a name for itself with a range of great Android phones with premium specs at a fraction of the price of flagship phones.

Unfortunately, the price of OnePlus phones has gone up over the years, but the new OnePlus Pad is indeed a very good value at $479 with a keyboard case included.

The new OnePlus Pad offers very good value indeed at $479 with a keyboard cover included

For that money you get a processor of the very best, more than capable of handling most apps.

The tablet also has a big, great screen and solid battery life – which is exactly the recipe OnePlus used to get its claws into the smartphone market.

The battery lasts a whole month on standby, OnePlus says – I have no reason to doubt this, as it barely drained when I left the tablet untouched. And it charges to 80 percent in an hour.

The standby mode is much better than the competition – iPad Pro only lasts a few days – and the fast charging outperforms any tablet I’ve tested before.

No problem, the machine is a great value in terms of hardware. The 144Hz LCD screen is sharp and with 500 nits bright enough to use (just) outside.

The battery life is pretty sensational too, almost to the point where you don’t have to think about it anymore – and if you do come up short it comes with a chunky 67W charger that can charge it to 80 per cent in under an hour to recover.

It has a distinctly ‘tall’ screen (it’s the very first tablet with a 7:5 aspect ratio), which isn’t an earth-shattering innovation, but makes it easier to read or work on documents on the screen.

Buying tablets is often a rather confusing experience due to the plethora of ‘Pro’, ‘Max’ and ‘Ultra’ models of Apple and Samsung tablets – with the OnePlus Pad, what you see is what you get.

There’s one spec, with one color, green (meaning “life and new change,” OnePlus informs me).

One of the eternal truths of electronics is that when you pay a low price, things are missing.

There’s no fingerprint scanner here, just a face scanner (so you’re not using banking apps on the Pad), and there’s no cellular connection, just Wi-Fi.

The screen is also LCD, not OLED – but these are all pretty insignificant details, and the screen is beautiful for watching videos and playing games.

But can you work on it for a day? Android tablets used to be an absolute nightmare if you had to use one for work, with many apps unpredictably turning into on-screen phone apps.

Occasionally that flickers here (the Amazon Prime app suddenly turned into a phone-sized floating window when I tried to close it), but it’s mostly a very laptop-like experience – helped immensely by the Fusion Folio case, which offers a keyboard with pleasant clicky keys that are very easy to type.

The front and rear cameras are centrally placed (Photo: Rob Waugh)

The gadget is pleasantly slim at 6.54mm (Photo: Rob Waugh)

Google pulled up its socks on tablets with the release of Android 13, with the operating system optimized to work on large screens, and Google’s and Microsoft’s apps all work really well horizontally.

The camera is centrally positioned, with face tracking technology (useful for Zoom and Teams calls).

Both the rear and front cameras are OK, rather than sensational (but really, who wants to take pictures on a tablet?)

As a laptop replacement, it pretty much works (in fact, I’m typing this on the OnePlus Pad right now without too much desire to be back on my ‘real’ computer).

OnePlus has added a split-screen mode for an even more ‘laptop-like’ experience, and the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 (a highly advanced chip) ensures that you never feel like the device can pour steam out the sides when you’re at work .

With the odd hiccup where apps refuse to go into horizontal mode, this isn’t as polished a performer as Apple’s iPad Pro.

But it offers an incredible level of performance for the price, and it’s a great looking machine too, just 6.54mm thick and with a pleasing metal unibody design (although after a while I notice a bit of wear and tear around the magnetic connectors for the keyboard). few days).

For highly mobile workers (or just to keep kids still in the backseat of the car for very long periods of time) it’s a great product.

It may not dethrone Apple’s iPad, but it certainly marks the arrival of a powerful new competitor to Apple’s all-conquering slates – and one well worth considering for anyone looking for a less expensive, sleek machine.

Rob’s final score: Four out of five.