OnePlus Pad 2

Verdict

The OnePlus Pad 2 is a strong successor to the OnePlus Pad, but it’s more than that. With a top-end processor, premium pixel-packed screen, fast charging and a sleek design without the associated high price tag, this is one of the best Android tablets you’ll find in 2024.

Introduction

The OnePlus Pad 2 is official, and it looks like it could be one of the most capable Android tablets on the market.

The OnePlus Pad 2 sports the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, boasts a 12.1-inch 144Hz display with a 3K resolution and unique software you won’t find on any other tablet, all for the relatively budget-friendly price of £499.

While I’m not yet ready to deliver my final thoughts, I’ve had a chance to use the OnePlus Pad 2 for a few hours ahead of the launch, and here’s what I think so far. 

Design and screen

• Similar design to the OnePlus Pad with a bigger screen
• 12.1-inch 3K 144Hz IPS LCD display
• New keyboard and stylus accessories

The OnePlus Pad 2 isn’t a complete rethinking of the original OnePlus Pad design – though considering the first-gen tablet was a pretty thin, sleek bit of kit, I’m not really too mad about that.

That means you’re getting a very similar tablet, sporting an all-metal unibody design that pairs well with the OnePlus Nord 4 that launched at the same time. The aluminium frame has been sandblasted and anodised to deliver a velvety smooth touch, while also being more resilient to scratches – according to OnePlus, anyway.

It’s also just as delightfully thin and light as its first-gen counterpart, measuring in at 6.49mm thick and 584g. That is 30g more than the original Pad, but considering the screen size has grown from 11.6 inches to 12.1 inches, I don’t think that’s a bad trade-off at all. 

This all translates to a delightfully thin tablet that’s nice to hold, complete with those curved edges and rounded corners to make it sit nicely in the palm of your hand, though I am lamenting the OnePlus green finish that most OnePlus products come in – the Pad 2 is only available in Nimbus Gray. 

Let’s talk a bit more about that display because it’s a bit of a beast, blowing any equivalent iPad out of the water. The 12.1-inch display boasts a 3K resolution and a super smooth 144Hz refresh rate that can switch between 30-, 48-, 50-, 60-, 90-, 120- and 144Hz automatically depending on what you’re doing on the tablet in a bid to save battery life – though you can manually select the high refresh rate at the expense of battery life. 

It’s also a pretty unusual aspect ratio, measuring in at 7:5. While this means you might have bigger black bars atop and below the screen when binging Netflix, it also makes the OnePlus Pad 2 particularly well suited to split-screen use. It also allows for more screen real estate in its landscape mode when paired with the new OnePlus Pad Smart Keyboard.

Yep, that’s right, the OnePlus Pad 2 comes with an ecosystem of accessories including a folio keyboard case that doubles up as a kickstand with a magnetically detachable keyboard, as well as an updated OnePlus Stylo 2. These don’t come in the box, rather an additional extra, but it does greatly expand what you can do with the tablet.

The Smart Keyboard offers a nice full keyboard experience with an impressively large trackpad that essentially turns the OnePlus Pad into a laptop alternative, and though I’ve not delved too far into what the accessories can do, I have noticed that small complaints about the first-gen kit – like the on-screen keyboard not disappearing when using the physical keyboard – have finally been ironed out. 

It also features an NFC chip in the keyboard for quick connection to the tablet, making it easier to share files and even access mobile apps on the tablet screen, though this functionality is limited to OnePlus and Oppo smartphones. 

Features and spec

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 power
• New tablet-focused software features
• 9510mAh battery with 67W fast charging

One of the headline features of the OnePlus Pad 2 is the processor found within – the flagship-level Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That should make the OnePlus Pad 2 the fastest, most powerful Android tablet around, even compared to high-end options like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 and its custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset – though that’s something I’ll confirm once I put the tablet through a rigorous set of benchmark tests.

From what I’ve seen so far, however, the OnePlus Pad 2 can handle just about anything that’s thrown its way. 

I booted up Genshin Impact for a quick game and managed to select some pretty high-end graphics options without a noticeable slow-down, even when powering that pixel-packed 3K display. It’s just as fast and responsive in general use too, opening and switching between apps instantly with not a hint of stutter or lag anywhere.

I mean, that’s to be expected from one of the most powerful chipsets on the market, but it’s good to see it in action. That’s coupled with a healthy 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage as standard, which should be more than enough for the vast majority of users. 

Continuing OnePlus’ journey into the world of AI, the OnePlus Pad 2 will sport a bunch of AI features – though most aren’t available at launch, instead coming via OTA updates in the coming months. 

Magic Eraser 2.0, which removes subjects from photos, along with an AI-powered recording summary feature and document scan tech will be available sometime later this month, while the more interesting AI features – like AI Speak, which reads out text for you, AI Summary that’ll summarise long chunks of text and AI Writer, that can rewrite text for you – will be out sometime in September. 

It’s not exactly the most feature-packed approach to AI we’ve seen, especially compared to the likes of the Pixel Tablet and Galaxy Tab S9 range that has recently seen the addition of Galaxy AI, but it’s a step in the right direction at least.

As well as a suite of AI tools, OnePlus is bringing its Open Canvas multitasking feature from the OnePlus Open to the Pad 2. It was hands-down one of my favourite features of the OnePlus Open when I reviewed it last year, allowing you to multi-task while still using full-screen apps. 

Instead, you just tap or swipe from the edges of the display to switch between full-screen apps, and these app groupings can be saved and added to the Home screen for later use – ideal if, say, you find yourself frequently using Slack, Google Chrome and Google Docs as I do for working on the go. 

What’s currently unclear, however, is just how long the OnePlus Pad 2 will be supported. OnePlus made a big celebration of the fact that the Nord 2 will get four OS upgrades and six years of security updates, and I’m hoping for similar here, but we’ll have to wait and see for now. 

When it comes to camera tech, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of change, sporting the same centrally-positioned 8MP camera and 13MP rear-facing camera as the original OnePlus Pad. That’s to say that, going by our original OnePlus Pad review, the cameras are fine for quick snaps and video calls, but anything noteworthy that you want to capture should probably be done via your smartphone. 

The 9510mAh battery found within the Pad 2 is about what you’d expect from a 12-inch tablet, and I’d expect it to last a few days with sporadic use when combined with the battery efficiency of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, though that’s something I’ll have to test for the full review. 

OnePlus claims that its standby time is pretty decent too, up to 43 days, and it supports 67W fast charging too – though a charger doesn’t actually come in the box so you’ll have to source that separately. 

That’s not a problem if you’re a OnePlus phone user, which the tablet is obviously targeted at first and foremost, but it’s an annoyance if you want to dabble with a OnePlus product for the first time. 

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The OnePlus Pad 2 is not just a big improvement over the original OnePlus Pad, but its combination of high-end specs and a mid-range price tag makes it one of the most tempting options around in 2024 for Android users.

Introduction

OnePlus has continued its foray into the world of Android tablets with the OnePlus Pad 2, and it could be one of the best options available for Android users in 2024.

While the OnePlus Pad was already a strong bit of kit with a Dimensity 9000 chipset, a range of accessories and a gorgeously premium build despite its £449 price tag, the OnePlus Pad 2 blows it out of the water.

Not only does it sport the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 that allows the OnePlus Pad 2 to outpace much of the tablet competition, but a bigger, higher res screen, second-gen accessories, faster charging and software enhancements like Open Canvas multitasking software really polish the overall tablet experience. 

The question is, then, should the £499 OnePlus Pad 2 be your next tablet purchase?

Design and accessories

• Similar design to the OnePlus Pad with a bigger screen
• Premium build with nice sandblasted finish
• New keyboard and stylus accessories

The OnePlus Pad 2 isn’t a complete rethinking of the original OnePlus Pad design – though considering the first-gen tablet was a pretty thin, sleek bit of kit, I’m not really too mad about that.

That means you’re getting a very similar tablet, sporting an all-metal unibody design that pairs well with the OnePlus Nord 4 that launched at the same time. The aluminium frame has been sandblasted and anodised to deliver a velvety smooth touch, while also being more resilient to scratches – according to OnePlus, anyway.

It’s also just as delightfully thin and light as its first-gen counterpart, measuring in at 6.49mm thick and 584g. That is 30g more than the original Pad, but considering the screen size has grown from 11.6 inches to 12.1 inches, I don’t think that’s a bad trade-off at all. 

This all translates to a delightfully thin tablet that’s nice to hold, complete with those curved edges and rounded corners to make it sit nicely in the palm of your hand, though I am lamenting the OnePlus green finish that most OnePlus products come in – the Pad 2 is only available in Nimbus Gray. 

The OnePlus Pad 2 comes with an ecosystem of accessories including a folio keyboard case that doubles up as a kickstand with a magnetically detachable keyboard, as well as an updated OnePlus Stylo 2. These don’t come in the box, rather an additional extra, but it does greatly expand what you can do with the tablet.

The Smart Keyboard offers a full keyboard experience with an impressively large trackpad that essentially turns the OnePlus Pad into a laptop alternative. It’s a full-sized QWERTY keyboard with a nice amount of travel that delivers a satisfying typing experience – so much so that large chunks of this review have been written on the OnePlus Pad 2 using the keyboard case. 

OnePlus has also fixed small issues I encountered with the original OnePlus Pad keyboard combo, like the on-screen keyboard not disappearing when using the physical keyboard. It’s a much more polished experience this time around, complete with new touches like a dedicated row of function buttons to further streamline your productivity. 

I also love that the keyboard is detachable, leaving you with a tablet/kickstand combo and a way to control the tablet from a little farther away. That means you can, say, place the tablet on a bedside table with Netflix playing while controlling it from the keyboard’s trackpad just a few feet away. 

The keyboard also features an NFC chip in the bottom-right corner to quickly connect your smartphone to the tablet, making it easier to share an internet connection (when Wi-Fi is unavailable), photos and other files, as well as the ability to access smartphone apps on the tablet screen, though this functionality is, rather unsurprisingly, limited to OnePlus and Oppo smartphones.

The second-gen stylus also packs a few surprises, including a built-in system that delivers haptic feedback to better simulate the feeling of writing on paper. What’s more, this subtly changes depending on the type of pen you’re using, with a pencil providing a rougher, scratchier sensation than a ballpoint pen. Plus, like most tablets, it’ll snap onto the side of the Pad 2 for charging and storage when not in use. 

Screen

• 12.1-inch IPS LCD display
• Super-smooth 144Hz refresh rate
• Pixel-packed 3K resolution

Let’s talk a bit more about that display because it’s a bit of a beast, blowing much of the tablet competition – iPad or otherwise – out of the water. 

The 12.1-inch display boasts a 3K (2120 x 3000) resolution that’ll please the most demanding of pixel-peepers, and it’s coupled with a super smooth 144Hz refresh rate that can switch between 30-, 48-, 50-, 60-, 90-, 120- and 144Hz automatically depending on what you’re doing on the tablet in a bid to save battery life – though you can manually select a high refresh rate at the expense of battery life. 

That results in a buttery-smooth experience that makes everything feel that little bit smoother and more responsive. It’s also great for gaming, allowing the screen to display up to 144 frames per second in supported titles.  

The OnePlus Pad 2 also sports a pretty unusual aspect ratio compared to much of the tablet competition, measuring in at 7:5. 

While this means you might have bigger black bars sitting atop and below the screen when bingeing Netflix, it also makes the OnePlus Pad 2 particularly well suited to split-screen use. It also allows for more screen real estate in its landscape mode when paired with the new OnePlus Pad Smart Keyboard, ideal for working on the go.

More generally, the screen is well suited to basically any tablet task. It’s great for watching movies on Netflix and Disney+, with a large canvas that, despite featuring an LCD panel, still delivers vibrant tones and plenty of detail. It was a handy companion during a trip to Milan, serving not only as my evening entertainment in my hotel room but a great screen for bingeing Prime Video’s The Boys on the flight home. 

It’s also plenty bright with a 900nit peak brightness, making it not only easy to use in bright environments – one of the big complaints I had with the budget-focused OnePlus Pad Go earlier this year – but also means that HDR content looks great, offering support for HDR10+. 

Plus, with a whopping six speakers built into the tablet, it’s solid at delivering a wide soundscape with plenty of volume. It, of course, doesn’t handle bass as well as a dedicated speaker would, but it’s been more than good enough for casual music playback and watching movies without the need to reach for my headphones. 

If you do want to use your own pair of cans, however, you can look forward to both Wireless Hi-Res Audio and LHDC codec support via Bluetooth 5.4. 

Features and specs

• Flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 power
• Falls behind Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 competition in benchmarks
• 256GB of storage as standard

One of the headline features of the OnePlus Pad 2 is the processor found within: the flagship-level Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. That’s a pretty impressive offering considering the tablet’s £499 price point, as tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 cost quite a bit more with similarly high-end chipsets. 

The inclusion of the top-end chipset makes the OnePlus Pad 2 a pretty capable Android tablet in both the CPU and GPU departments – though it still can’t quite compete with some more recent iPads, especially those running on Apple’s desktop-level M chips.

That’s pretty much borne out in benchmark testing, with the OnePlus Pad 2 delivering impressive results across the board, though interestingly, it’s beaten by the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 and its older, custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chipset in the CPU department. This could be down to the fact that the OnePlus Pad 2 uses slower UFS 3.1 storage compared to the 4.0 from the Galaxy Tab, but it’s hard to say for sure. 

That’s only data based on synthetic benchmark tests however, and in real-world use I’ve found that the OnePlus Pad 2 can handle just about anything that’s thrown its way. 

I’ve booted up hugely demanding high-end 3D games like Genshin Impact with some pretty high-end graphics options and still managed to hit relatively high frame rates, even when powering that pixel-packed 3K display. It can get warm after extended gaming sessions, but not to the point where I noticed a knock-on effect on game performance.

It’s just as fast and responsive in general use too, opening and switching between apps instantly with not a hint of stutter or lag anywhere. I mean, that’s to be expected from one of the most powerful chipsets on the market, but it’s good to see it in action.

That’s coupled with a healthy 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage as standard, which should be more than enough for the vast majority of users, though there’s no microSD card slot if you run out of space later down the line. 

Software and AI

• Handful of AI features available, more coming soon
• Open Canvas multitasking remains the best around
• OxygenOS 14.1 based on Android 14

Continuing OnePlus’ journey into the world of AI, the OnePlus Pad 2 sports a bunch of AI features – though most aren’t available at launch, instead coming via OTA updates in the coming months. 

Magic Eraser 2.0, which removes subjects from photos, along with an AI-powered recording summary feature and document scan tech are available now, while the more interesting AI features like AI Speak, which reads out text for you, AI Summary that’ll summarise long chunks of text and AI Writer, that can rewrite text for you – will be out sometime in September. 

It’s not exactly the most feature-packed approach to AI we’ve seen, especially compared to the likes of the Pixel Tablet and Galaxy Tab S9 range, the latter of which has recently seen the addition of Galaxy AI, but it’s a step in the right direction.

As well as a suite of AI tools, OnePlus is bringing its Open Canvas multitasking feature from the OnePlus Open to the Pad 2 as part of the OxygenOS 14.1 update. It was hands-down one of my favourite features of the OnePlus Open when I reviewed it last year, allowing you to multitask while still using full-screen apps, and it’s just as helpful on a tablet. 

That means you could run three apps full-screen on the OnePlus Pad 2, tapping or swiping the edges to switch between apps, offering the traditional full-screen experience while still being able to quickly switch between apps. The layout of the apps is also customisable, and you can save them as a group for quick access later on. It’s easily one of the best approaches to multitasking that I’ve seen. 

When it comes to long-term support, OnePlus offers a middle-of-the-road combination of three OS upgrades and four years of security patches. That’s a pretty good promise on the tablet front, but considering the OnePlus Nord 4 (which launched at the same time) gets six OS upgrades, it does feel like the OnePlus Pad 2 has lost out here.

Cameras

• 13MP rear-facing camera
• 8MP selfie camera
• Fine for basic snaps and video calls, but not much else

When it comes to camera tech, there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of change, sporting the same centrally-positioned 8MP camera and 13MP rear-facing camera as the original OnePlus Pad – but considering tablet cameras are used for video calls and not much else, that’s not a massive disappointment. 

In general, the cameras perform about as well as you’d expect from tablet cameras, which is to say that they’re fine for quick snaps and video calls, especially with the selfie camera’s horizontal orientation, but any serious photography should be left to your smartphone or a dedicated camera. 

Battery Life

• 9510mAh battery
• Good battery life with long standby times
• Rapid 67W charging, but no charger in the box

The 9510mAh battery found within the Pad 2 is about what you’d expect from a 12-inch tablet,  and that means that performance is pretty solid – especially when combined with the power efficiency of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

That meant that the Pad 2 consistently delivered solid battery life, able to get me through a day’s use without much worry, and sporadic use lengthened life by a few days. Whenever I reached for the Pad, even if I hadn’t used it for a few days, it still had plenty of power – it makes sense, considering OnePlus claims it can last up to 43 days on standby mode.

For context, 30 minutes of Zombie Gunner Survival used just 1% of battery. That’s pretty outstanding. 

What’s more, it boasts some of the fastest charging tech you’ll find on a tablet right now, sporting 67W SuperVooc charging – although a charger doesn’t actually come in the box so you’ll have to source one separately. 

That’s not a problem if you’re a OnePlus phone user, which the tablet is obviously targeted at first and foremost, but it’s an annoyance if you want to dabble with a OnePlus product for the first time. 

Still, it is very much worth sourcing a supported charger if you don’t have one to hand because it delivers a pretty rapid charging experience. 

The tablet regained 50% charge in just 22 minutes, with a full charge in 55 minutes. That’s not only faster than the original OnePlus Pad that was already pretty speedy, but it’s the fastest charging from a tablet we’ve seen at Trusted Reviews in the past few years. 

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