OnePlus Pad 2 review

The OnePlus Pad 2 is designed similar to the first Pad with a unibody metal frame finished with rounded corners and edges. The body has a smooth textured finish and the tab is slim at 6.49mm. It’s available in a single Nimbus Grey colour.

Unlike last year’s folio design, the Pad 2’s keyboard comes in two parts that are finished in grey faux leather jackets. The back cover unit attaches to the top of the rear side with the bottom half bendable to form a kickstand. The keyboard unit snaps onto the bottom side. This means that you can watch movies without the keyboard in place, saving some space on the desk or even prop it up on a ledge if you can’t find a desk. The large keyboard with a proper trackpad offers enough spacing and relief while typing. Another good thing is that since the keyboard is slightly far from the screen, any stray finger won’t change the cursor position while typing; a problem I encounter frequently while using my Xiaomi Pad 6 keyboard.

On the flip side, since both units are separate, attaching the large keyboard consumes much desk real estate, even more than a standard 15-inch laptop. So you will find it difficult to work with this on a flight, especially a cramped economy class tray table.

Another problem is that both the keyboard and back cover have to be positioned accurately or they can snap onto neighbouring magnetic points. OnePlus designers don’t seem to have taken account of the increased weight of the tablet and both the units detach easily if you accidentally pull on the keyboard or kickstand. The keyboard unit has a flexible skin leading to the mounting points, which prevents a tight closure.

As mentioned before, the OnePlus Pad 2 uses a large 12.1-inch 3K (3000 x 2120 pixels) display with the same 7:5 aspect ratio that OnePlus has adopted for all of their tablets. The display is amply bright with up to 900 nits of brightness (600 nits typical) and crisp with 303 PPI pixel density. Colours reproduction is excellent for all practical purposes and you can customise the colours with Natural, Pro and Vivid options depending on what you are doing. Pro mode offers D65 (Daylight at 6500K), which is the preferred screen colour setting for any colour-critical application like photo editing. You also get a peak refresh rate of 144 Hz, which makes things smooth and responsive.

The Pad 2 houses a 6-speaker Omnibearing sound system, and the audio is truly immersive by the device standards. Output is loud and clear for all your music and movies.

OnePlus has opted for a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor in the Pad 2. We received the 12GB RAM variant and the tablet didn’t have any problems in handling our multitasking efforts with multiple windows. The kickstand makes it easy to change the display angle. 

OxygenOS 14.1 makes life easy with a lot of customisations. The tablet offers fast interconnectivity with other OnePlus devices. So if you are already in the OnePlus ecosystem, it will offer one-touch file transfer via NFC, cellular data sharing between the devices connected via the same OnePlus account, content sync, app relay and remote file access for seamless work continuity. Multitasking gets a boost with Open Canvas making its way to the Pad 2. Now you can open up to three apps simultaneously in either a three-way split or two vertical and one in a horizontal band. Of course, there is the floating window option as well.

A major component in assessing a tablet’s performance is video streaming. Initially, the OnePlus Pad 2 had a lot of trouble with streaming platforms and we were expecting OnePlus to fix these via firmware updates. But since then things have moved quite fast, and now the pad is fully equipped to handle all your OTT platforms. And the large display combined with the 6-speaker audio system makes it a great streaming device.

The keyboard doesn’t offer the best tactile response, but it is still a pleasure to use with large keys and ample spacing providing much-needed relief while typing. The large keypad is a welcome addition, but its utility is limited without a scrolling feature and most of the time, you end up using the touch display instead of the trackpad. The Stylo 2 worked flawlessly.

The OnePlus Pad 2 houses the same 9510 mAh battery as that of its predecessor, and OnePlus bundles a 67W SuperVooc charger, which can deliver a full charge in 81 minutes.

The OnePlus Pad 2 bears the burden of expectations and it bundles some very useful features that makes it one of the best Android tablets in the market with its large screen and productivity features. With OnePlus fixing the initial glitches with video platforms, it’s a truly incredible tablet with a lot of productivity and multitasking options, providing some deep customisations depending on how you want to use it. However, the keyboard design is something you will either love to the core or absolutely hate depending on your use case, especially how much desk space you can afford to spare for a tablet. 

We would still consider it one star away from being perfect, simply owing to the unimpressive design and features of the optional, but necessary keyboard and kickstand.