Tablet Titan reigns over current offerings

Android tablets seemed to be stuck in a rut for a while, till the likes of the OnePlus Pad 3 and the recent Xiaomi Pad 8 came along. Now, the OnePlus Pad 4 enters the scene with a tablet that ambitiously goes further than the single-digit increment would suggest…and that includes on price as well. Is OnePlus’ latest flagship tablet worth the pretty penny? 

At its laptop-matching 13.2-inch screen size with an incredibly thin 5.94mm profile, you’d think the OnePlus Pad 4 would either be ungainly or flimsy, or worse…both. In use, it is neither, with the metal unibody chassis staying firm under pressure while still handy enough (672g) to carry around without weighing you down. The design is clean and elegant, particularly in the matte bronze Dune Glow variant, although I’m fairly certain the weight and good looks will be the first casualty for a tablet that will spend the bulk of its life docked onto the Smart Keyboard accessory. No fingerprint unlock on the power button though, and the volume controls really ought to have been on the shorter edges, leaving the long edge free for the Stylo Pro stylus.

That 13.2-inch, 3.4K resolution display is certainly one of the highlights of the Pad 4, carrying forward the stellar display we first saw on the Pad 3, albeit one that is a tad brighter at 1000 nits. Bear in mind, the LCD screen on the Pad 4 leans hard on the productivity use cases, with its wide color gamut support and 7:5 aspect ratio perfect for photo editing and productivity apps, less so for streaming 16:9 content with high contrast scenes. The eight-speaker setup is impressive, no matter whether the Pad 4 is held in portrait or landscape orientation. 

Gaming, browsing and navigating the interface at 144Hz is a whole lot of fun too, and the experience never feels held back, courtesy the top-tier Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip that powers a large chunk of Android flagships in the past six months. You can pick between 8GB and 12GB of memory, and 256/512GB of storage – the latter comes highly recommended if multitasking is a priority. Open Canvas on OxygenOS 16 remains by far the best way to multitask on a tablet, and the extra bit of memory enables up to five simultaneous windows for folks who like to keep a whole lot running at all times (the base 8GB variant is restricted to two simultaneous windows). Once you pick the Pad 4 up, you’ll be tempted to pick up the Stylo Pro as well (Rs. 5,499) which, with its 16,000 pressure sensitivity levels, haptic feedback shortcuts and interchangeable writing/drawing tips, give you a scribbling and drawing experience at par with the Pencil Pro on the iPad. Dock it into the Smart Keyboard accessory or pair it with a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse and you have a quasi-laptop, with an improved file management system and the ability to use the Pad 4 as a secondary display for compatible phones and PCs. The cameras, both front and rear, are perfectly adequate for the occasional photos and video calls. 

And with OnePlus equipping the Pad 4 with a massive 13,380mAh battery, you get nearly two days of use, or one dawn-to-dusk day if you’re out and about (although that made one miss the lack of a cellular option even more). Charging with the bundled 80W charger takes about 90 minutes.  With all of this coming together in a cohesive fashion in one device, the Pad 4 truly is the one tablet that can do it all and makes the most compelling case for an Android tablet yet, one that can allow you to (almost) leave the laptop behind. It’s pricey, though, and that’s before you start adding in the costs of the accessories. Folks looking for a similar experience at a slightly lower price point would do well to consider last year’s Pad 3 as well. 

Rating: 9/10

Price: ₹59,999/₹64,999.

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