OnePlus Pad 3 Tablet Review: Feature-Packed and Powerful

The OnePlus Pad 3 costs way less than the iPad Pro, but it feels like a premium tablet, and its performance truly surprised me. It has a few limitations for content creators, but those looking for something comparable to an iPad Pro that’s under $1k will be more than pleased with the OnePlus Pad 3.

OnePlus

Brand

OnePlus

Storage

256GB (UFS 4.0)

CPU

Qualcomm Oryon CPU (Snapdragon 8 Elite) @ up to 4.32GHz

The OnePlus Pad 3 boasts a large 13.2-inch 144Hz LCD display and is powered by the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. It aims to be a powerful and versatile device for both productivity and entertainment. It features a sleek design, long battery life, and support for accessories like a Smart Keyboard and Stylo.

Pros & Cons

• Slim, lightweight, and comfortable to hold
• Brilliant, crisp 3.4K display
• Long-lasting battery life and fast charging
• Speedy, efficient processing

• No IP rating
• Speakers are just so-so
• Only 3 years of OS updates

Price and Availability

The OnePlus Pad 3 is available now from retailers like Amazon and OnePlus. It comes in one color (Storm Blue) and normally sells for $699, but I’ve seen the price as low as $649.99. The tablet’s accessories are an additional cost (more information on each of those later).

A Slim and Sturdy Premium Design

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The OnePlus Pad 3 looks and feels like a premium tablet, and quite frankly, it is. Despite its lower cost compared to options like the iPad Pro, the OnePlus Pad 3 offers a competitive build and design. It’s incredibly thin—just 0.23in—but still feels sturdy in your hands, thanks to its sleek aluminum chassis. The overall design is sleek, though it doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

Despite the hefty, durable feel of its aluminum body, the OnePlus Pad 3 weighs a mere 1.48 pounds. I quite liked the weight, as the tablet didn’t feel too flimsy, and it was also lightweight enough for me to hold comfortably for extended periods or carry around in a tote bag. The body has rounded edges, which also make it more ergonomic for lengthy use.

The 13.2-inch display stretches almost edge-to-edge, so everything on this tablet feels incredibly immersive. Seamlessly integrated into the top of the display (when the tablet is in landscape mode) is the front-facing camera.

The back body houses the rear camera, which significantly protrudes from the body but doesn’t get in the way when holding it. In the middle, there’s a metallic OnePlus logo, and below that, at the bottom, are magnetic connectors for the optional OnePlus Pad 3 Smart Keyboard.

Using the tablet in portrait mode, the speakers are at the top center, and the power button is on the top-right. On the right side are volume buttons with an integrated microphone below them. At the middle-right side is the smart pen charging area, while the centralized speakers flank the USB-C port and a microphone at the bottom.

The worst thing about this tablet’s design is the lack of an IP rating. Because it has no IP rating, I wouldn’t advise using it poolside or streaming any shows in the bath with it.

The Optional Accessories

If you’re planning to use the OnePlus Pad 3 as a laptop substitute, you’ll likely want to purchase the optional accessories. The accessories make the OnePlus Pad 3 a complete work setup, but they’re going to cost you. If you buy the OnePlus Pad 3 directly from OnePlus, they may have an “optional gift” item to bundle with the tablet. I’ve seen this optional gift include the choice of the OnePlus Stylo 2 or the OnePlus Pad 3 Folio Case.

Paying full price for the folio ($49.99), the Stylo 2 ($99.99), and the OnePlus Pad 3 Smart Keyboard ($199.99) will run you an extra $350. However, if you buy these at checkout with the tablet, you may be able to snag the optional gift at no cost, plus a discount on the other accessories. I’ve seen a discount of up to 30% off on these items. I haven’t seen any bundles available from Amazon, however.

Sadly, I feel that the Smart Keyboard is a bit overpriced. It’s a nice addition to the tablet, and easily attaches via the magnetic connection at the back. The typing experience is somewhat stiff, but comfortable. Rather than feeling flimsy, it feels sturdy. The stiffness of the keys, however, wasn’t great for long typing sessions. It took what felt like a lot more effort to write up emails or draft an article using this keyboard. That said, if you don’t write every day like I do, it might not feel as awkward to you.

The integrated touchpad on the keyboard is smooth and responsive and has a nice, satisfying click. I didn’t have a problem with this input, but I found it a bit painstaking to try to click and drag to highlight a section of text to copy or delete.

The Stylo 2 features a nice, low-latency response and functions great for note-taking, sketching, photo editing, or scrolling. The convert-to-text feature is handy, and the OnePlus Pad 3 does a phenomenal job at recognizing sloppy handwriting and converting that to text with very few errors.

My only gripe is that the setup for the pen isn’t very intuitive. It didn’t automatically pair as promised after magnetically attaching the pen to the charging area of the tablet. Instead, I had to search the settings page for “stylus,” then pull up the Stylus settings page, to get it connected. Nowhere is this mentioned in the manual for the Stylus.

The folio case easily snaps onto the tablet and also lets you prop the tablet for use or viewing at multiple angles. I appreciate that it doesn’t add much bulk, but still offers some protection.

These accessories aren’t strictly necessary to enjoy the Pad 3. Still, together they turn it into a surprisingly capable laptop alternative, and I’d recommend purchasing them if you plan to use the tablet for work or content creation.

Display and Graphics: Crisp and Stunning

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Thanks to its 13.2-inch, 3.4K LCD with an adaptive refresh rate (up to 144Hz), the OnePlus Pad 3 handles media of all types very well. In my time with the tablet, I enjoyed everything from video games to photos to movies. YouTube videos with a 4K resolution looked incredible on this tablet. Videos of YouTubers and podcasters were so detailed that I could see individual pores and blemishes, the shine of someone’s hair, and fine details like veins on eyelids, individual lashes, and face freckles that would have been harder to make out on a lower-resolution display. Nature videos, shows, and movies also looked incredibly detailed. And the refresh rate made streaming and casual gaming extremely smooth, with zero screen tearing or latency issues.

Although this tablet doesn’t have an OLED screen, it has a pleasing color contrast. More shadowy shows like Wednesday were still easy to stream and enjoy, although I would have liked to see a bit more contrast in the black and gray shades. One scene in particular was harder to make out fully due to the gray bricks fading into the background, while the character’s black clothing and hair dominated the scene. Still, overall, the display gave me beautiful graphics and endlessly watchable, viewable images and streams, despite my nitpicking.

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The display handles colors quite well, with up to 98% DCI-P3 and 95% NTSC color gamut coverage. Content creators and artists may prefer the broader color gamut coverage on the iPad Pro, but the OnePlus Pad 3 beats it in terms of refresh rate (iPad Pro’s adaptive refresh rate only hits up to 120Hz). However, the OnePlus option doesn’t have a fully adaptive refresh rate (it switches through a defined set of rates) while Samsung and Apple offerings do. I didn’t notice any issues with the refresh rate, though, even if it isn’t quite as souped up as the iPad Pro’s.

Snappy Processing and Multitasking

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Under the hood, the OnePlus Pad 3 has Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and the Adreno 830 GPU. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is one of the best mobile chipsets currently available and delivers a significant speed and battery life boost. Which means the OnePlus Pad 3 is fast.

Every task I undertook on this tablet was a breeze to execute, whether that was streaming, word processing, browsing, drawing, gaming, or photo editing. The CPU can also handle multitasking (with up to three programs in split screen), without any performance stutter. I used the tablet as my primary work device, and its CPU’s high-performance cores managed to keep everything snappy.

The tablet runs OxygenOS on top of Android 15, so it’s very well-organized, easy to navigate, and functions much like an Android phone. As an aside, OnePlus opted only to include three years of OS updates for this tablet, which might give you pause if you want to use this thing for five years or more.

The Adreno 830 GPU also performed exceptionally well, even when I was playing titles with heavier graphics demands. This GPU is energy-efficient while delivering a 40% boost to graphics rendering. I got a well-balanced performance (and decent graphics) from several games, like Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, Black Desert Mobile, and Crypt Custodian. And while I wouldn’t necessarily recommend playing resource-heavy biggies like Indiana Jones and The Great Circle on this tablet, I was able to eke out some pleasant gameplay using Xbox Cloud Gaming on the OnePlus Pad 3. Someone could also stream from their console to this tablet with Xbox Remote Play or PlayStation Remote Play.

The combination of the CPU and GPU makes the OnePlus Pad 3 about as snappy and speedy as you can get. I was even able to do some light content creation without a hitch. Unfortunately, since Android doesn’t have Adobe apps, some content creators might choose an iPad for this reason alone. Despite the lack of some big-name creative programs available, I was still able to successfully edit photos in other apps, create graphics in Canva, and even experiment with some audio editing.

The Camera, Microphones, and Speakers: Good But Average

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I don’t typically expect a lot from a tablet’s cameras. But the OnePlus Pad 3 makes a decent case for itself if you need to snap a quick shot or hop on a video call. The 13MP rear camera offers fairly detailed shots and up to 4K video recording at 30fps. In good lighting, I got clear, crisp shots with accurate colors. However, the shots I took in low-light environments weren’t great.

This was all pretty standard in terms of what I’ve seen from tablet photography.

The 8MP front-facing camera has a smart placement that mimics the angle of a laptop camera (when used in landscape mode). I found this placement more awkward for taking selfies, but it worked great when I hopped on an unexpected video call with some colleagues and mentors. The video call quality is average—it’s crisp enough to use for Zoom calls, but it isn’t anything to write home about.

Recording videos with the rear camera worked well for capturing the misadventures of my pets and family members.

The point is, neither of these cameras will match your smartphone’s quality. But they do well enough for a tablet and are fine for low-key work meetings, casual calls, and snapshots of your friends and family.

As for the speakers, I don’t have much to say about them except that I was a little let down by the volume at times. The OnePlus Pad 3 has eight speakers total (four woofers and four tweeters). The positioning of the speakers works well for making audio pop, but the overall sound quality is rather boxy and lacks bass. It sounds a little overly compressed, and in some instances, like during my cloud gaming session of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, I could barely hear the dialogue.

On the flip side, some media was surprisingly loud, like the audio in the mobile game Alien Invasion. Although these speakers were so-so, they still did an average job for the most part. I’d suggest putting on headphones if your choice of media is particularly quiet.

The microphones delivered crisp, clear audio in most settings, but they did pick up background noise, so I’d suggest using them in quieter settings. When streaming music on my laptop or recording in a loud environment, it was a bit more difficult to hear my voice (though not impossible).

Impressive, Long-Lasting Battery Life and Fast-Charging

The OnePlus Pad 3 has a battery that surpasses the iPad Pro (and some of the best Android tablets) and offers a similar battery life to the Lenovo Tab Extreme from 2023.

OnePlus claims its 12,410mAh battery can last up to over 17 hours when playing longer videos (though this is likely with the brightness turned way down). In my experience, its battery life was quite impressive. Depending on what tasks I undertook, of course, the battery life varied. For instance, it dropped about 20% after a two-hour cloud gaming session, but didn’t drop nearly as much if I was working, using only a few applications for research and writing.

Most of my regular use, a few hours a day, resulted in about a 20% loss of battery life, which was very good for the variety of tasks I was doing. I didn’t need to plug the tablet in to charge until the end of day four of my testing period.

What I like most about its battery is its fast-charging capability. The OnePlus Pad 3 has 80W Super VOOC charging, so when I plug the tablet in, it boosts its charge rate in the first 10 minutes. The company claims you get an up to 18% boost, but I more regularly saw around 12 to 14%. Using the included Super VOOC charger, the tablet charges to full battery in about an hour and a half.

Should You Buy the OnePlus Pad 3 Tablet?

Cianna Garrison / How-To Geek

Where the OnePlus Pad 3 wins is in many areas, especially for that $700 price tag. A pleasing display, easy-to-navigate OS, speedy processing, excellent battery life, and decent tablet cameras are just some of the key features. Its faults are few (so-so speakers, only 3 years of OS updates, and no IP rating). If those things aren’t a problem for you, this tablet is a great buy that’ll feel value-packed for its price.

As for performance compared to the iPad Pro, the OnePlus Pad 3 holds its own and could truly compete in terms of speed, battery life, and charging. The iPad Pro’s OLED display still wins on contrast, color depth, and HDR performance. And, due to some creative app limitations on Android, professional content creators would probably prefer the iPad Pro. But for the cheaper price, you’d do well to pick up the OnePlus Pad 3 if content creation, the Apple ecosystem, and an OLED display don’t matter to you.

OnePlus

Brand

OnePlus

Storage

256GB (UFS 4.0)

CPU

Qualcomm Oryon CPU (Snapdragon 8 Elite) @ up to 4.32GHz

The OnePlus Pad 3 boasts a large 13.2-inch 144Hz LCD display and is powered by the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. It aims to be a powerful and versatile device for both productivity and entertainment. It features a sleek design, long battery life, and support for accessories like a Smart Keyboard and Stylo.