This is going to be a really controversial video. See, I’ve tried the Xiaomi Pad 7, Lenovo tablet, and this recently launched OnePlus Pad 3. And I, as an Android fanboy, I love Android, by the way. But Google needs to fix Android tablets big time. In fact, Google is the reason Android tablets are hard to recommend. See, it will all make sense. I and Shi swapped our laptops to use the OnePlus pad as our daily driver. And this might launch around 50,000. So the question that has to be asked is is this the best Android tablet to buy right now? And with this cover and this keyboard, can it replace your laptop? Like stick around till the end. We’ve got something important to share about the pad 3 and about Android tablets in general. Pratik Techiser, let’s all tap go. Let’s tabbing. So inside the box, you get all the basics that you need. And I and Shi use the OnePlus pad 3 completely from working on it throughout the day to watching movies and typing scripts. in fact even edit some of the thumbnails. Now the first thing that you I would note here is the design. The entire body here is made up of metal and it comes in two color options. There’s the gray color and this one that we have is the blue color. The blue color here looks pretty minimal and elegant at the same time. And you see the camera array is very similar to the OnePlus 13S. Now just like iPhone and Samsung, OnePlus is also trying to make all the devices look identical from the back. Even the upcoming Hotfire Notch has this same camera island and the same look and then you get the OnePlus logo at the center.
Now, one thing to note here is the back here is a bit of a fingerprint magnet. Most of the time I ended up grabbing a cloth and cleaning it all the time. The side frames here are also metallic. The left side is clean. There are no buttons. The bottom side here has a type-C port. On the right side, there are the volume buttons. And at the top, you get the power button. Now, when you hold the pad in your hands, it doesn’t feel that heavy initially, although it does weigh like 675 to 680 g. about the weight of 3 plus iPhones. Now, OnePlus has not updated the pen this year. It uses the same OnePlus stylo. But a new thing this year is this smart keyboard. It’s updated from last year and if you see on the top, you will find some dedicated functional keys to increase brightness, decrease brightness, sound, take a screenshot, etc. The trackpad is also slightly bigger. Now, in my daily usage of writing scripts, typing experience was quite good. Like you get a very similar key layout if you compare it with a 13 to 14in laptop keyboard.
Even the keys have a minimum travel here and have a soft feel with minimal noise. Like listen to this. So typing on this was a really good experience. And it has some gestures baked in. See, if you pinch it with four fingers, the app goes to a floating window. If you swipe down with three fingers, it takes a screenshot. And if you swipe down with two fingers in the middle of the trackpad, you can quickly open apps in a split screen. And also, you can use the keyboard in detached mode. So you can keep the display far away and still be typing from over here. It works via Bluetooth. Now, the stylus and smart keyboard, you need to buy them separately. Like the keyboard costs about 8,499 and the pen costs an extra 5,499. If you compare it with the competition, it’s about the same price as the Xiaomi Pad 7 keyboard and pen. Now, the moment you turn the tab to the front, it has this huge 13.2 in display, which is bigger than last year’s OnePlus Pad 2. In my usage, I watched quite a lot of movies on Netflix, Prime Video, and so on. The colors and sharpness are really good.
Even the display here gets pretty bright. Now, since this is an LCD display, if you look at the display from the sides, there is not much color shift. But here’s an interesting thing. As per OnePlus website, the tablet supports HDR 10 plus and Dolby Vision. So, you can play HDR videos on YouTube. That’s fine. But if you go to Netflix, there’s no HDR or even Dolby Vision support. They can push the HDR update or fix this bug. But I feel companies should start mentioning whether Dolby Vision is supported in third party apps or not. Now, coming back to the tab, what makes the movie watching experience awesome here is the speakers. There are eight speakers on this like max I have seen on any tablet. You get four woofers and four tweeters. And let’s listen to the audio.
They are pretty loud. Like I can feel the bass in the song. Now the display here supports the OnePlus Stylo 2. This is last year’s pen. like it has the same scribbling sound along with haptic feedback similar to when you’re writing something with a pencil or pen on paper and the palm rejection here is quite good. The stylus here charges wirelessly and it attaches to the right side of the tab. Now coming to one of the most interesting parts of the OnePlus pad 3 performance. Now the pad 3 is the only tablet in India to have the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite processor. So we ran the N22 benchmark which gives you an overall score by measuring the CPU GPU RAM at full power. So it scores somewhere around 27.4 4 lakh in balance mode. If you put it on performance mode,
it scores somewhere around 28 lakh which is like the highest 8 elite can score. And my daily usage, I frequently open chats for writing scripts on docs along with slack and YouTube in split screen. It can handle this kind of multitasking very easily. The other day I was surprised that I was downloading the game data of BGMI and wooding waves side by side and also I had opened Chrome for writing scripts along with 105 other tabs open. It handled this multitasking pretty easily.
Now well optimized games like DJI and COD you can play at 120 fps and obviously the performance is good but these days I’ve started playing heavier games like boothering waves and it can handle that at 60 fps in ultra high graphics like look the graphics look so rich and good on this bigger display and just to show you power of this tablet like I know this is not at all practical but I have opened three games in split screen and I can switch between them and play at the same time it’s just seamless. Now so far you would think the OnePlus pad is fine. What’s the problem? Like why is the title Google is not letting tablets win? Well, here’s the problem. When you start seeing this tablet as a productivity tool or let’s just say as a secondary laptop, the pad 3 comes with Oxygen OS 15 based on Android 15. And this is not at all good for productivity. Like there are multiple reasons. The first reason is software optimization. See, Google still doesn’t have a tablet version for Android. The Android that is running on This tablet is just the scaled out version of the same Android that runs on your smartphone. Like see if there’s a tab open in Google Chrome and if I hysterically press the escape key the tab just closes and it’s not just with tabs.
Suppose if you have opened an app like Netflix if you press escape the app just closes. There is no minimize or window management and like this by mistake multiple times I have pressed the escape key and the app or a chrome tab closed. Frustrating next apps like Slack or Google Docs inside Google Chrome if you press shift plus enter it inserts a new line. But if you do the same thing in the chat GBT web app or the WhatsApp app, it just sends the message. The next one is even more frustrating. See, I’ve opened Google Docs in Google Chrome and suppose I want to switch to my other Gmail ID. Google Drive gives a pop-up and when I select the account, Google Drive opens. So if I have to switch my Gmail ID inside Google Chrome, I have to manually edit the URL, type 2 3 here and then
switch Google accounts. This in no way behaves like Windows or a secondary laptop. And it’s not just this tablet. This entire problem exists. We have used Xiaomi pad, OnePlus pad 2 and now the OnePlus pad 3 all have the same problem. Now the second reason is the lack of apps to do heavy or creative tasks. For example, this is a very popular app lumaf fusion for video editing. It was launched for iPad on the app store in 2016. It came to the Android app store finally in 2022 and still if you see the Android app is on version two.
The iPad app is way ahead on version 5. Next is Dainci Resolve. It’s been there for Windows, Mac OS and now for iPad OS for a while. It is optimized to use the full power of the M series chip and you can do a decent to intermediate level of video editing on the iPad and guess what Davinci Resolve is not on Android. So if you seen the flagship processors from Android like Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 or this year’s Snapdragon 8 Elite 8 or 9400 they are on par with M series chip to do
heavy tasks like video editing and all of that. But where is the app? Then there’s Sharp 3D CAD which is available for iPad, Mac and Windows but missing on Android. And I could go on and on about this app support. If you leave all of this aside, let’s say some of you are doing or want to get into digital illustration. Which tab would you get? The most likely answer would be an iPad. Why? See, apps like Procreate don’t exist for Android tablet or apps like Concept are designed and optimized better for an iPad or better for the
Apple Pencil. They have native Apple Pencil support. By the way, this is not just my personal opinion. There’s a whole Reddit thread where people are saying the same thing. The third issue here is multitasking. Android has had multitasking for ages now. You can enter into a split screen and open three apps. But is it intuitive to use the apps in this way or with a keyboard? Not exactly.
So when you’re working on a setup with a keyboard and mouse, your brain is wired to use it like you multitask on a laptop. And I’m not complaining because I’m comparing this tablet to a proper Windows laptop. I’m comparing it to the iPad. It’s a competition. Apple understood the need for a separate OS for the tablet. They launched the iPad OS in 2018, 7 years ago, and they’re adding better features every single year. They just introduced window mode, so you can multitask faster, just like your laptop. And don’t get me wrong, the Oxygen OS 15 here is good. I had almost a bug-free experience. The problem is Android, and even the hardware on this tablet is topnotch. It comes with a 12,140 mAh battery. In my usage of the Pad 3 for work and for entertainment, like watching movies, videos, and even scrolling reels, it easily lasted me a day with 20 to 30% battery left on a single charge. That’s on a very heavy workload where the screen is on for 6 to 7 hours. And when it runs out of battery, you can charge it at 100% in just 1 hour 30 minutes. You get 80 watt super fast charging. The Pad 3 here has a 13 MP main camera and an 8 MP front camera. The front camera here is 1080p and you can use it for video calls and WhatsApp calls. As you can see the video quality and mic quality.
See the problem with the OnePlus 3 is not OnePlus, it’s Google. If the Android OS is 4×10, Xiaomi and OnePlus can optimize and improve it and only make it 5x 10 or 6×10. They cannot make it compete with the iPad. Like we have fairly understood the problem. So what’s the solution? Google should make a separate OS for tablets. iPad is winning because they treat iPads differently from an iPhone. They give it new features every single year. The recent iPad OS update, no cap, is fire. And they haven’t achieved this iPad OS in 1 year or two. They have done it for over 7 to 8 years and made it perfect. Google should also have a separate OS for tabs. And guess what? They don’t even need to make it from scratch. They have an OS lying silently in their arsenal is the Chrome OS. Chrome OS can run so smoothly even at lowest specs. It can also run Android apps and run Google Chrome beautifully. So if Google finds the Chrome OS and brings in some creative apps that work flawlessly on the flagship chips, Android tablets would definitely give iPads a hard time because see the hardware is there, brands are there, even the sale numbers are right there. Now coming to the OnePlus 3, overall in my experience it’s a fantastic tablet. But if you want a tab mostly for media consumption or playing games, why would you spend so much money? The Xiaomi Pad 7 is the value for money tablet you should go with. Pretty good for media consumption.
Now, if the Pad 3 goes on sale and it is available at a discount around 40,000, then it’s a good deal. But if you have to do anything close to productivity or serious work, get an iPad. Spend the money. Period. Let us know what your thoughts are on this one. Do you agree with our take or do you have a different one? We’ll love to read them. The comment section is all yours. On that note, this place is signing off. See? Yeah. Pretty soon.
