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Review: Oneplus Pad 3 - Large tablet

Compared to its predecessor, the Oneplus Pad 3 has more of everything, and thus some of the advantages are lost.

Elias Nordling
Published

When the Oneplus Pad was released two years ago, it was a tablet with high performance and a good screen at an attractive price. Now we are on the third generation and we have received more of everything. Yes, including the price.

If we start with the screen, it was 11.61 inches in the first Oneplus Pad, 12.1 inches in Pad 2, and now 13.2 inches in Pad 3. The format remains the same, 7:5 ratio, but the screen resolution has increased faster than the size so the pixel density is greater on the Oneplus Pad 3 than on previous tablets.

Larger screens are a general trend for tablets, and since a large screen is precisely what distinguishes them from mobiles, there is a logic to it. But with the larger format also comes increased weight. The Oneplus Pad 3 weighs 675 grams. Not unusually much for a tablet of its size, but still just over 125 grams more than the first Oneplus Pad, and enough to make it tiring in the long run to hold it if you're watching a movie or playing games.

The bezels around the screen are relatively thin, and even though the tablet's metal casing has become more angular, it still has softer edges than Samsung's tablets, making it a bit more comfortable to hold. The tablet is also really thin, under 6 millimetres.

Not Oled but still good

The screen is of the LCD type, so you don't get the perfect blackness that an Oled screen provides, but for an LCD screen, it's really good, without much colour shifting when I tilt it in different directions. A large and good screen is the most important thing for a tablet, so in that respect, you could say the Oneplus Pad 3 is spot on.

LCD screens also tend to give worse battery life, but that's not something we notice here either, as the battery is also larger than before. Over eight hours of screen time at maximum brightness in our screen test is good for a tablet, and the tablet stands out in other contexts as well. Oneplus claims it has a standby time of ten weeks, and at least during the two weeks I was away without the tablet, it managed with less than half of the battery consumed.

The screen has a refresh rate of 144 Hz, but here you notice the screen's limitation, as LCD screens simply can't update as quickly as Oled screens.

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The tablet is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, the same as in this year's top models among mobile phones. This makes it the fastest Android tablet right now, and if you don't plan to play high-performance games on it, it's almost overkill with such a fast chipset, as it's also an expensive chipset. The same goes for the 12 GB of RAM (16 if you choose the variant with 512 GB of storage instead of 256 GB).

More Expensive

The price tag of the Oneplus Pad 3 has really shot up compared to its predecessors. One of the things that made the first two tablets so appealing was that you really got a lot of tablet for your money. The Oneplus Pad cost 6000 kronor, Pad 2 6700. With Pad 3, the price has risen further to 7300 kronor. Still good value for what you get, absolutely, but enough more for you to start considering the alternatives. If the alternative is Samsung, you don't need to worry. The closest they have is the Galaxy Tab S10 FE Plus, with a price tag of several thousand kronor more and performance that is subpar in comparison. At the time of writing, it can be added, you get the variant with 16/512 GB memory for the same price as the tablet with 12/256 GB as a discounted offer.

Accessories are extra if you want them. The stylus costs 1170 kronor, a protective case and stand 700 kronor, or you can choose the keyboard cover for 2199 kronor. Unfortunately, the keyboard does not have åäö, which is a shame because it is really good and the case does not add much to the tablet's weight. You can of course set it to a Swedish keyboard layout, but then you have to remember where åäö and some other keys are located. With the keyboard case, you can also detach the keyboard and just use the back as a stand for watching films, and it can be adjusted steplessly. Really nice.

The system in the tablet is Android 15, and to that Oneplus has added its own user interface, which, among other things, allows you to easily split the screen between two apps by swiping across it with two fingers. Oneplus has of course also added a dose of AI, including for text processing, but this function is handicapped by the current lack of Swedish language support.

For 7300 kronor, the Oneplus Pad 3 is still an excellent value tablet with a large and good screen and top performance, but with its greater weight and price tag, it is no longer an obvious first choice for those who want a new Android tablet.

Questions and Answers

How are the speakers? The tablet has a total of eight speakers that deliver a loud and rich sound, although you might lose a bit of treble as the sound is directed out to the sides.

Does the tablet have a fingerprint reader? No, it uses a pin code or simpler facial unlocking.

Is there a variant with its own SIM card slot? No, it is only sold in two different memory configurations without a SIM card slot.

An alternative

If you want a slightly lighter tablet with decent but not top performance, the Xiaomi Pad 7 costs just a little more than half of what the Oneplus Pad 3 costs.

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