OnePlus Pad Go Review: Affordable Media-Focused Tablet

Value When Reviewed

Unavailable within the US

Lower than a 12 months on from the OnePlus Pad, which launched the model to the cut-throat world of Android tablets, the ‘By no means Settle’ agency is again with the OnePlus Pad Go.

Curiously, this isn’t a direct follow-on from the unique Pad, and it doesn’t appear to be attempting to do something massively totally different to the OnePlus Pad. Reasonably, the OnePlus Pad Go tries to do the same at a less expensive value.

It’s one other full-sized media-focused pill, however one which makes even handed cuts to the core specs to be able to hit a sub-£300 price ticket.

Discover out what rivals the Pad Go should face in our greatest pill chart.

Design & Construct

• Aluminium and plastic construct
• Solely accessible in ‘Twin Mint’
• No fingerprint sensor, simply insecure face unlock

OnePlus has broadly caught to the same design language because the OnePlus Pad for the Pad Go. That is one other sagey-green (‘Twin Mint’, in truth) pill with rounded corners and a centrally positioned digital camera module that’s means larger than it must be.

It’s a nice trying piece of package, albeit not as premium feeling as its massive brother. New to the Go is a cut up between a basic aluminium body and a shiny plastic strip alongside the highest, the place the digital camera is.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

The latter appears to be like high-quality proper up till you first contact it along with your fingers, at which level it turns right into a greasy nightmare. Why do producers stick with this type of factor, I ponder?

At 532g, it’s just a little lighter than the OnePlus Pad, although nonetheless not what you’d name light-weight – particularly provided that its 11.35in show is ever-so-slightly smaller. It’s a tad thicker at 6.9mm.

The OnePlus Pad Go lives as much as its identify and one-ups the pricier Pad by together with a SIM tray on its left-hand edge. This implies you may entry the web while out and about just by dropping a SIM card in.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

What you don’t get is the OnePlus Pad’s pogo connector, which means there’s no keyboard cowl possibility this time round. Nor do you get a 3.5mm headphone jack, simply the standard USB-C port on the right-hand edge.

On condition that the unique Pad ditched the fingerprint sensor, it’s maybe no shock to study that the Pad Go doesn’t have one both. It’s no much less of a bummer, although, because the alternate options – an insecure face unlock or a laborious pin code system – are unsatisfactory.

Display screen & Audio system

• 11.35in LCD show
• 90Hz refresh charge
• Strong quad stereo audio system

OnePlus has gone just a little smaller and fewer clean with the Pad Go’s show, but it surely’s nonetheless an honest effort.

You get an 11.35in 2408 x 1720 IPS LCD panel, with the identical uncommon 7:5 side ratio as earlier than. It feels well-suited to a broader vary of media than your common widescreen Android pill, and it implies that the pill feels far more pure and usable in portrait orientation too.

The Pad Go’s show doesn’t get as vibrant because the common Pad’s, with a acknowledged prime brightness of 400 nits (vs 500 nits). Utilizing a colorimeter, I recorded it at 382 nits with autobrightness off, which is an effective 100 nits wanting our OnePlus Pad studying.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

It’s additionally nowhere close to as clean as its massive brother, with a 90Hz refresh charge dropping properly wanting the Pad’s 144Hz. The latter all the time felt just a little like overkill, nevertheless, particularly in a less-than-Professional pill, and the Pad Go feels lots clean sufficient typically use.

It’s price noting that that is the utmost setting for the OnePlus Pad Professional’s display screen refresh charge and that it’ll robotically choose the suitable refresh charge for the duty. You may’t select to drive this, although you may choose to repair it to 60Hz if battery life is a precedence.

It is a moderately colour-accurate show too, significantly when you swap away from the default Vivid mode and activate Pure. True to its identify, it reigns within the further pop and makes all the things look much more, properly, pure.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

OnePlus makes some extent of highlighting the Pad Go’s eye care credentials, with clever brightness and Low Blue Mild know-how promising to scale back eye pressure. Given its positioning as a pill to twist up in a darkened room with and watch a movie, it’s a sensible (if removed from distinctive) inclusion.

Audio output is dealt with by a wholesome set of 4 audio system, two on both edge as you maintain it in panorama mode. With Dolby Atmos assist, prime quality film content material from the likes of Disney+ sounds good – loud, clear, and spacious, if not one of the best with bass.

Specs & Efficiency

• Mediatek Helio G99 chip
• 8GB LPDDR4X RAM
• Ample efficiency

OnePlus has scaled again on efficiency for the Pad Go, switching to a reasonably humble (and ageing) Mediatek Helio G99 chip.

This is identical processor that may be discovered within the Poco M5, an reasonably priced smartphone from a few years in the past. Extra lately, Acer plumped for this chip within the Iconia P11, a £249 Android pill.

As that implies, it’s not a very spectacular performer, dropping properly wanting the Xiaomi Pad 6 with its Snapdragon 870 and the Google Pixel Pill with its Tensor G2 in benchmark exams. Naturally, it’s a lot slower than the OnePlus Pad with its MediaTek Dimensity 9000, too.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

There’s no escaping this restricted efficiency in use, with tiny halts and stutters when flicking between house screens and delays when leaping into apps. It’s nothing too extreme, nevertheless, and the availability of 8GB of RAM stops this being a severe difficulty.

Ideally, the OnePlus Pad Go ought to be handled as a single media app form of a pill. It’s obtained sufficient energy to run most purposes adequately, and you’ll even run lighter apps aspect by aspect with out an excessive amount of of successful, however you wouldn’t need to depend on it for intensive multitasking.

Equally, whereas it’ll deal with easy video games like Slay the Spire completely properly, extra superior 3D titles like Wreckfest would require you to drop the graphical settings to medium or low if you would like them to run moderately fluidly.

In storage phrases, you get 128GB as normal. There’s a 256GB on the market in some areas, however not the UK. There’s additionally a devoted microSD card slot if it is advisable broaden that additional.

OnePlus Pad Go benchmarks

Cameras

I ought to solely make a fast point out of the digital camera set-up right here, as such issues are hardly ever a precedence in a pill – even much less so in an reasonably priced one. On the rear, you might have an 8Mp sensor that completely fits the time period ‘lavatory normal’.

Even in good daytime lighting, snaps taken with this digital camera betray a important lack of sharpness and pop, with notable graininess in blue skies and poor dynamic vary. The 8Mp entrance digital camera is equally underwhelming, fully failing to make topics pop.

In fact, none of that is remotely shocking, and such issues may be stated of nearly each low-cost pill in existence. I don’t anticipate even ample digital camera provisions from such units, so I’ll transfer on.

Battery Life & Charging

• 8000mAh battery
• A number of days of sunshine utilization
• 33W charger not included

The OnePlus Pad Go comes with a comparatively small 8000mAh battery. It’s actually deal smaller than the OnePlus Pad’s 9510mAh cell.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Positive sufficient, the Go scored a lot worse than its brother in our standard PCMark Work 3.0 Battery take a look at, falling nearly three hours brief at seven hours and 57 minutes.

In sensible phrases, nevertheless, I’ve a number of complaints. Throughout two and a half days of sunshine to reasonable utilization, with a complete of 5 hours and 20 minutes of display screen time, the pill was nonetheless going – albeit with a mere 7% left. It usually lasts days and days on standby, which is what you need from an informal pill akin to this.

The charging provision isn’t as spectacular as the total OnePlus Pad, maxing out at 33W. You don’t get a charger within the field both.

You’ll have to be explicit in regards to the charger you select for it. Utilizing a 33W Xiaomi charger, it solely obtained to 10% from empty in quarter-hour and to 21% in half-hour. Hooking up the OnePlus 12R‘s 100W charger, nevertheless, obtained it to 19% and 34% respectively.

Software program & Apps

• OxygenOS 13.2 on Android 13
• Pill-specific options work properly
• Lack of succesful, optimised apps

If there’s parity with the OnePlus Pad in a single space, it’s software program. You get the identical customized OxygenOS 13.2 UI layered on prime of Android 13.

Sure, that’s Android 13, not the present Android 14 which has been accessible since October 2023.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Nonetheless, OnePlus’s pill software program providing is fairly sturdy. The OS itself isn’t the prettiest, based mostly, as it’s, on Oppo’s busy ColorOS, but it surely’s very purposeful.

You may run two apps aspect by aspect, and one other as a floating window (with efficiency limitations as talked about earlier). There’s additionally a aspect menu, accessed by swiping in from the highest proper edge, which grants fast entry to current recordsdata and apps.

Swiping left will get you to Google’s always-useful Uncover feed display screen, the place you’ll get pertinent information tales and articles, in addition to media suggestions out of your chosen streaming apps.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Jon Mundy / Foundry

None of that is significantly modern, but it surely doesn’t have to be. Should you’re trying to do something extra productive, know that Android nonetheless trails iPadOS for correctly tablet-optimised apps, and that the OnePlus Pad Go isn’t fairly highly effective sufficient to run superior duties anyway.

One different downer is the promise of simply two years of updates. On condition that a kind of will presumably contain the belated swap to Android 14, that doesn’t supply lots of hope for longstanding assist.

Value & Availability

The OnePlus Pad Go is obtainable now in a single 128GB configuration with an RRP of £299.

On the time of writing, OnePlus was promoting it at a reduced value of £269 instantly from its web site. Amazon was additionally promoting it on the identical knock-down value.

When it comes to equally priced rivals, there’s the Samsung Galaxy S6 Lite (2024) for £349 and the Xiaomi Pad 6 for £369. The Honor Pad 9 is identical value whereas in the other way, there’s the Amazon Fireplace Max 11 for £249, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab A9+ is £239 or the Xiaomi Redmi Pad SE for less than £199.

Stretch as much as £399 and you’ve got the likes of the Lenovo Tab P12 £399 and newly decoupled Google Pixel Pill. Loads of alternative, then.

Reasonably awkwardly, there’s additionally the unique OnePlus Pad, a greater pill in a lot of the ways in which depend, which has been closely discounted since its launch.

So far as I do know, OnePlus has no plans to launch the Pad Go within the US – it’s an Asia and Europe-only machine for now.

See our prime picks in one of the best tablets and finest Android tablets charts.

Must you purchase the OnePlus Pad Go?

The OnePlus Pad Go doesn’t a lot supply one thing totally different to the unique OnePlus Pad because it does supply one thing broadly related at a less expensive value.

It’s one other fashionable full-sized pill with a give attention to media playback, together with a pleasant sharp 11-inch show and a succesful set of quad audio system.

Aside from mobile connectivity, it affords related drawbacks too – together with solely providing one storage possibility and failing to incorporate a fingerprint sensor. Efficiency and battery life have additionally taken successful.

All in all, this can be a strong choose for anybody searching for a neat and tidy pill for media streaming and internet shopping, however there are many nice choices at related or cheaper costs to think about.

Specs

• Android 13 with OxygenOS 13.2
• 11.35in, 2408 x 1720, IPS LCD, 90Hz show
• Mediatek Helio G99
• 8GB LPDDR4X RAM
• 128GB/256GB storage
• 8Mp foremost digital camera
• As much as 1080p @ 30fps rear video
• 8Mp front-facing digital camera
• Dolby Atmos Quad Audio system
• SIM slot
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
• Bluetooth 5.2
• 8000mAh battery
• 33W charging
• 255.1 x 188 x 6.9mm
• 532g
• Launch colors: Twin Mint