OnePlus Pad 4 Review: Amazing for Gaming, BUT….

OnePlus’ Pad 4 somehow packs a gorgeous 13,2’’ display, 8 speakers and the newest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip at just a $669 price. Not only that, OnePlus even offers a new stylus that matches the Apple Pencil Pro on paper. If the spec sheet doesn’t lie, there’s almost no point in buying an iPad Air anymore. 

I spent the last 3 weeks testing the OnePlus Pad 4 nonstop. I used it for work, at home for streaming and, of course, for gaming. And although the tablet impressed me overall, there’s actually a critical feature that’s worse than on the OnePlus Pad 3. Let’s talk about it. 

Performance and Specs

The Pad 4 is the fastest Android tablet we’ve ever tested, surpassing the OnePlus Pad 3, which is now the 2nd fastest. That’s thanks to the newest flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip. But don’t expect the tablet to be much more responsive for casual use, there’s little difference most of the time. The improved performance will mostly be noticeable if you’re playing heavy games or editing videos locally. 

The Snapdragon chip is accompanied by a standard 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage. Some regions will have an 8GB/256GB variant instead. For most purposes, 8GB of RAM should be enough, even for heavy games. But just make sure you know which model you’re buying. 

For a bit more money, the storage can be upgraded to 512GB. There’s no MicroSD card expansion slot, so make sure to get the right model. 

To see just how much faster the OnePlus Pad 4 is compared to every other Android tablet, we can use benchmark tests to gauge the theoretical performance. In Geekbench 6’s CPU test, the Pad 4 leads the OnePlus Pad 3 by 17% in single-core speed, and by 20% in multi-core. That lead is even bigger compared to the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra, where the OnePlus Pad 4 is 30% faster in CPU single and 25% in multi-core. Apple’s similarly priced iPad Air M4 is 6% faster in CPU single, and 23% faster in CPU multi-core. 

3DMark’s Wildlife extreme benchmark gives us a better idea of how the tablet performs in games. Here, the OnePlus Pad 4 is 20% faster than the Pad 3, and 12% faster than the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra. Only the iPad Air is slightly ahead by 3%. Overall, while the OnePlus Pad 4 is really fast, it’s not a significant upgrade over the Pad 3. 

Gaming 

Let’s take a look at gaming performance. We start with Fortnite, where the tablet is able to hit a smooth 120FPS average at the maximum possible settings. There’s no issues like micro stuttering, and the back of the tablet only gets warm to the touch. It’s an excellent showing from the OnePlus Pad 4, but other flagship tablets like the OnePlus Pad 3 and Galaxy Tab S11 can do the same in Fortnite. 

Delta Force lets the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Pad stretch its legs. You can play the game with 60FPS at max settings, or 120FPS at high. But again, the OnePlus Pad 3 performs exactly the same in Delta Force. 

Even the newest Rainbow Six Siege: Mobile can’t hold a candle to the Pad 4’s raw power. Unfortunately, the game is limited to 60FPS no matter the settings, but you can crank everything up to its respective maximum and still get good FPS. 

OnePlus’ inbuilt “Game Booster” app is also great if you want to tune your performance settings on a per game basis. It also integrates an FPS reader, which is how we got our measurements. Overall, the Pad 4 is an excellent gaming tablet; though it’s quite large, so you might want to pick up a controller for it. We’ve linked all relevant accessories we recommend in the video description. 

Read: Top 12 Best Free Android Games: All Genres

Display and Speakers 

The 13,2’’ display here is, unfortunately, not an OLED. But at this price range, fitting such a large OLED panel would require corners to be cut elsewhere. It’s a sharp, 2400x3392p LCD panel that gets up to 1000 nits bright with automatic brightness. That’s bright enough for any indoor environment. Honestly it’s really a nice looking display with really thin bezels. 

The choice of a 7:5 aspect ratio is controversial. On one hand, you have a lot of vertical space available, which is great for doing office work, but on the other hand most video content doesn’t scale as well as on tablets with a 16:10 aspect ratio. Watching YouTube or Netflix leaves large black bars on the top and bottom of the display. We would rather recommend something like the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro Gen 2 for watching videos. 

Gaming is a whole different story though; the 144Hz refresh rate means that animations and gameplay are silky smooth, although most games are still limited to 120hz. The aspect ratio makes the tablet a lot easier to control and play on compared to other large tablets in action games where you often need to put your finger across the entire screen to aim at an enemy, for example. 

Just like the OnePlus Pad 3, the Pad 4 has 8 speakers in a stereo configuration. They’re also some of the best sounding tablet speakers out there with deep bass and a wide sound. It’s great for movies, music and of course games where directional audio cues are important. 

Read: You Should Worry About OLED Burn-In If You Do This

Stylus 

As I mentioned, the new tablet also supports a new stylus, the OnePlus Stylo Pro. It’s basically an Apple Pencil Pro clone with the same squeeze and double tap feature, it even costs about the same!

On paper, it’s an absolute monster stylus with 16,000 pressure sensitivity levels, and even 2 different tips. It can even vibrate slightly while writing to emulate a paper-feeling. But after using it for taking some notes and drawing, it’s immediately clear that the Stylo Pro isn’t anywhere close to the Apple Pencil Pro. 

In the inbuilt notes app, the stylus is great. It doesn’t lag, the pressure sensitivity is consistent and the haptics are really cool. But the haptic feedback only works in that app, and OnePlus Notes isn’t a serious notetaking app. So that feature’s out of the window.

There are a couple other issues that we noticed. Firstly, it’s super inconsistent when writing. Half the time, the tablet will ignore your input when you try to draw a dot. There’s also noticeable latency when writing. And sometimes the input will register a millimeter or two from where the tip is touching the screen. 

All those issues make it hard for us to recommend the OnePlus Pad 4 for artists and students who want to take notes with a pen. You should get a Samsung S tablet or an iPad for that instead.

Read: Top 11 Best Tablets With Stylus Pen Tested

Battery Life 

Despite the dimensions staying the same, the Pad 4’s battery actually grew to an incredible 13380mAh compared to last year’s 12140mAh. The charging speed is still 80W, which tops up the tablet quickly enough.

In our YouTube playback endurance test, the tablet lasts 7 hours and 30 minutes while looping an HD video at max brightness. That’s 2 hours longer than the iPad Air 13’’, and actually decent for a tablet with a bright LCD screen. But compared to the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra’s 14 hours and 12 minutes score in the same test, there’s still room for improvement. 

Software 

The Pad 4 comes with the Android 16 based OxygenOS 16. It’s a well fleshed out, clean Android tablet operating system with some great features for multitasking and productivity. Split-screen apps and floating windows are supported, and the OpenCanvas function helps let you easily switch between up to 3 apps. Unfortunately, there’s no true desktop mode and no display extension when you connect an external monitor. Screen mirroring still works, thanks to the fast USB-C port with USB 3.2 speeds. 

There’s a more serious problem though. OnePlus hasn’t announced how many years the tablet will receive software updates and security patches at the time of writing. But according to the EU database page, the Pad 4 is expected to get 3 Android upgrades, up to Android 19, and 5 years of total security updates. It’s a decent support duration, but there hasn’t been any official confirmation from OnePlus, so we can only hope it’s correct. 

Design and Cameras

The Pad 4 looks exactly the same as the Pad 3. It’s still 13,2’’, has the same dimensions and the same unibody aluminium design. The back of the tablet has a simple OnePlus logo, and 3 pogo pins to attach a magnetic keyboard accessory when it eventually is available. There’s an oval camera bump that houses the rear camera and LED flash. 

Speaking of cameras, the setup here is surprisingly capable, featuring an 8MP selfie camera and 13MP rear camera. It doesn’t sound crazy on paper, but the rear camera produces very sharp shots in daylight that rival cheaper smartphones. Video recording in 4k 30p is supported, however the quality takes a slight hit compared to the photos. 

The front camera takes very sharp selfies, and handles harsh backlights quite well. Although video recording is limited to FHD 30p, the video quality is solid, especially if you’re just videocalling. Overall, we’re impressed by the 2 cameras.

The tablet’s power button sits on the top of the left side, and the volume buttons to its top right. One minor complaint we have is that the power button is slightly out of reach when you’re holding the tablet normally. It would have been better on the top side next to the volume buttons, like a modern smartphone. Also, an integrated fingerprint reader is missing from the tablet, which is a real downside compared to virtually every other premium tablet. You have to rely on basic face-unlock, which isn’t as secure as Apple’s Face-ID, and can’t be used in apps that require high security or passkeys. 

Conclusion

The OnePlus Pad 4, just like the Pad 3, is a great value Android tablet with flagship performance. It runs any game on the Google Play Store, looks great for streaming videos and has one of the best tablet speaker setups. We are just a little let down by the lack of a fingerprint reader and no official software support commitment. And of course the new Stylo Pro, which costs a lot but doesn’t feel great to write with.

Despite those shortcomings, the OnePlus Pad 4 is still a great value for the performance and massive screen on offer. If you’re after an Android gaming tablet that also works well for watching shows or YouTube, we recommend it. 

But if you’re willing to trade some performance for a 13’’ 16:10 aspect ratio screen that handles HDR content way better, and get a cheaper and better stylus and proper keyboard, you have to check out our review of the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro Gen 2. It’s a really strong competitor to the OnePlus tablet.