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Addicted to tech, as we are, it’s now quite common to get home from a long day of work and spend some time winding down with a smartphone, TV or tablet. And by some time, I mean right until we fall asleep! No wonder then there’s been a renewed interest in tablets, especially post-pandemic. OnePlus, that launched its first-ever tablet earlier this year, is already out with a budget version — the OnePlus Pad Go. I’ve been taking it along to work and on holidays, and here’s my experience.
Design
The OnePlus Pad Go, despite being slated as a budget tablet, looks premium. It weighs just over 530 grams and is fairly thin at 6.8 mm. Despite its 11.3-inch display, it’s not very hefty. There are only three physical buttons — the power button and the volume rocker — around a smooth corner. The tablet is available only in one colour option, which OnePlus calls ‘Twin Mint’. The rear panel has a two-textured finish with the camera panel being reflective green glass and the bigger chunk of panel being a smooth matte surface.
The 11.3-inch LCD display offers ample real estate for endless media consumption. The tablet has a fairly unique 7:5 aspect ratio — just like the OnePlus Pad. This optimises games, apps and websites quite well, in both portrait and landscape modes. The display packs in2408 x 1720 resolution and offers a refresh rate of90 Hz. Reading and scrolling through Pinterest is smooth on the tab. What I sometimes had issues with is that media on VLC or YouTube wouldn’t play right away when I hit play or pause when I clicked the icon. Brightness indoors and especially in spaces outdoors wasn’t an issue, with the unit offering up to 400 nits. What’s truly impressive is the sound quality of the tablet. With both the proprietary Omnibearing Sound Field tech and Dolby Atmos quad speakers, the sound and music from the tablet are both loud and immersive.
I used the 8-MP front camera to attend a couple of briefings and webinars, and the quality is just about good enough. The rear camera is also 8 MP and delivers pretty average photographs. Pics taken indoors, in the absence of natural lighting, turned out a little too grainy.
Like most smartphones, the tab also offers a ‘Bedtime Mode’, which lets you customise the tablet’s features to facilitate a better sleep schedule. It also lets me enable motion detection and light detection to track my sleep patterns. Also, the tablet’s screen temperature automatically changes to reduce the blue-light impact on your sleep.
Tech Specs
The OnePlus Pad Go is powered by a MediaTek Helio G99 processor and runs on the upgraded OxygenOS 13.2. With 8 GB of RAM and 256GB ROM, the tablet is snappy enough with multi-tasking. There’s also microSD card support so you can expand the storage by up to 1TB for even more photo, video and content storage. Apart from a Wi-Fi-only model, one can also choose from two different 4G LTE variants (8+128 GB LTE and 8+256 GB LTE).
Another huge advantage that the OnePlus Pad Go has is its massive 8,000 mAh battery. With incessant binge-watching over the Diwali weekend, it kept me company for almost two days before shutting down. It also ships with a 33W SUPERVOOC charger, which takes close to a couple of hours to charge the device fully.
Verdict
In my experience, the OnePlus Pad Go is a great secondary device for media consumption. I wouldn’t mind coming home and catching up on Jinny’s Kitchen or trying out new gaming apps on this every day. It was also great to pop up mid-flight to catch up on downloads of ‘What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim’. However, this wouldn’t be my go-to device to actively write on or even edit copies on. The company hasn’t made it compatible with its own folio-cum-keyboard accessory. So, this tab is great if you’re specifically looking to buy a device as a bigger alternative to your smartphone, that you can wind down with. A decent display, great speakers, long battery life and a lightweight design are enough to keep you happy if you’re looking for a tablet that doesn’t hurt your wallet too much.
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