OnePlus Pad 3 Tablet Is Powerful and Elegant, but Its Higher Price Has Me Thinking Twice

8.2/ 10
SCORE

OnePlus Pad 3

$700 at OnePlus

Pros

• Impressively zippy overall performance
• Good battery life
• Sharp, bright display with 144Hz refresh rate for smooth scrolling and gaming

Cons

• Fairly premium price
• LCD instead of OLED display
• No microSD card slot for expandable storage
• Disappointing front camera

Last year’s OnePlus Pad 2 was considered one of the better tablet values, combining premium performance with a midrange price ($550) that would sometimes dip to $500. To a certain degree, the new-for-2025 OnePlus Pad 3 follows the same playbook. Equipped with a top-of-the-line Snapdragon 8 Elite processor and a bright, 13.2-inch, 3.4 K-resolution display with 315ppi pixel density and an adaptive refresh rate up to 144Hz, this is a high-performance Android tablet that gives off premium vibes for a lower price than Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S10 Plus. At $700, though, it costs $150 more than the Pad 2, edging it into premium pricing territory and making it less of a bargain. It’s available for preorder now with a choice of two «free gift» accessories as an incentive to purchase, and it ships on July 8.

Simple yet sleek and slim

The Pad 3, which includes 256GB of storage, 12GB of memory (RAM) and runs on Android 15 (you get three years of Android updates and six years of security patches), isn’t particularly bold-looking, but I still found its svelte design impressive.

Weighing 1.5 pounds (675 grams) and measuring 11.4 by 8.3 by 0.24 inches (289.6 by 209.7 by 6 millimeters), it has an aluminum-alloy unibody in an understated «storm» blue color. Like the Pad 2, the Pad 3 has a 7:5 aspect ratio that’s different from the 16:10 aspect ratio found on many Android tablets. It’s a little more of a square look, akin to Apple’s iPad and iPad Air’s 4:3 aspect ratio or the 11-inch iPad Pro’s 3:2 aspect ratio. Some people prefer the squarer design, and the Pad 3’s 7:5 aspect ratio is arguably a selling point.

The 13-megapixel rear camera is more bland-looking than the camera that OnePlus features on its phones. But it’s been moved from a central position on the back to the top-left corner — or the right corner in portrait orientation — which is probably a better spot for it. There’s also an 8-megapixel front-facing camera that’s fine, but nothing special.

The Pad 3’s 3,392×2,400-pixel LCD is sharp, but its black levels and contrast fall short of what you get with the superior OLED displays found on Samsung’s high-end Galaxy Tab S10 Plus and S10 Ultra. (The Pad 3’s contrast hits just 1,123:1 when displaying a checkerboard pattern.) On the bright side, literally, it shines with a whopping 600 nits for a whole-screen image and is rated to go up to 900 nits in a special high-brightness mode (I could only measure the brightness in standard mode). I also liked that the screen features a 144Hz refresh rate that makes for buttery scrolling and gaming.

While Samsung’s more affordable version of the Galaxy Tab S10 Plus, the Tab S10 FE Plus, doesn’t have the same aspect ratio at the Pad 3, it’s got a 13.1-inch screen that uses LCD technology, is 6 millimeters thick, weighs 1.5 pounds (664 grams) and starts at $650, so it’s in the same price class as the Pad 3 and probably it’s most direct competitor. The Tab S10 FE Plus’ screen refresh rate only hits 90Hz, so technically the Pad 3 has an edge there. And the Pad 3’s Snapdragon Elite processor is significantly more powerful than the Tab S10 FE Plus’ Samsung Exynos 1580 processor.

Both Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S10 and Tab S10 FE series have microSD expansion slots for adding more storage, while the Pad 3 has no expansion slot. You’ll have to make do with the 256GB of built-in storage (which should be ample for most people).

Incredibly zippy performance

The OnePlus Pad 3 packs the best chipset for Android devices I’ve tested. The Snapdragon 8 Elite offers huge improvements on the already impressive Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset used in leading phones and tablets in 2024. The OnePlus Pad 3 puts up impressive performance numbers across benchmarks, with especially strong results from the GPU.

The Pad 3’s Geekbench 6 results saw it even beat the Windows-based Asus ProArt PZ13 ($1,300) in single-core performance, though it still lagged behind in multicore performance. When it came to graphics, though, the OnePlus Pad 3 achieved more than double the PZ13’s scores in 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Light and Wildlife Extreme tests.

The tablet’s larger footprint allowed OnePlus to pack in a sizable 34.8-square-centimeter graphene composite vapor chamber to dissipate heat, and it does its job admirably. Running the Steel Nomad Light Stress Test, which cycles the benchmark 20 times in a row, the OnePlus Pad 3 had 84.5% consistency and saw its CPU temperature rise from 28 degrees Celsius to just 31 degrees, one of the more impressive results I’ve seen.

All that speed lets the tablet run incredibly smoothly, with nary a hitch in everyday operation. It also easily handles heavy games, like Delta Force, while remaining comfortable to hold (heat-wise, not so much bulk-wise). The newer chip also gives the Pad 3 the edge over even gaming-focused devices like the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3.

We were also impressed with the Tab 3’s battery life. Its 12,140-mAh battery rocks, easily lasting through the workday for everyday tasks. And in our online streaming battery test with the display set to 50% brightness (measured at 125 nits), it ran for 16 hours and 20 minutes (it ran an additional 40 minutes after the display dimmed, giving it a total battery life of 17 hours). It can also recharge at up to 80 watts with the included charger, reaching full capacity in 92 minutes. Alas, the USB-C charging port isn’t high-bandwidth, as it tops out at the USB 3.2 Gen 1 spec of 5Gbps.

While camera performance has been impressive on OnePlus phones of late, the same can’t be said of this tablet’s cameras. Both the front and rear cameras are only mediocre, failing to offer very sharp or low-noise images.

The tablet packs eight speakers (four for the low end and four for high frequencies), which would seem like a recipe for excellence. But the sound quality was only decent, not great — basically what you’d expect from a premium tablet. Not surprisingly, the midrange, where vocals live, was the strongest, with voices sounding loud and clear. However, like with most tablets and laptops, the speakers just don’t output a ton of bass, and you’re not getting any semblance of surround sound.

OnePlus Pad 3 accessories

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S10 series tablets are pricey (the Tab S10 FE models could also be included in that statement, even though they’re more affordable). But Samsung is always offering big discounts in its online store if you trade in an older tablet or another device. If you play your cards right, you can get several hundred dollars for an earlier Tab S series model to put toward the latest model.

OnePlus only gives up to $100 for trade-ins in its online store, but it tends to throw in an accessory for «free» as a value-added incentive to buy the device. In the Pad 3’s preorder window, which ends July 7, OnePlus is going a step further, allowing buyers to pick two of three accessories as «free gifts.» The accessories available are a $49 folio case, the $199 OnePlus Pad 3 Smart Keyboard and the $99 OnePlus Stylo 2 (yes, the same stylus offered with the OnePlus Pad 2, but the other two accessories are new for the Pad 3).

Given the choice of two accessories, I suspect most people would take the Smart Keyboard and the Stylo 2. And if only one accessory was available as a free gift, the Smart Keyboard would likely be the first choice.

The keyboard is pretty good, with a more tactile feel to the keys than the earlier version. OnePlus says the Pad 3 Smart Keyboard «has larger, spaced-out keycaps that give a PC-style feel, as well as a range of useful command keys and a dedicated AI button — all while retaining the same massive trackpad. It can also be adjusted to between 110- and 165-degree angles and continues to support NFC transfers and instant magnetic connection.»

If I had a gripe, it was that the behavior of the trackpad is a little odd. The mouse movement wasn’t perfectly smooth and was sometimes a little jumpy, struggling to detect nuance. This hampers its principal utility: fine control. We struggled to select text quickly and accurately. Using two fingers to scroll webpages, we found the trackpad often accidentally registered a click, and I ended up opening plenty of advertisements this way. In some cases, the trackpad actions don’t even work. Google Docs wouldn’t allow it to scroll pages, and many times I’d be clicking around the web and would come across something that I couldn’t click on with the trackpad, so was forced to reach up and tap the screen.

Note that while you can attach the keyboard case to the tablet magnetically, you can also detach it and use it wirelessly over Bluetooth (sometimes when the case was jostled, it detached a little too easily and had to be reattached).

The Smart Keyboard is decent enough if included, but it isn’t worth anywhere near its $200 price. I suspect OnePlus intends to heavily discount the keyboard or continue offering it as a free gift alongside the tablet, which is what it did with the Pad 2.

The Stylo 2 stylus has a magnetic anchor point along its top edge, where it also charges the pen. This arrangement could use more work, as the stylus is easy to attach in the wrong position (it’s not clearly demarcated), and it’s all too easy to pop the stylus loose while moving the tablet into or out of a bag, even when it’s attached correctly.

The stylus is accurate and helps facilitate some interesting features, including the ability to write words into text fields on the tablet and have your handwriting converted into neat text (most pen-based tablets offer this feature). It supports a whopping 16,000 levels of sensitivity and has haptic feedback that helps simulate the feel of paper. But there’s no getting past how smooth the screen’s glass is. It just doesn’t give that right amount of resistance to feel like paper.

Should you get the OnePlus Pad 3?

It’s hard to say what the Pad 3 would have cost without the Trump administration’s tariffs coming along, but it likely would’ve been $50 to $100 cheaper. So it goes. All things considered, the Pad 3 is still a decent value, particularly when you compare it to the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE Plus, which retails for about $50 less but can’t come close to matching the zippy performance that this model’s Snapdragon Elite processor serves up. And it matches up quite well against Apple’s similarly priced iPad Air M3, offering better specs in some areas and better overall performance, though iPadOS has some advantages over Android in general.

The Pad 3 isn’t quite ready to be a laptop replacement, which you could argue is the case for most Android tablets and iPads. For a true laptop replacement in a tablet form factor, Windows-based machines like Asus’s aforementioned ProArt PZ13 or Microsoft’s Surface Pro remain your best bet. But despite its small shortcomings, the OnePlus Pad 3 is one of the best premium Android tablets and certainly makes for an excellent entertainment device, offering strong performance for gaming (it’s also well-suited for Xbox Cloud Gaming) and light productivity.