OnePlus Pad 4 Review: A Premium Tablet with a Few Minor Flaws

A lot has happened since OnePlus entered the Android tablet market in 2023 with the first OnePlus Pad. While the original was still positioned in the upper mid-range segment, the OnePlus Pad 4 is now taking a decisive step up and clearly positioning itself in the premium segment. I’ve been using the tablet for a while now – from streaming on the couch to productive multitasking with multiple windows to extended gaming sessions. My in-depth review will explore whether the OnePlus Pad 4 lives up to the high expectations and where it falls short.

Technical Specifications of the OnePlus Pad 4

Feature	OnePlus Pad 4
Product	Pad 4
Display	13.2-inch IPS LCD, 3,392 × 2,400 pixels, 7:5, 144 Hz, 12-bit
Brightness	700 nits (typ.), up to 1,000 nits (HBM), Dolby Vision
Processor	Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
Graphics	Adreno 840 (1,200 MHz)
RAM	8 GB / 12 GB LPDDR5X
Storage	256 GB / 512 GB UFS 4.1 (not expandable)
Battery	13,380 mAh
Charging	80W SUPERVOOC (approx. 2 hours to 100%)
Speakers	8 speakers (4 tweeters/4 woofers)
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, USB-C; no cellular connectivity
Operating System	OxygenOS 16 (Android 16)
Dimensions / Weight	5.94 mm thin, 672 g
Colors	Dune Glow, Sage Mist
Special Features	No fingerprint sensor, no Widevine L1, no IR blaster
Price	€508.99 (with the coupon code DECD60)

Design and Build Quality

When you pick up the OnePlus Pad 4 for the first time, you immediately notice its exceptionally high-quality feel. The unibody is made of metal and measures just 5.94 mm at its thinnest point. This makes the tablet slightly thinner than even the already slender iPad Air. At the same time, the 672-gram chassis feels surprisingly well-balanced, although the weight—combined with the slim design—does become noticeable during longer sessions held in the hand. The design concept has remained nearly identical to that of its predecessor, the Pad 3; the only visible differences are the two new color options and the repositioned pogo pins for the keyboard accessory.

My review unit came in the color Sage Mist, a warm shade of green that really lights up in the right light. Alternatively, “Dune Glow” offers a cooler, matte finish—both variants look elegant and well-designed. The button layout is kept simple: a volume rocker on the right side and the power button on the top edge. Four speaker grilles on the sides house the eight-speaker system, and the USB-C port is located on the bottom edge. You won’t find a microSD slot or SIM support here.

Despite its elegance, there are two points of criticism: First, the physical buttons on the side are awkward to reach in almost any position. Second, the combination of extremely thin display bezels and the lack of palm rejection on the bezels backfires: if even a tiny part of your palm touches the edge of the touchscreen, the device stops responding.

OnePlus Pad 4 Review: Modern Features

When it comes to the internals, OnePlus really goes all out. The Pad 4 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, currently the fastest mobile processor for Android devices. It’s paired with 12 GB of LPDDR5X RAM, combined with 256 GB or 512 GB of fast UFF 4.1 storage. My review unit was the 12-GB model with 256 GB of storage. Significantly, the predecessor still offered configurations with 12 and 16 GB, whereas 16 GB is no longer available at all—a small but noticeable step backward that is likely due to rising component costs.

When it comes to wireless connectivity, the OnePlus Pad 4 leaves nothing to be desired: Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 are on board, along with—for the first time—AI-powered smart antenna technology that intelligently switches between antennas to maintain the best connection. In practice, Wi-Fi performance was consistently excellent, with no dropouts or dead zones. This makes the lack of any cellular connectivity all the more puzzling.

Even the significantly cheaper OnePlus Pad Go 2 offers 5G. There are also other omissions that surprise me after four generations: There’s neither a fingerprint sensor nor an IR blaster. The device can only be unlocked via a passcode or the less secure facial recognition.

Bright 13.2-inch Display

The 13.2-inch display essentially uses the same highly praised panel as the Pad 3, and that’s mostly good news. It’s an IPS LCD in an unusual 7:5 aspect ratio with a resolution of 3,392 × 2,400 pixels, 12-bit color depth (8-bit + FRC), and a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz. Color coverage is 98% of the DCI-P3 color space, and a Delta E value of 0.7 ensures impressive color accuracy for this price range. In everyday use, the screen shines with rich, well-saturated colors and strong contrast.

The biggest improvement over its predecessor is the brightness, which now reaches 700 nits for standard content and up to 1,000 nits in High-Brightness mode (previously 900 nits). This makes a real difference when using the device outdoors. Nevertheless, it remains physically an LCD: It doesn’t achieve the deep blacks of an OLED panel, and in high-contrast scenes, the raised black levels are noticeable. An OLED would have definitively made this tablet top-tier. Motion sharpness is also typical of IPS. Text can blur slightly during fast scrolling.

My biggest criticism, however, doesn’t concern the panel itself: The Pad 4 lacks Widevine L1 certification, which is why Netflix and Amazon Prime Video can only be played back in SD resolution. On a 13.2-inch display, this looks noticeably washed out. This is a shortcoming that OnePlus has failed to address across all generations. It shows that streaming capability isn’t a given.

This is a point that our review of the HUAWEI MatePad Pro 13.2″ also illustrated impressively. The 144-Hz refresh rate, on the other hand, delivers consistently smooth performance and can even be put to good use on the LCD, such as when browsing in Chrome.

Impressive Battery Life on the Pad 4

Battery life is one of the OnePlus Pad 4’s absolute strengths. Inside is a massive 13,380-mAh battery—a roughly 10% increase over its predecessor, without making the device any thicker. In my test, the tablet easily lasted several days with moderate use. During continuous streaming on YouTube, it managed an impressive 24 hours straight. The efficient Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 noticeably contributes to this endurance during light tasks.

I was particularly impressed by the standby time. For a tablet that you don’t use every day, that’s crucial. Even after several days of inactivity, with Wi-Fi active and notifications turned on, the Pad 4 barely lost any battery life. This means there’s usually enough juice left to use it right away without having to plug it in first. Charging is done via 80W SUPERVOOC; it takes just under two hours to go from 0 to 100%. Given the massive battery capacity, that’s a reasonable time, even if the competitors’ slimmer batteries charge faster in percentage terms.

Performance

When it comes to performance, the Pad 4 leaves nothing to be desired. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 handles everything thrown at it with ease. In the Geekbench 6 multi-core test, the tablet scored around 10,946 points, clearly outperforming many competitors. The benchmark scores are very good across the board. Only in the 3D Mark Stress Test is there a noticeable drop in performance.

Benchmark	Result
Geekbench 6 CPU	3,536 points / 10,283 points
Geekbench 6 GPU	23,267 points
Geekbench AI	2,336 / 3,953 / 3,259 points
PCMark Work 3.1	13,277 points
3DMark Wild Life Extreme	7,215 points
3DMark Solar Bay	12,796 points
3DMark Steel Nomad Light	2,842 points
Steel Nomad Light Stress Test	79.2 percent

For thermal management, OnePlus uses the same Cryo-velocity cooling technology as in the OnePlus 15, but with a significantly larger vapor chamber measuring 45,260 mm², which is tailored to the tablet’s design. The results are impressive: Even after extended gaming sessions with titles like Genshin Impact, there are no noticeable hotspots, and the tablet barely throttles under normal ambient temperatures.

Only the top edge of the back gets slightly warm. Gamers will benefit from the excellent cooling and the fast chip. A look at alternative platforms, such as in the HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2 review, shows just how different tablet chips can be.

Hands-On Review of the OnePlus Pad 4

In everyday use, one thing has become particularly clear: The OnePlus Pad 4 has finally reached the point where the software can keep up with the powerful hardware. The tablet runs OxygenOS 16 based on Android 16 and offers a refreshingly uncluttered experience. Unlike OnePlus smartphones, which the manufacturer tends to pack with its own apps, the in-house app store, browser, theme store, and Phone Manager are almost entirely absent here. Even the Videos app displays only local content instead of promoted recommendations. This clean, uncluttered user experience made my first impressions much more pleasant than I was used to with this brand.

The real highlight in everyday use, however, is multitasking. With Open Canvas, you can open up to five apps simultaneously in freely resizable windows, and using gestures, I can quickly minimize apps or switch between a predefined three-app layout and freely positioned windows. I usually had Slack, Google Docs, and Chrome running side by side—for writing, researching, and communicating all at once. On the huge 13.2-inch display, this feels closer to a real laptop than any previous OnePlus tablet. While there’s a bit of a learning curve—since Android has only recently started supporting such layouts—after a few days, the gestures came naturally to me. File management has also been noticeably improved: files can be moved between apps via drag-and-drop, folders can be viewed in multiple columns, and you can identify them using thumbnails without opening them. All of this is complemented by O+ Connect, which allowed me to mirror the screen of my OnePlus smartphone, share the clipboard, and transfer files—even across platforms to iOS, Windows, and Mac.

Despite all the progress, however, some areas still lack the finishing touches. Cross-device file transfer on OnePlus still relies on dedicated apps, making it seem more cumbersome than the AirDrop-like solutions from Google and Samsung, which are now integrated into Android. Features like Live Alerts—OnePlus’s take on Apple’s Dynamic Island—seem out of place on the tablet, simply because it lacks the appropriate front-facing camera cutout around which the UI could be arranged; instead, it floats somewhat aimlessly at the top edge of the display. The brightness and volume controls in the notification bar were also overly sensitive: even the slightest finger movements caused large jumps. And at times, the interface froze briefly—nothing dramatic, but not quite what you’d expect from a device in this price range.

When it comes to media consumption, the Pad 4 really makes the most of its size. The eight-speaker system—comprising four tweeters and four woofers—delivers surprisingly clear, room-filling sound for such a thin device. The mids and highs are pleasantly precise, and there’s even a bit of bass—more than you’d expect from such a slim chassis. A handy feature is that the system automatically adjusts the stereo channels to match the orientation. However, the stereo effect only works properly in landscape mode; if you hold the tablet portrait-oriented, one channel is at the top and one at the bottom, causing the spatial imaging to be lost. Above about 75% volume, the otherwise warm sound also veers into shrill territory and seems tuned more for maximum volume than for balance. When binge-watching shows, the combination of a large display and powerful sound still clearly won me over—only the aforementioned SD limitation on streaming services clouds the picture.

OnePlus Pad 4 Review: Conclusion

The OnePlus Pad 4 is a confident entry into the premium segment and largely justifies its price. The hardware is flagship-worthy in every respect: from the lightning-fast Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 with excellent thermal management, to the brilliant 13.2-inch display and outstanding battery life, all the way to the powerful eight-speaker system. OxygenOS 16 has matured significantly and finally makes the Pad 4 a serious productivity device.

Nevertheless, it leaves a mixed impression. The lack of Widevine L1 certification is a serious oversight for a display-centric device in this price range, and the complete absence of a cellular option is hard to justify given the availability of more affordable 5G alternatives. Added to this are the missing fingerprint sensor and the somewhat limited 8 GB base model. Ultimately, it’s less OnePlus than the entire Android tablet ecosystem that still stands in the way of this otherwise excellent device. If you’re looking for a top-tier Android tablet for productivity and media consumption and can live with the shortcomings mentioned, this is one of the best devices currently on the market.