OnePlus Pad 4 in for review

Today, we are taking a look at the new OnePlus Pad 4, the company’s latest premium Android tablet, which is expected to officially launch on April 30. We were able to get the device early and give you a first look with a quick unboxing.

The OnePlus Pad 4 packaging is very simple and comes in the familiar red and white colorway. Inside, the tablet itself takes up very little of the vertical space, thanks to its slim 5.94mm profile. Most of the height is taken up by the 80W fast charger, along with the matching cable. There’s not much else in the box.

The OnePlus Pad 4 is a relatively straightforward iterative update over the OnePlus Pad 3. It replaces the Snapdragon 8 Elite of the Pad 3 with a new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip along with a 30% larger 45,260mm² vapor chamber. It comes with the same 256GB and 512GB storage capacities as before, but in UFS 4.1 instead of UFS 4.0. You also get around a 10% increase in the battery capacity, going from 12,140mAh to 13,380mAh. Finally, the display is about 100 nits brighter.

However, that’s where the upgrades end. The rest of the tablet is more or less identical to what we got from OnePlus last year. This includes the design, the display, the cameras, the charging, the connectivity, and the speakers. There is even one downgrade, as the OnePlus Pad 4 only offers 8GB and 12GB LPDDR5X memory options compared to the 12GB and 16GB on the Pad 3. The reasons for that should be self-explanatory if you’ve read the news in the past six months, but it’s disappointing nonetheless, especially considering the performance and multi-tasking-focused nature of this device.

OnePlus does have some new accessories, though. There’s a new stylus, called the OnePlus Stylo Pro. It comes with two different tips, one made specifically for writing and one for drawing. There is also a new OnePlus Pad 4 Smart Keyboard. Unlike the Pad 3 Smart Keyboard, which had a split keyboard/kickstand design, the Pad 4 model is a single, laptop-style unit with a hinged design. The pogo-pin contact patch has been moved, so it will not be compatible with the older tablet.

That should do for now. We will have more to say regarding the OnePlus Pad 4 and its performance in our upcoming review next week.