OnePlus Pad 3 review: strong iPad Pro competiton at a great price!

OnePlus has returned to the premium Android tablet scene with the new OnePlus Pad 3 – its most powerful and feature-packed slate yet. Building on its predecessor, the Pad 2, this third-generation device pushes the envelope with an even larger, 13.2″ display, cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, new software features, and reworked accessories. However, are all the changes OnePlus has made for the better?

The star of the show is the 13.2” LCD display – OnePlus’s largest and sharpest yet. I know what you’re thinking: LCD, seriously? I wouldn’t be concerned about that, however, as the LCD displays OnePlus employs for the Pad line are pretty great. With a 7:5 aspect ratio and a spectacular 3.4K resolution, this screen is amazing for for multitasking, media consumption, and productivity. But what’s equally impressive is the humongous battery packed into the thin chassis. Despite measuring under 6mm in thickness, the OnePlus Pad 3 houses top-tier internals, including an enormous 12,140mAh battery, which OnePlus argues is strong enough to start a car!

The OnePlus Pad 3 is priced competitively considering its powerful hardware, capable software features, and the available accessories. The price starts at just $699 – much lower than Samsung and Apple’s $1000+ premium tablet offerings. And, the great news is, you can also score some lovely deals (like a free Smart Keyboard case) if you pre-order early. Let’s take a closer look at what makes this Android tablet a true heavyweight contender in 2025.

OnePlus Pad 3 Design

Super-thin, super-heavy

At just 5.97mm, the OnePlus Pad 3 is the thinnest tablet OnePlus has ever made – and among the slimmest on the market. However, it’s definitely not the lightest one with its 675g. I used the OnePlus Pad 2 for a quite a while, and one of the few things I didn’t enjoy about it was the considerable weight of about 580g. While I hoped OnePlus will make the Pad 3 lighter, it’s sadly gone in the opposite direction, adding another inch to the screen and another 90 grams or so to the weight.

Aside from that, the design is modern, sleek and minimalist, and this year it comes in two colors: Storm Blue and Frosted Silver (the latter being India-exclusive). The Storm Blue color is rather original and good-looking.

The bezels are sufficiently slim, and the rear camera has been moved to the corner, giving it a more conventional and modern look. This is a change I definitely welcome, because the center-positioned rear camera of the OnePlus Pad 2 made it difficult to write on with the stylus, due to all the unpleasant wobbling. This problem is now reduced to a minimum, thanks to the rear camera’s new position in the corner.

As expected from a premium tablet, there’s a hardware keyboard accessory available (costs $200). It’s very similar to last year’s model, where there’s a magnetic back cover that doubles as a kick-stand, and an attachable keyboard part. While the Pad 2’s keyboard accessory attached seamlessly and without any interference with the magnetic back cover, this is not the case with the new accessory for the Pad 3 – where attaching the keyboard is a bit more fiddly. It’s the same thing that Huawei did with its keyboard for the MatePad Pro 13.2, where you need to slightly open the kickstand, in order to slide in the magnetic attachment of the keyboard. I’m not sure what necessitated this downgrade, but it’s there.

The hardware Smart Keyboard also has a large trackpad, which has great response and fluid tracking. Its pointer acceleration (to the extent there’s acceleration at all) feels a bit weird, but it’s not too bad and not hard to get used to. I think it’s best for tablet manufacturers to tune these trackpads in a way that would make pointer behavior similar to what users experience on Windows and Mac – this will make switching between the tablet and a PC feel way more natural. Unfortunately, there is no support for two-finger tap to call up the context menu (i.e. a right mouse click).

OnePlus Pad 3 Battery

Two words: power overwhelming

The OnePlus Pad 3 features a massive 12,140mAh battery – the largest ever in a OnePlus device. It supports 80W SUPERVOOC charging, going from 0 to 100% in just over 90 minutes, which is faster than the competition – only the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 comes close in this aspect.

OnePlus Pad 3 Audio quality

Class-leading audio – great volume and bass

Audio is another area where OnePlus has stepped things up. With a total of eight speakers – four woofers and four tweeters – the Pad 3 delivers truly impressive stereo sound! The OnePlus Pad 3 speakers manage to output incredibly deep tones, with a nice, heavy, deep bass. They are also quite powerful, so you can definitely have fun listening to music on these. They are even probably a bit too bass-heavy when on max volume, which is great, because it means that at moderate volumes, the sound will feel just right, and most of the time you won’t be listening at max volume.