Unless you’re a monk practicing serious detachment in the Himalayas, chances are you’re constantly craving the next digital dopamine hit.
Whether it’s the hottest new soundtracks, the trending show on Netflix, or just trying to hit your viewing goals for the month, we’re all constantly consuming content. And what better device to do that than an easy-to-use, affordable tablet?
Build and design
OPPO Pad Air features a 10.36-inch 2K IPS display
At around 440 grams, OPPO’s very first tablet – the Pad Air – is quite light. The form factor is quite slim at just under 7mm, and I found it easy to hold and carry.
Despite its slim form factor, the OPPO Pad Air offers a 10.36-inch 2K IPS display, and in my books, that’s about the perfect size for a secondary media consumption device. The top of the back panel features the “Sunset Dune 3D texture” – a smooth, wavy surface that adds some originality to the gray tablet.
There are three physical buttons – the power button on the left frame and the volume rockers on the top. Around a smooth corner of each other, they are quite easy to access when you need them. Along the top bezel is also the microSD card slot, where you can expand the storage by an additional 512GB.
There are three physical buttons – the power button on the left frame and the volume rockers on the top
I caught up with a few new releases – Rocket: The Nambi Effect and I watched several seasons of The crown on the OPPO Pad Air, and the viewing experience is quite immersive. I found the need to crank the brightness up to near maximum while watching shows or movies, given that the brightness levels on the Pad Air are 360 nits. With 225 ppi, the visuals were sharp enough on the LCD.
Catching up on my reading of the month — Truth by Colleen Hoover – was easy on the big screen. I liked using the option to switch to a black and white display, especially when reading.
During the game Real Race 3, graphics were smooth most of the time, and stutter was minimal. The IPS LCD screen offers pretty decent viewing angles in case you and a friend are hooking up to Netflix and chilling out.
The four speakers are surprisingly one of the highlights of the device providing audio quality loud enough for two people to enjoy music or movies together. Powered by Dolby Atmos, the audio quality was so clear and engaging that most of the time I preferred not to use my headphones – a nice change for once.
The Pad Air has an 8 MP rear camera and a 5 MP front camera. Images on the rear camera are basic, with a bit of grain. The front camera, when I’ve used it for online meetings, does its job well and also comes with Retouch mode enabled by default, which might appeal to most users.
The Pad Air has an 8 MP rear camera and a 5 MP front camera.
ColorOS
The proprietary operating system used by OPPO on all its smartphones is also integrated into the Pad Air. The OS thankfully doesn’t have any overlays or excessive animations and keeps things simple in terms of looks. It supports a bit of multitasking – you can choose to have some apps as a floating window in one corner.
When I needed to reference two apps simultaneously, for example, attending a meeting on Google Duo while accessing documents on Google Drive, split-screen mode came in really handy. The tablet comes with an 8-core 6nm Snapdragon 680 processor with 4GB of RAM, which the company says can be expanded by an additional 3GB if needed, enabling a total performance of 7GB of RAM.
Browsing and multitasking didn’t really slow down when I had lots of apps open and switched between them often. 64GB of internal storage, in the unit I reviewed, is enough to store tons of e-books, photographs, and documents. But in case you need more, there’s always the variant that offers 128GB of internal storage.
With a built-in 7100mAh battery, the device allowed me to game for far longer than is healthy, at least on a weekday. There’s an 18W fast charger and it took around two hours to get to a full charge from scratch. Initially, with light use – around 1-2 hours of video watching per day – I was looking to only plug it in once every couple of days or so, and it was definitely a relief not having to ensure it is charged at the end of each day. However, on days when I played games on it a bit obsessively, I had to plug it in after about six to seven hours of use.
The OPPO Pad Air is priced at ₹16,999 for the 4GB + 64GB version and ₹19,999 for the 4GB + 128GB version. ‘one might be looking for in a relatively affordable tablet primarily for media consumption – it’s easy to carry wherever you go, doesn’t skimp on screen real estate, delivers a fairly engaging viewing and listening experience, and offers enough power to keep you entertained for most of the day.
Published on
August 16, 2022