OnePlus Pad Go 2 review: a solid Android tablet to sway iPad fans

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More so than most Android tablets, the OnePlus Pad Go 2 sets itself up as a rival to the stalwart Apple iPad that so many new slate buyers turn to. While it does as good a job as possible, and could sway some iPad users, it’s still let down by the problems that plague many mid-range tablets.

The OnePlus Pad Go 2 sells for $399.99, not including the $79.99 stylus or $44.99 folio case; while the iPad starts for $50 less, its own accessories cost more and so the prices between the two are roughly similar. Given the market dominance of the iPad, that makes the OnePlus natural competition.

Like the best Android tablets, the OnePlus Pad Go 2 shines when you’ve got a task at hand. Its large, wide-screen display is lovely for streaming movies and TV shows; its chipset packs a punch when you’re gaming; its large battery makes it an ideal travel companion. For casual or specific users, the Go 2 might be an even better value buy than the OnePlus Pad 3.

However the slate suffers from the same issue that its kin do: software, with the Android operating system simply not rivalling iPadOS for large-screen functionality despite OnePlus’ best efforts. Navigation and gestures aren’t as intuitive, not all apps and widgets are available or work natively, and the user interface simply doesn’t look as natural on the large display, leaving large pockets of emptiness.

When you’re jumping between apps or settings – that is, when you’ve not got a task at hand – it looks and feels awkward.

That’s not helped by how ill-thought-out the accessories feel. The folio is cheap-feeling and wobbly, doesn’t adequately cover the screen and doesn’t turn into any kind of stand. The stylus doesn’t have a way of attaching to the tablet when you’re travelling, and when it’s housed in the Folio, it blocks the volume buttons. For some users, accessories make or break a tablet, but here you’d be more likely to break the accessories.

Many of those pitfalls are par for the course with Android tablets, and this is a close iPad rival all things considered. But while I initially scored the slate as a 4-star model, I couldn’t help but feel the lack of any killer feature or unique angle stops it being a must-buy.

OnePlus Pad Go 2 specs

OnePlus Pad Go 2 build and display tick the boxes

Quick take: With a screen primed for entertainment, the OnePlus Pad Go 2 sis an ideal portable streaming device

The OnePlus Pad Go 2 isn’t looking to be your svelte pocketable mini-tablet; it knows you want a big screen for entertainment reasons. And so it’s a little bulkier than its near rivals and relatives, weighing just shy of 600g and being wider than an iPad, all to allow for a bigger display.

Nothing will surprise you around the edges of the tablet, with its quad speaker set-up, volume rocker, power button and USB-C port all exactly where you’d expect. The single rear lens doesn’t stick out much, so the tablet won’t be too wobbly when laid flat, but I generally kept the slate in a sold-separately case during testing.

A note on the accessories; they leave a lot to be desired. The stylus doesn’t connect to the tablet in any way, so you can’t clip it magnetically like an Apple Pencil or S-Pen. Prepare to lose it in the bottom of your rucksack a lot.

The folio case doesn’t have any useful functionality as a keyboard or stand, uses cheap-feeling plastic for its shell, and offers a cover that wobbles and contorts. It didn’t instill much faith that it’d keep the slate protected in my bag.

You might still want to buy a case, whether it’s OnePlus’ or an alternative, because the tablet doesn’t have an official IP rating. That suggests it’s not durable against moisture or fine particles.

The screen is 12.1 inches diagonally, with a 7:5 aspect ratio making it a wide display that’s suited for more for movies and TV shows than documents and work. Other specs point to this entertainment use case: the 2800 x 1980 means you can enjoy relatively high-res games, as does the 120Hz maximum refresh rate (which you’d best enjoy by going into the Settings app and enabling, as I found the default auto-select mode tended towards lower refresh rates). 

Given how much of my testing time was spent glued to the screen, I’d say it achieves its task… mostly. My one gripe is the automatic brightness was constantly turning things down, making the panel dimmer than it should be. Turning off this feature was a quick fix, but I did then have to manually adjust the brightness frequently.

The panel is LCD which doesn’t quite offer the contrast or vibrancy as the AMOLEDs many top-end Android slates have, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a tablet at this price which uses any other kind of tech.

Design score: 8/10

OnePlus Pad Go 2 performance will cover most use cases

Quick take: The OnePlus Pad Go 2 has enough power for play, though not for intensive tasks

I’m not going to pretend that the OnePlus Pad Go 2 is the fastest tablet ever made, but I’d wager that most users won’t notice the difference. It touts the MediaTek Dimensity 7300-Ultra chipset, paired with 8GB RAM.

A benchmark test revealed middling power – slightly less than the Galaxy Tab S10 FE, using a similar chip made by Samsung – but the real proof is in the pudding, and I spent a large amount of the testing period playing demanding games.

Generally speaking, titles were smooth with little lagging or stuttering, especially if I steered clear from any ‘ultra’ or ‘top-end’ graphics settings available. I never felt at a disadvantage in online games either. 

Loading times for certain single-player titles were longer than I’ve seen on other tablets, but that was the most noticeable difference between the OnePlus Pad Go 2 and top-end alternatives I’ve tested.

Outside of gaming, I found the Pad suitable for mid-intensity tasks like photo editing. I’ll admit I didn’t push it with video editing or graphics rendering, because the 7300-Ultra doesn’t seem cut out for that, but for most tasks it’s fit for purpose.

Some users might find the 128GB build-in storage a little lacking, and a 5G model with 256GB isn’t on sale in the US. Thankfully, a microSD card slot will let you add some extra space, for people who don’t want to rely on cloud storage.

Performance score: 7/10

OnePlus Pad Go 2 software is a stumble

Quick take: The OnePlus Pad Go 2 doesn’t do enough to remedy how awkward Android still feels on tablets

Myriad minor issues make the software experience on an Android tablet feel inferior to that on an iPad. That’s something we can blame Google for more than OnePlus, but it doesn’t remedy the fact that the OnePlus Pad Go 2 software feels a little rough around the edges.

My biggest issue with Android tablets is that the user interface never feels designed with large, or wide, screens in mind. The swipe-down quick-settings menu is bunched up to one side, while the home screen leaves massive gaps between apps and widgets, and sizing feels particularly awful if the slate is in a portrait orientation. 

But there are more iPadOS touches that are absent on Android: split-screening and multi-tasking with OnePlus’ Open Canvas simply isn’t intuitive, the floating task bar’s app menu and file dock are strangely slow to appear, and you have to swipe frustratingly far to bring up the notifications list or settings menu, or move between pages. OnePlus has made advances in cross-device file sharing so it’s easy and quick, particularly between the company’s phones and the tablet, but I don’t see the Pad Go 2 as being the kind of device I’d frequently manage files or photos on anyway.

OnePlus here uses Android 16, with its own OxygenOS 16 laid over the top. The key features of this Android fork lay in the realm of AI, with the notes app offering writing generation, proof-reading, polishing, formatting and table formatting. The features are turned off and are uninstalled by default, so if you don’t care about AI features, they won’t even take up your storage space. 

A few other AI features here include summarising and transcription in the Recorder app, live translation in the Translation app and various editing tools in the Photos app, as well as Gemini being built-in. All of these work about as well as AI tools generally do: the results are hit-and-miss. Transcription sometimes just wouldn’t pick up the words I’d write, and AI-written passages were as nondescript as I’ve come to expect from generative tools.

One common gripe fans have with Android tablets, is that they’re not often supported for very long. I have no such concern with the Pad Go 2, though, as OnePlus has pledged that it’ll see five years of Android updates.

That should take it up to Android 21 in the year 2030, one more year than the OnePlus 15, and I can only laud the brand for supporting its hardware for such a term.

Software score: 6/10

OnePlus Pad Go 2 battery doesn’t quite cut it

Quick take: On paper the battery seems big, but in testing it didn’t last as long as I’d expect

There’s a fairly sizable 10,050mAh battery in the OnePlus Pad Go 2; it’s not the biggest we’ve ever seen in a OnePlus tablet, but reaching five figures sends a message: this is a slate that should last you a long time between charges. ‘Should’ being the optimal word.

In most use cases, the power pack is enough to keep the slate ticking for long amounts of time. I could work for hours on end, or watch multiple episodes of a TV show, without having bouts of battery anxiety. But gaming is another matter, and I was surprised by how quickly the battery would decharge when I was trying to conquer Europe or win a firefight.

Multiple titles I tested saw battery percentage drops of 20-25% per hour, which exceeds what I’ve seen in other tablets I’ve tested, and what I’d expect from a slate like this.

If you generally game while near a wall socket that’s okay, but it meant I couldn’t rely on Total War: Medieval II to while away the entirety of my bus journey to see family at Christmas. Isn’t something like that, what a tablet is for?

The slate only supports a 33W charging speed – given that OnePlus is a pioneer in fast charging, some might find that spec a little disappointing. But there’s none of the OnePlus 15’s 120W or even the Pad 3’s 45W charging – this is, after all, more of a budget slate. 

Given that the battery can decharge quite quickly when you’re gaming, I would’ve hoped to see the percentage jump back up a little quicker. When I powered up the slate using the in-box charger, half an hour of charging took me from empty to 31%.

Battery score: 7/10

Should you buy the OnePlus Pad Go 2?

If you’ve got around $400, and you want a tablet, and you want a really good one… you’re probably already considering buying an iPad. I can’t pretend that the OnePlus Pad is a tablet that does enough to compete with the big dog on the market.

But if, for whatever reason, you don’t want an iPad and would rather stick to the Android ecosystem, then that’s when the OnePlus Pad Go 2 rears its head. If you have an Android phone and want a tablet that matches, you could do a lot worse than this slate.

It’s best suited for people who want an entertainment tablet, but don’t need anything too demanding. The screen is good, but not best-in-class. The processor will handle most tasks easily, though you can get faster if you pay more. 

For work, school or creative tasks, it’ll do the job, but the lack of an official keyboard accessory mean it wouldn’t be my first pick.

Why not try…?

iPad (2025)

I’ve compared the two enough to give the message: the iPad is the first tablet you’d consider buying if you wanted to try something different to the OnePlus Pad Go 2. 

It’s cheaper too, starting at $349, though that’s for the lowest storage variant. It can easily cost you more if you want more space, or one of Apple’s expensive accessories. And now I’m listening the negatives: iPads have never had fantastic battery lives, and they’re slow to charge up.

The positives outweigh the negatives though. iPads all have loads of processing power, great displays and software that’s ideal at transforming the slates into wonderful creative or productive tools.

OnePlus Pad 3

Like what you see in the OnePlus Pad Go 2, but want a little bit more? That’s where the Pad 3 goes in, which is best treated as the bigger sibling to the cheaper option I’ve just reviewed.

The Pad 3 has a bigger screen with more pixels, a more powerful chipset, more RAM and storage, a larger battery and much faster charging. It’s just an improvement on every point of the specs list.

All of this comes for a price, though, and the OnePlus Pad 3 starts for $699. That’s almost twice the price of this budget tab. Look at it like this: if the Pad Go 2 is an iPad rival, the Pad 3 is best put head-to-head with the iPad Air.

Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE

Another Android tablet made as a cut-price alternative to a top-powered one, and this one comes from one of the biggest slate brands on the market: Samsung.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE is a more affordable spin on the ‘standard’ S10 – although at $499 it’s slightly pricier than the Pad Go 2. For that extra cash you’re getting a slightly more powerful processor and faster charging, as well as a more streamlined build.

But it’s not a direct improvement on the Pad Go 2. OnePlus’ tablet has a bigger, higher-res screen and a larger battery. So you’re going to have to decide which specs you prefer – and if you’re willing to pay for them.

How we tested

This review was written after four weeks of testing, which follows Digital Trend’s commitment to testing products for at least as long before writing a review. Over that time I used it for a variety of tasks including streaming TV shows, playing games and writing other articles, mainly at home. Most of my testing was experiential however towards the end of the review process, I carried out some benchmark tests.