Oppo Pad Air review – the affordable tablet that punches above its weight

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• VERDICT

The Oppo Pad Air is an affordable entry level tablet that delivers quality, features and performance you’d usually find on more expensive devices.

We already know Oppo for its smartphones but the company has now released its first tablet in Australia – the Pad Air – which is a handy companion for work, play and travel.

Yes, the name of the product sounds almost exactly like a popular Apple tablet, but that’s where the similarity ends.

Priced at $379, the Oppo Pad Air is certainly affordable. And the cover is an extra $79.

On the design side, the device certainly punches above its weight and includes a two-tone metal splicing design with 3D texture on the rear panel which helps prevent those ugly fingerprints.

And the Pad Air is just 6.94mm thick and weighs just 440g.

The 10.36-inch display has a resolution of 2000 x 1200 with a screen to body ratio of 83.5 per cent.

It also has a 60Hz refresh rate and can display more than a billion colours.

The Pad Air screen has a wider aspect ratio that’s perfect for viewing movies and other video content like YouTube.

But it’s not the best shape for viewing websites or reading documents but turn it on its side to portrait mode and you have an oversized smartphone-shaped screen.

This makes viewing websites and social media apps like Instagram and TikTok even easier as well.

Our content on the Pad Air looked impressive.

It also sounded good as well through the built-in quad Dolby Atmos speakers.

Now we’ve heard better quality audio on a tablet but, given the affordable price, the Pad Air delivered a surprisingly good result.

The Pad Air is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 (CPU) and the Adreno 610@1115MHz (GPU) so performance well above an entry level tablet.

It is running Android with Oppo’s ColorOS 12.1 which gives it a clean and minimal look while still offer easy navigation of the system and the tablet’s features.

Realistically, the Pad Air won’t challenge the iPad Pro in terms speed and power, but it will give you enough grunt for basic tasks like creating and editing documents, playing games, reading eBooks and watching movies.

On the battery side, the Pad Air has 7,100mAh capacity which provides days of power with light usage of a full day of video viewing.

That’s another plus for the tablet at this price point.

It also supports fast charging as well when it’s time to power up again – but you’re not getting the legendary Oppo faster VOOC charging.

Onboard is 64GB of storage but the good news is you can expand the memory with a microSD card.

It has a front 5-megapixel camera and rear 8-megapixel camera which will do the job for basic images and full high-definition video calls.

There are a few limitations with the Pad Air including its lack of a stylus and any clear ability to write on the screen.

It doesn’t have a headphone jack, but it has Bluetooth 5.1 to easily pair earphones and headphones to listen to your music and enjoy your video content.

The Oppo Pad Air is ideal for the customer looking for an affordable tablet with a view of consuming more content than they create.

The Oppo Pad Air is available now and is priced at $379. The cover for Pad Air is available separately for $79.

VERDICT

The Oppo Pad Air is an affordable entry level tablet that delivers quality, features and performance you’d usually find on more expensive devices.