Oppo Pad Air review: A tablet that’s easy to recommend

Price under consideration

Not available in the US

Oppo has clearly thought long and hard about how to debut in the West. Instead of being rushed by a singing, dancing flagship tablet – which it is clearly capable of – the Oppo Pad Air is proving to be a very affordable competitor to the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8.

As Apple’s iPad line-up dominates the market, all the potential lies further down the ladder, leaving a few standout contenders to the throne of the £200 tablet. So, Oppo Pad Air is screaming?

With a refined design, decent display, and decent performance, it certainly makes a good first impression. Let’s see how it all fits together.

Design and build

• Slim and lightweight design
• solid colors
• No fingerprint sensor

You wouldn’t necessarily guess that the Oppo Pad Air is a £239 tablet just by seeing and holding it. It’s a stylish package with a slim (6.9mm) all-metal design and attractive iPad-style flat edges. In this sense, it is very similar to the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8.

John Mundy / Foundry

What separates the Oppo Pad Air from its Android tablet rival is the slight visual impact on the top half of its back. The softly rippled texture of this plastic panel is both distinctive and attractive, as well as a pleasure to grip when holding the tablet in portrait orientation.

Speaking of holding the Oppo Pad Air, it’s also slightly lighter than the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 at 440g (versus 509g). This will definitely affect long reading, web browsing or gaming sessions.

John Mundy / Foundry

The choice of colors is a little underwhelming – either gray or silver – but the overall impression it gives is that of a sober professional adult tablet, rather than the “my first tablet” vibe of some of the other options available.

The budget nature of the Pad Air is evident in the lack of a fingerprint sensor. It shares this omission with the Galaxy Tab A8, but it’s still a pity that this basic biometric feature wasn’t included. You’ll have to rely on a rudimentary facial recognition system that’s neither particularly secure nor completely reliable in low light.

Screen and speakers

• Bright LCD display
• 60Hz refresh rate only
• Four stereo speakers

The Oppo Pad Air features a 10.36-inch IPS display with 2000 x 1200 resolution. This is a significant improvement over the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 with a smaller TFT screen and 1920 x 1080 resolution, with brighter colors and better viewing angles.

John Mundy / Foundry

It hits 355 nits of brightness, which isn’t particularly bright at all, though it again beats its Samsung rival. Color accuracy isn’t amazing either, but the 89% sRGB and 64.5% Adobe RGB gamut coverage outperforms the Galaxy Tab A8, and the Delta E average of 2.74 – while far from exemplary – also comfortably outperforms its younger competitor.

It’s a pity that the display refresh rate doesn’t exceed 60Hz, but to be honest, that’s not what we expect from such an affordable tablet at the moment. Apple still ships its iPads and iPad Airs with this specification, and they sell for hundreds more. With that said, the Redmi Pad has been launched with a 90Hz screen for just a bit more money (£269).

John Mundy / Foundry

All in all, it’s a solid canvas for video and web media content. This is further enhanced by the Oppo Pad Air’s stereo speakers. There are four of them, two on each side when held in landscape, and they sound good for the money.

Characteristics and performance

• Snapdragon base chipset
• Handles simple games
• 64 GB of base memory

Oppo has equipped its tablet with the Snapdragon 680 4G processor we’re used to seeing in budget phones like the Realme 9 4G and Redmi Note 11.

It’s not a very powerful component, but it doesn’t have to be either. There are no claims that this is a tool for power users, and the processor does not need to drive a display with a high refresh rate.

In terms of benchmarking, the Oppo Pad Air comfortably outperforms the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 in CPU-focused Geekbench 5, but falls short in all GPU-focused GFXBench benchmarks. As for the latter, it’s worth remembering that the Oppo Pad Air comes with a higher resolution display than its affordable rival, which certainly takes its toll. In all respects, it is higher than the Nokia T20.

When it comes to gaming, the Oppo Pad Air is better suited for light 2D mode. Even when running games like Slay the Spire, you’ll get a control pause when the moment of death hits, reliably letting you know you’re playing on humble hardware. If you need more power, the next best choice on Android is the Xiaomi Pad 5, which starts at £369.

Apart from the Snapdragon 680 4G, the Oppo Pad Air is equipped with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. Entry-level storage is double that of the Galaxy Tab A8, which is another advantage Oppo has. Other territories also have 4+128GB and 6+128GB options.

Camera

• Disgusting 8MP rear camera.
• Main 5-megapixel selfie camera
• Suitable for video calls, nothing more

We can easily sum up the Oppo Pad Air’s single 8MP rear camera: it’s pretty terrible, but you don’t have to worry about that.

John Mundy / Foundry

Unlike smartphones, the camera is perhaps the least important component of any tablet, especially when it comes to such an affordable tablet. Most people don’t take pictures with their 10-inch tablet, so the bare minimum is acceptable.

Which is good news, because the bare minimum is exactly what you get here. In several shots I took with the Oppo Pad Air camera, camera detail was poor, exposure was off, and the sensor struggled with dynamic range. It also failed to focus properly from time to time.

Elsewhere, there is no dedicated night mode, and shooting in low light will result in a lot of noise. You won’t find any flash here either.

There’s a 5MP selfie camera on the front, but you really shouldn’t rely on it for anything other than video calls.

Battery life and charging

• Big battery for the price
• Faster charging than other budget competitors

The Oppo Pad Air’s 7040mAh battery is a decent size for such a modest 10-inch tablet. If you’re a casual user, it will last a few days on a single charge, and I was impressed with how little power it consumed when I left it more or less untouched for a couple of days. This is a great tablet for casual use.

Our usual PCMark 3.0 battery life test didn’t complete on the Pad Air, apparently due to an annoying low battery notification that caused the app to close at a key moment. However, a quick look at the battery settings menu showed that the tablet lasted between 8 and 8 hours and 30 minutes in this cycle test.

John Mundy / Foundry

That would place it slightly behind the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8, well ahead of the Nokia T20, and roughly on par with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite.

Oppo ships its tablet with an 18W wired charger that can charge the tablet from 0 to 23% in 30 minutes. It’s hardly fast, but much faster than the Galaxy Tab A8.

Software

• Comes with Android 12
• Launches Oppo ColorOS heavy shell

Oppo has outfitted its tablet with Android 12. It’s not the latest version of Google’s OS anymore, but that doesn’t really matter since it’s got a heavy Oppo ColorOS 12 skin on top.

ColorOS is unobtrusive, with a fairly clean design and simple icons. But it’s a bit different from stock Android than we’d like, with a heavily redesigned notification bar and settings menu.

John Mundy / Foundry

Fortunately, this does not affect viruses too much. Aside from the usual set of homemade tool apps (calculator, compass, etc.), there are almost no extraneous settings in it. You get Netflix pre-installed, but that’s a worthwhile inclusion on a device that’s pretty much built for casual video streaming.

Price and availability

The Oppo Pad Air is already available for purchase on Oppo’s own website and Amazon. It’s on sale from Oppo for £199 at the time of writing, but has a suggested retail price of £239.

We only see a 64GB model available for purchase in the UK, but Oppo’s UK website lists a 128GB variant in the spec sheet.

There don’t appear to be any plans to launch the Oppo Pad Air in the US, but we’ll update this review if that changes at any point.

John Mundy / Foundry

If you’re still unsure, check out our ranking of the best budget tablets to see what else there is.

Verdict

The Oppo Pad Air is a great full-sized budget tablet that matches its key rival, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8, in many ways and outperforms it in others. Its design seems to be perfect, with a solid all-metal body and four stereo speakers.

However, its IPS LCD is crisper and of superior quality, making everything from media playback to web surfing and gaming look and feel better on an Oppo tablet. The performance is pretty mediocre, but it’s perfect for the normal tasks you’d expect from the Pad Air.

Battery life is great, and the Oppo Pad Air has an impressive ability to sip juice when not in use, making it a solid tablet for occasional use. If you have less than £250 to spend on your next tablet, the Oppo Pad Air will do the job with a fair amount of poise.

Specifications

• Android 12 with ColorOS 12
• 10.36″ 2K IPS LCD 60Hz flat panel
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 4G
• 4GB LPDDR4X RAM
• 64/128 GB memory
• 8 MP, main camera f/2.0
• Front camera 5 MP
• 4 stereo speakers
• WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
• Bluetooth 5.1
• battery 7100 mAh
• charging 18 W
• 245.08 x 154.84 x 6.94 mm
• 440g
• Launch Colors: Grey, Silver