OnePlus Pad Lite review: For the price, gets it absolutely right

By launching its most affordable tablet yet in the Indian market, OnePlus is indicating two clear trends. First, Indians are buying tablets and increasingly so now, and the learnings from the OnePlus Go from a couple of years ago have been revised well. Equally, there are certain equalities with their more premium Android tabs, such as the OnePlus Pad 2 and the OnePlus Pad 3. Also gives OnePlus a little more in the arsenal against Xiaomi’s very capable Redmi Pad line-up.

The OnePlus Pad Lite is well built, good to hold and has the sort of finishing that doesn’t immediately betray its pricing. (Vishal Mathur/ HT Photo)

Speaking of which, the OnePlus Pad Lite’s pricing which starts around ₹15,999 for the 6GB memory and 128GB storage spec (a step up is 8GB+128GB and LTE for ₹17,999), will compete with the Xiaomi Redmi Pad 2, which is priced ₹13,999 onwards, and also balances Wi-Fi and LTE spec options. At this stage, one can confidently recommend a budget Android tablet, since these are far superior than anything Lenovo or Nokia or Honor have sold at these price points, over the years.

For starters, OnePlus’ choice of Aero Blue as the only colour option going on sale in India, deserves a hat tip. This is a marked move away from the fatigue that’s set in for the conventional blacks and greys that usually dot tech product lines. This blue, with a very nice matte finish (that also helps with grip), is a good balance to find among the many shades of choice. You’ll notice a duality of colour on the back, and that adds a subtle visual cue. The OnePlus Pad Lite is well built, good to hold and has the sort of finishing that doesn’t immediately betray its pricing. That’s always a good thing.

The 11-inch display, which is primarily the spec that puts the OnePlus Pad Lite in direct comparison with the Redmi Pad 2 for anyone who’s choosing one. The OnePlus Pad Lite does well enough in terms of viewing angles, brightness levels and colours. For most potential buyers, it may tick all the boxes, but the context of having used the Redmi Pad 2m brings forth the element of pixels — the OnePlus Pad Lite has a 1900x1200 resolution, while the display Xiaomi has used, golds 2560x1600 which is comparatively sharper with text.

Performance, if we are to test very closely with synthetic benchmarks, may vary slightly between the two — the OnePlus Pad Lite is powered by the MediaTek Helio G100 chip while the Redmi Pad 2 gets the MediaTek Helio G100 Ultra. Most users couldn’t care less about synthetic benchmark scores, and in that realm, performance doesn’t betray any superiority or inferiority. The OnePlus Pad Lite is fairly fast in responding to your aspirations of opening new apps even under a fair load of multi-tasking, as well as switching between them. Only occasionally may you bear witness to a momentary pause as things move along, but that could also be attributed to app optimisations and background processes. At no point does the OnePlus Pad Lite leave a user complaining about performance — as long as you remember what you brought this for.

Software is familiar, and that includes OnePlus tablets and to a large extent, phones too. Screen Mirroring from the phone to the tablet should be useful if you have a OnePlus phone too, and as would be clipboard sharing to copy and paste between devices. Open Canvas is easy to get the hang of, as you would want to, for sharing the screen space between more than one app — the ideal is two side-by-side, and that’s what Canvas does for now. Kids Mode is useful, if there is an intention to share the tablet with a young one at home. That said, the lack of placement for the OnePlus AI suite is disappointing, though circle to search (that’s a Google Gemini feature, theoretically) is there. As is AI transcription for voice recordings.

The OnePlus Pad Lite is, and there’s little doubt, a compelling option in the budget Android tablet segment that’s slowly but surely firming up with better quality and specs. At ₹15,999, it also represents OnePlus’ strategic push into what would assume is the price segment where a large chunk of growth in India’s tablet market is going to come from. There is a definitive OnePlus-esque refinement that the OnePlus Pad Lite brings to the table, a collective of the software and hardware in play. Ideally, a dependable Android tablet for media consumption, light productivity, and family use — without breaking the bank.