There is a generation of Indians for whom Android feels much more native as a platform than Windows or Mac ever could. This is why I have been looking to get rid of my Windows laptop and replace it with an Android-powered tablet for years, and the OnePlus Pad 3 finally fit the bill for me. I have been using the OnePlus tablet for over 90 days as my laptop replacement, and here’s how it fared in the real world.
One caveat before we move ahead:
The use case as a laptop replacement may only be restricted to users like me who don’t play a lot of AAA titles or need to edit videos using professional software, both of which would require you to get a Windows or a Mac device handy.
As for my use case, I spend most of my time writing stories, watching some movies, and browsing the web, for which the OnePlus Pad 3 sufficed perfectly.
How did the OnePlus Pad 3 act as my laptop replacement?
The new tablet from OnePlus comes with a 13.2-inch 3.4K 144Hz display with 900 nits HBM and a 540Hz touch sampling rate. The bigger display, compared to the 12.1-inch form factor of its predecessor, gives the OnePlus Pad 3 more real estate to play with, which does not make you remember those big displays.
This isn’t an OLED panel, which OnePlus says would have significantly bumped up the cost, but the IPS display on the Pad 3 will be good enough for most users, whether you are gaming, watching movies, or browsing the web. The 900 nits HBM ensures that you don’t have much trouble viewing even while traveling.
Another good thing with the Pad 3 is that OnePlus has trimmed down the thickness and the weight of the tablet, which measures just 5.97mm and 675g, respectively. OnePlus sells the folio case, the keyboard, and the stylus separately with the tablet. The case allows for movement of the tablet from 110 to 165 degrees, but I feel the magnets on it could have been slightly stronger. There have been a number of instances where the Pad 3 slipped from its position while adjusting the angles. The keyboard itself isn’t anything special; it will not give you the kind of feedback that you would expect from a laptop keyboard, and the lack of a backlight means you’ll have to use the lights at night while working. However, once you start using the Pad 3, these problems will slowly shift into the background.
Let’s get straight into the two reasons why I prefer the OnePlus Pad 3 as my laptop replacement.
One: the battery life, and two: the connected software experience.
The OnePlus Pad 3 comes with a 12140mAh battery with 80W SuperVOOC fast charging. While the battery is the same as last year, the Pad 3 lasted over a day and a half for me on most occasions in a usage combining 9 hours of work (writing and browsing the web), watching some movies, and listening to music. Compare that to a normal Windows PC, which lasts 4-5 hours for the same usage. I’ll give you that the current Snapdragon-powered devices have much greater battery life, but chances are your PC doesn’t have an ARM-based processor yet.
Talking about the software experience, it’s no secret by now that OnePlus’ OxygenOS is among the most fluid Android skins in the market. While I would have expected more feature upgrades from last year in terms of interconnectivity, the features that are currently here will suffice for most users.
If you are using a OnePlus phone, you will get the best experience out of this ecosystem, wherein you can connect your smartphone to the tablet to relay apps on the bigger screen, transfer content, sync notifications, share the clipboard, and, the best part, use the mobile data of the phone to run on the tablet. For someone who travels a lot, the need to not turn on Hotspot every time I have to use the internet on my tablet is a big win.
The NFC chip on the keyboard can be used to pair and instantly start sharing files with OnePlus and Oppo devices.
There are also a bunch of shortcuts that will not make you miss Windows; for instance, the Menu key + D takes you to the home screen, Alt + V opens the clipboard, and Alt + Tab opens recent tasks.
But by far, the standout feature on the Pad 3 is its split-screen mechanism called Open Canvas, which can seamlessly integrate up to three screens. The system allows you to get the best out of the screen real estate by adjusting the apps to an extent where they can even be cornered to one side of the screen.
I usually use this with AI apps like Gemini by relegating them to the corner in split screen. Once I am done writing my text, I simply slide the split screen to the other side to open Gemini for generating images, saving a lot of time in the process.
There are also all the AI-powered features on the tablet that come with other OnePlus phones, like AI Translation, AI Writer, AI Notes, Gemini Live, and Circle to Search. These features, weren’t particularly useful to my workflow but hopefully, the OxygenOS 16 update will bring some new exciting updates for the Pad 3 as well.
A few problems I faced:
The journey of using the Pad 3 as my laptop replacement has been very fruitful in the last few days, but there have been some roadblocks along the way, most of which are Android level problems rather than OnePlus problems.
No immersive view while reading:
Remember how you can press F11 to turn your current tab into reading mode where all the menus get out of the way? Well, you can’t do the same on Android. I tried at least 6-7 different browsers, from Brave to Kiwi to Edge and Firefox. None of the browsers fully hid the status bar.
Lack of good Android browsers:
On a related note, the current batch of Android browsers do not give you the same kind of customization that their Windows counterparts do. Most browsers don’t come with extension support. Some that do, don’t support split-screen. I finally ended up choosing the Edge Canary browser, which could do all of this, but even then, the third-party extensions sometimes would simply not work.
Lack of apps to use the power of Snapdragon 8 Elite:
The Snapdragon 8 Elite on the Pad 3 is among the most powerful processors that you can get your hands on, but the Android ecosystem does not give you a lot of apps and games that can fully use the power of this SoC. Hopefully, there will be better video editing apps and games for Android in the future.
Weird bug:
Lastly, I encountered a weird bug while using the Pad 3 where my connected mouse ocassionally froze for 3-4 seconds. The company seems to have fixed this problem with an OTA update, but I felt it was worth mentioning here.
Final thoughts:
The OnePlus Pad 3 currently offers the best that you can get from an Android tablet with a good-quality display, big battery life, great software, and a powerful processor. Sure, there are some problems with Android support for tablets, but that’s the price that we have been paying for years for choosing this OS. If you are looking for an Android tablet around the ₹40,000 mark, there is really no looking beyond the OnePlus Pad 3.
