With the Pad Air, Oppo is entering the European tablet market, a difficult segment if there ever was one. The Chinese brand bets on a correct product at a very affordable price. A touchscreen slate ideal for entertainment-oriented use?
Oppo has long teeth and aspires to become a major player in terms of mobility in the European market. Alongside its smartphones, the Chinese company is trying to make a foray into the tablet segment with a first product to be sold on the old continent: the Oppo Pad Air.
The idea is simple: Offer a decent tablet at a reasonable price, ergonomic and powerful enough to provide entertainment without feeling restricted. A risky bet since today touch slates are not really popular anymore and other brands like Xiaomi, Samsung Realme or Huawei jealously occupy this price segment.
It therefore remains to be determined if this Oppo Pad Air keeps all its promises. Do we have a technically correct product for its price? What about everyday use, is it enough to have fun without asking questions? Answer in this test.
price and availability
The Oppo Pad Air is already sold in France on the official Oppo website and at partner retailers. It is marketed at a price of 299 euros for the model with 64 GB of memory and 349 euros for the version with 128 GB memory. With a microSD card it is possible to add more.
Important detail: The shell is included in the price of the tablet. So there is no need to buy it separately. Therefore, we will take this into account in our judgement.
A technical sheet corresponding to the price
The Oppo Pad Air offers a technical sheet in line with its price, a little modest but that wants to be effective in what is asked of it. The tablet has a 10.36-inch 2K LCD screena usable panel at this price and an entry-level Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 processor, which seems sufficient for entertainment-oriented use.
| Oppo Pad Air | |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 245*154*6.9mm |
| Weight | 440 grams |
| Screen | 10.3″ LCD 2000×1200 pixels, 60Hz |
| processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 |
| R.A.M. | 4GB |
| Front sensor | 5MP (f/2.2) |
| Rear sensors | 8MP (f/2.0) |
| storage | 64 or 128GB |
| battery | 7000mAh |
| BONE | Android 12 + ColorOS 12.1 |
| Price | 299 euros or 349 euros |
On the photo side, the tablet is content with the minimum, with an 8-megapixel rear sensor and a 5-megapixel front sensor. Finally, the 7000mAh battery seems decent for the proposed configuration. In short, Oppo bets on a product that is certainly not very powerful, but balanced. Whether the recipe works in everyday life remains to be seen.
A clever design reduced to the essentials
With its Pad Air, Oppo wants to limit itself to the essentials and does not make any waves in terms of design. We have unibody aluminum chassis with the most classic flat edges. The only visual feature of the tablet is this slightly warped plastic strip that runs along the back. It’s discreet but you can tell.
The presence of flat edges makes for a small premium site which is not to be dissatisfied with a device around 300 euros. A design code already used by some competitors since we’ve seen it on the Realme Pad Mini or even the Galaxy Tab A8. However, we’re surprised by the button layout, with the volume buttons on one side and the power button on the other. As a result, we often look for the latter, which is placed on the left in landscape mode. Not very practical, but you get used to it eventually.
When it comes to the facade, we are back on familiar ground. Not a fart wrong, all calibrated, seen a thousand times but devilishly effective. We regret the slightly protruding edges (9mm), but overall nothing very noticeable. The screen/facade ratio is not very high at 83%, but it’s still acceptable.
The tablet is comfortable in the hands. We appreciate its slim thickness of 6.9 mm which really gives the impression of putting a record on top of a thin sheet of metal.
Its weight of 440 grams is very well balanced and can easily be taken anywhere. Due to its reduced dimensions of 245 x 155 x 6.9 mm, it is very mobile and can easily be placed in a bag.
Oppo includes a plastic cover with his tablet. If a bit cheap and rigid in use, especially at the foot level which sometimes struggles to hold well, it serves its purpose and offers some security in transit. We appreciate that it is provided and not sold separately.
Note that this is a protective case only. No integrated keyboard SO. This limits usage to simple entertainment, such as watching a movie on the train.
Oppo is not revolutionizing the world of tablets with its Pad Air. Well calibrated design terminal, it is effective and comfortable in the hand, if not original. This will be enough for users who are not looking for design at all costs. Adding a cover is a real plus.
A well-calibrated LCD screen but lacking in brightness
The Oppo Pad Air is equipped with a 10.36 inch LCD panel with a resolution of 2000 x 1200 pixels. To note that The screen is limited to 60 Hz. While that’s enough to consume content or work, it’s a little rough in 2023. We would have at least been happy with a 90 Hz screen. Damage.
The first thing that catches your eye when using the Oppo Pad Air, It is the very low brightness of the panel. An impression that is confirmed by our measurements, because our probe determined a maximum brightness of 370 cd/m². That’s little. Very little ! This means using your Pad Air outdoors is complicated. Watching a series in the park on a sunny afternoon? Unthinkable.
Also Read- Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra Review: Does Size Matter?
A pitfall that is all the more regrettable given that the rest of the specs are good for an LCD panel. The latter has a contrast of 1500:1, perfect for demanding gray tones, as well as an average temperature of 7000K, very correct and close to the 6500K of the video standard. The image pulls towards blue very slightly, but nothing very dramatic.
The average Delta E is 2.7, with only exaggerated greens. In short, it’s correct. We really regret that Oppo only offers one color mode in the options. Too bad, we would have liked to have had the choice, even if it is possible to adjust the temperature with a wet finger in the parameters.
The audio part, on the other hand, is completely missing. However, the speakers are well placed, on either side of the case, but the sound delivered is terrible. If we turn up the volume, we immediately hear a nasty distortion that is unpleasant for the ear. The sound is also unbalanced, giving nasal voices far from the punches the tablet is trying to transcribe. As the icing on the cake, we have an unsightly box effect, you can feel the chassis shaking when the volume is over 75%. In short, Oppo has tripped the carpet at this level.
Average power but controlled heating
The Oppo Pad Air isn’t a thunderbolt: it just wasn’t designed to be a high-performance machine. However, it wants to offer a smooth entertainment experience and this requires the use of a proper processor. Here is the Snapdragon 680, an entry-level SoC that was chosen.
We ran our usual series of benchmarks, of course, and the results obtained are not surprising. We have a not very powerful SoC, located at the bottom of the market, but without reaching the bottom. In fact, it means that we have a product designed for simple tasks like streaming videos, reading, browsing the web or writing emails. Don’t think of using your Pad Air as a work machine, multitasking isn’t necessarily optimized. Even gamers will not find their account there.
When the big games from the PlayStore start on it, You have to make some big concessions to take advantage of this. Genshin Impact, for example, only runs smoothly (30 frames per second) when the graphics are at their lowest. And again we have a lot of slowdowns. The result is no more conclusive in Diablo Immortal, the Blizzard game even allows us to warn that our tablet is not suitable. Only strength, the heating is well regulated; Our fingers didn’t feel any unpleasant heat on the chassis.
To use your Pad Air as a slot machine, you need to spin more to cloud gaming applications, like Microsoft’s Game Pass.
Decent battery life but no fast charging
The Pad Air has a 7000 mAh battery, which looks very decent on paper. During our usage we noticed that it dropped from 100% to 0%. in just over 11 hours of video playback, and that with the panel set to 200 cd/m². It is in the market average. On the other hand, the management of the games is a little less controlled, the autonomy melts like snow in the sun (-20% in 40 minutes), but remember that it’s not designed for such use. With normal use, it gets charged about once a week.
Oppo offers an 18 watt charger in the box, which is remarkable. On the other hand, don’t rely on fast charging as we charged the tablet back to 100% in just over two hours. A little too long.
A tablet suitable for limited use
Technically, the Pad Air harmonises perfectly with its price. For 300 euros, Oppo offers a product that is certainly not perfect, but consistent and above all suitable for entertainment-oriented use.
Color OS is a pretty nice overlay
Color OS is a pretty nice overlayIt’s the ideal tablet for anyone looking for a terminal to watch Netflix on the train or surf the web after a busy day. We clearly don’t have a product designed for productivity, evidenced by the lack of a keyboard in the shell supplied with the machine. Its 5 megapixel front camera of poor quality does not make it an ideal terminal for Visios either.
In short, a good additional tablet, but nothing more. With a 90Hz screen or a slightly more powerful processor it really could have become indispensable at this price point, but overall It is a good copy that Oppo gives us.