OPPO Pad Air review: A cost-effective beast that emerged amid the trend of large-screen mobile phones and thin and light PCs

In the tablet computer field, whether it is Apple, Samsung or domestic manufacturers, they have always focused more on the price range above 2,500 yuan. This is not only the initial pricing of the iPad, the pioneer of the tablet category, but also the bottom line price of Apple's tablet products that has been adhered to to this day.

However, with the rapid development of mobile computing performance, it has become possible to achieve balanced performance at a lower price. While the iPad Pro gradually explores the boundaries between mobile and desktop products, the widely neglected entry-level tablets in the thousand-yuan price range have been able to meet more and more scenario-based demands.

However, it must be admitted that unlike the market positioning of thousand-yuan mobile phones that meet the rigid needs of some price-sensitive users, tablets, as a filler between mobile phones and PCs, have unclear target users. At a time when mobile phone screens are gradually challenging the limits of trouser pockets and belts, the boundaries of tablet cost-effectiveness need to be redefined.

Recently, OPPO officially released its second tablet computer, OPPO Pad Air, at a new product launch conference. It is positioned as a lightweight entry-level thousand-yuan tablet. The starting price of 1,299 yuan (1,099 yuan for the first launch) has greatly broadened the target population of the tablet computer and attracted the attention of consumers.

So, how many daily scenarios can this thousand-yuan entry-level tablet handle? Is it "only for iQiyi" or "also for productivity"? Can it even replace the 10,000-yuan Apple iPad Pro, so that your next computer, "Why iPad?"

Fortunately, I got a media review unit of OPPO Pad Air. I will try to use this review article to explore the capabilities of this new product for you and answer the above questions.

In addition, before the review begins, it should be noted that the media review machine is an engineering prototype, not the final mass production version. The system version is ColorOS for Pad 12.1, please be aware of this.

Sunset dunes, 3D texture craftsmanship highlights OPPO's aesthetics

As usual, let's start with the packaging. OPPO Pad Air uses a white, simple flat packaging, with only the host "Beautiful Photos" and the word "Pad" on the front. It is worth mentioning that the cover product color does not correspond to the real product. The OPPO Pad Air in my hand is matte black, but the cover host is star silver.

The back of the package contains information such as product specifications, model, color, capacity and serial number.

After opening the package, the OPPO Pad Air lies quietly inside, and the 10.36-inch full screen is quite visually impactful.

Take out the host, and you will find an 18W power adapter and a Type-C data cable randomly attached below.

In terms of appearance, the front of OPPO Pad Air adopts a full-screen design with equal width on all four sides. The width of the border takes into account both the grip and the visual effect, and the look and feel is excellent. A front camera on the side supports four-way face unlocking, and the unlocking speed and recognition rate are acceptable. Although the face unlocking method has been questioned in the mask era, fortunately, the tablet is still mostly used in closed indoor environments, and there are not many problems caused by other biometric unlocking such as fingerprint recognition.

The back design is a highlight of OPPO Pad Air. The upper part is a combination of the industry's first 3D texture process and the 5-layer coating streamer crystal diamond process, which can present a continuous visual effect of wind blowing through sand dunes. The lower part of the body is made of metal material with secondary sandblasting process, which feels delicate and has outstanding texture. The collision of the two materials makes OPPO Pad Air highly recognizable.

Considering the process precision and hardware cost, it is hard to believe that OPPO Pad Air is a tablet computer that costs only a thousand yuan.

The OPPO Pad Air has a body thickness of 6.94mm and weighs 440g. It has been professionally ergonomically designed to better fit the curvature of the palm, and its thin and light body feels good to hold.

From the front camera on the side and the logo on the back panel, it is not difficult to find that the official believes that OPPO Pad Air is a horizontal tablet. This is indeed the case. Except for occasionally browsing electronic magazines and comics, whether browsing the web, watching videos or working, OPPO Pad Air is mostly used in horizontal mode.

Excellent sound and picture, iQiyi phone at a price of 1,000 yuan

OPPO Pad Air uses a 10.36-inch 2K LCD screen. Official data shows that it supports 2048 levels of intelligent backlight adjustment, and the automatic adjustment function can adapt to different lighting environments.

This screen has been doubly certified by Germany's TÜV Rheinland and the National Ophthalmology Engineering Center. The low blue light eye protection can effectively reduce eye fatigue and effectively free the user's eyes from the small screen.

The screen resolution of OPPO Pad Air is 2000x1200. Although it does not seem to be outstanding compared with the current mobile phone screen data, considering the RGB arrangement of LCD, the actual number of sub-pixels is much higher than the OLED arrangement of the same resolution. Considering that the large screen is used at a farther distance, the actual viewing experience is very good.

The pixel density of the OPPO Pad Air screen is 233 PPI. In comparison, since Apple iPad supports Retina, the pixel density of the 9.7-inch New iPad (2048x1536) and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (2732x2048) are all 264. Although the price positioning is very different, the screen fineness of the OPPO Pad Air is not much behind that of the iPad.

As shown in the figure, even when displaying text, the sub-pixel rendering is delicate enough without any color fringing or obvious jagged edges because of the excellent RGB arrangement of the LCD screen.

In terms of sound, OPPO Pad Air is equipped with four symmetrical stereo speakers. The 0.8cc large-capacity sound cavity has a power of up to 1W. It has outstanding performance in all frequency bands, with clear layers and a wide sound field. It supports Dolby Atmos technology and Dolby Audio decoding, which can bring excellent sense of presence and immersion when listening to music and watching movies.

If the OPPO Pad Air screen shows a compromise in terms of cost, the sound performance can be said to be beyond expectations. Especially considering that the iPad version with four speakers starts at 5,000 yuan, the OPPO Pad Air configuration is more generous.

For users who "iQiyi after purchase", the performance of the entry-level tablet OPPO Pad Air in audio and video is definitely worth the money.

Snapdragon is in charge, and productivity can be achieved even at a cost of only 1,000 yuan

For users who buy the device with "productivity" in mind, is OPPO Pad Air enough?

First of all, in terms of performance, OPPO Pad Air is equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 mobile platform, which adopts an eight-core architecture with four Cortex-A73 and four Cortex-A53, and the GPU is Adreno 680. Although it is still a certain distance away from the flagship SoC, the 6nm process from TSMC allows this chip to take into account both performance and power consumption. At room temperature of 25℃, AnTuTu actually measured a score of 273682 points.

Before "productivity", it is better to "unfocus" for a while.

In "Honor of Kings", OPPO Pad Air can enable high frame rate, ultra-high resolution and water reflection effect, but the picture quality can only be selected as "HD". Clicking on "Ultimate" picture quality prompts "The current model is not supported yet, and we are working on optimizing it."

Enter the game and adjust the buttons in the operation interface to be closer to the edge, and you can enjoy playing "Honor of Kings" on this 10-inch tablet. The game will not feel uncomfortable or abrupt.

In the actual gaming experience, the game frame rate can be stabilized at 60 frames. Even in fierce team battles, there is basically no lag. The frame number is always maintained above 58 frames. After multiple consecutive tests, the back of the tablet is just warm. Don't question whether TSMC's process and ARM's old architecture are "still capable" because of 8 Gen 1.

Back to the topic, let's talk about "productivity". OPPO Pad Air's ColorOS has been optimized for large tablet screens. It supports multi-tasking functions such as floating windows, small windows, split screens, etc., and can be operated through simple gestures such as two-finger swipe and four-finger pinch, fully unleashing the productivity potential of the large screen.

In other words, users can display four window pages on one screen at the same time, making it easier to deal with complex office scenarios.

For example, I can open a browser to check information, open a small video window to play a tutorial, open a Zhihu APP for reference, and open WPS for text editing.

Of course, along with the OPPO Pad Air, the matching "smart Bluetooth keyboard" hardware was also announced, but this product was very popular and I didn't get it. But it doesn't matter, OPPO Pad Air also supports ordinary Bluetooth keyboard and mouse devices.

If you happen to have a smartphone running ColorOS 12 or above, you can also experience OPPO's cross-screen interconnection function, which allows you to display the phone interface on the tablet screen. Not only can you operate the phone through the tablet, share the clipboard between devices, but you can also move photos, videos and files between devices directly by dragging and dropping. For users who use multiple devices to collaborate, it can greatly improve operational efficiency.

However, it is a pity that OPPO Pad Air currently seems to only support connecting the mobile phone to the tablet, and does not support connecting the tablet to Windows or macOS. This is a big pity.

Although it is also possible to expand the computer screen through software such as Duet Display, which is similar to Apple's "On the Go" function, we still hope that OPPO can update the cross-screen interconnection function between tablets and PCs as soon as possible.

Another excellent feature of OPPO Pad Air that must be mentioned is the super recording function brought by ColorOS for Pad.

Simply put, in terms of the basic recording function, the super recording function supports quick marking at time nodes, which is convenient for later content search, and can even insert picture marks. Students can record blackboard notes, courseware slides and photos in classroom recordings, which is very close to the usage scenario.

At the same time, the Super Recording app also supports free voice-to-text conversion, which allows users to jump to the corresponding recording content through text after conversion, and vice versa. Although the voice recognition rate of Super Recording still has room for improvement, considering that similar functions on the Internet are basically paid services based on word count or time, Super Recording is still very practical, especially for classroom, meeting records and other scenarios.

Of course, there is another reason why tablet computers are popular among students and white-collar workers nowadays, that is, the stylus is more convenient and practical than the keyboard. The OPPO Pad Air also has a stylus.

The ultra-low latency smart stylus supported by OPPO Pad Air is packaged in the same style as the host.

The package includes a stylus, an AAAA battery, a metal clip for replacing the pen tip, and two replacement pen tips.

The smart stylus is silver, with a frosted body and a glossy cap. Compared to the Apple Pencil, the OPPO smart stylus is thicker and shorter, and the frosted texture makes it more stable and comfortable to hold.

The pen cap can be unscrewed to install an AAAA battery. Official claims that a single battery can last up to 1,000 hours, 10,000 hours on standby, and can be used for one year after replacement.

The stylus is very convenient to use. There is no need for pairing or other operations. You can pick it up and write at any time, simplifying the process. The stylus provides a button on the head, which can be set in the system to switch the eraser function, or to turn on functions such as the color palette. In order to prevent accidental touches when picking up or using it, this button is set to work only when you click it close to the screen. Clicks during writing or when away from the screen will be automatically filtered, fully considering the actual usage scenarios.

Because of the presence of the buttons, the stylus will soon encounter resistance and stop when rolling. You don't have to worry about the stylus rolling around and falling and getting damaged when you place it on a flat table.

The OPPO Pad Air smart stylus supports 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and 5-degree tilt detection. However, in the actual test of the built-in sticky note application, compared with the iPad mini 5 with Apple Pencil in my hand, the pressure sensitivity of the OPPO Pad Air smart stylus is not particularly sensitive to force. Light touch and hard writing will affect the handwriting, but the difference is not too big. In addition, the handwriting basically does not change when the pen tip is tilted.

Left OPPO Pad Air, right iPad mini 5

In terms of writing delay, both parties also conducted tests in the built-in note-taking application. In order to avoid reducing the access to the optimization algorithm, random doodles were performed. Under 10x slow motion, it can be seen that the Apple Pencil delay is slightly lower, but the difference between the two is not big, and both perform very well.

Top left: OPPO Pad Air, bottom right: iPad mini 5

It can be seen that the experience of OPPO Pad Air smart stylus still has room for improvement, but as the saying goes, "talking about performance without considering price is nonsense." Considering the price and function comprehensively, OPPO Pad Air smart stylus is still worth buying.

In terms of battery life, OPPO Pad Air has a large 7100mAh battery packed into its thin and light body. Official data shows that under normal conditions, watching 1080P high-definition movies on Bilibili while playing barrage can achieve up to 12 hours of worry-free viewing; using Zoom to start a video call can support 15 hours of battery life.

In actual tests, when playing the 1080p high-bitrate movie "Your Name" on Bilibili, with the brightness and volume set to medium and barrage turned on, the 106-minute movie was finished and the battery level dropped from 88% to 75%, with a battery consumption of 13%. It can be calculated that a full battery can provide about 13.6 hours of playback, which exceeds the official data. When playing "Honor of Kings" at the highest level of supported special effects, a multiplayer match lasted 16 minutes and the battery consumption was 4%. A full battery can provide about 6.6 hours of gaming.

Therefore, when you take OPPO Pad Air out with you, under normal circumstances, it can be used for a whole day as long as you don’t play games the whole time.

Remotely monitor children's learning

Since the epidemic, tablet computer sales have continued to pick up and set sales records for two consecutive years in 2020 and 2021. The surge in user demand for online courses is a reason that cannot be ignored.

As an entry-level tablet computer, OPPO Pad Air also fully considers the needs of parents buying it for their children to take online classes. It provides an application entrance called "Learning Space" in the system, building an open educational ecosystem for children.

After entering the "Learning Space", children need to use a password or obtain remote authorization from their parents' mobile phones before they can exit the application, extend usage time, etc.

And this function does not require parents to use ColorOS system phones. Any brand of mobile phone can view and control the tablet usage time through the WeChat official account, and can also authorize or reject the tablet's application for extended usage time to control the child's learning progress.

In the "Learning Space", OPPO Pad Air provides a vast amount of learning content, and you can choose the corresponding course videos according to the child's age and grade, which saves the cost of a learning tablet.

Not only that, the OPPO Pad Air "Learning Space" also provides functions such as sitting posture and distance monitoring, eye fatigue reminders, dim light reminders, etc., to continuously protect children's health in all aspects in the learning scene.

Summarize

To sum up, OPPO Pad Air is a high-value multifunctional tablet computer that is small but complete. It has greatly raised the lower limit of entry-level tablets. It brings good performance, excellent audio and video experience, unexpected office capabilities, and an extremely practical student education system at a price of thousands of yuan. It is very suitable for young people who are not sure whether they need a tablet computer, and those who need a second tablet for light office work or online classes for their children.

At a time when smartphones and smart TVs have entered the stock market from the incremental market and their sales have dropped sharply, tablets have become the hardware devices with the most imagination and growth potential. Not only did their national shipments surge 21.8% in 2021 to 28.46 million units (data source: IDC), but they also bid farewell to the era of Apple's monopoly and entered a new pattern of flourishing.

Therefore, we can see that new tablet products are emerging one after another, and we can also see that Google I/O conference regards tablet computers as the key layout for the future. However, compared with the continued arrogant layout of Apple iPad product line, OPPO Pad Air's product strategy of opening up incremental market with extreme cost performance is obviously more worthy of encouragement.

It is not difficult to find out from Apple's product updates and pricing strategies that the full-screen ID design, four speakers and stylus can all achieve a premium of around 1,000 yuan when pricing. However, on the OPPO Pad Air, all of this can be bought for more than 1,000 yuan. The difference between precise knife skills and full sincerity is evident.

Mobile phone screens are getting bigger and bigger, and PCs are getting thinner and lighter. However, tablet computers that can "support productivity, iQiyi, and even BabyBus" seem to have occupied a more solid ecological niche between the two in the current era.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.