Artist Review: OnePlus Pad 3 with OnePlus Stylo 2

Not a sponsored review

The OnePlus Pad 3 is a 13.2-inch Android 15 tablet released in June 2025. This tablet is actually a rebrand of the Oppo Pad 4 Pro, and the OnePlus Stylo 2 pen is a rebrand of the Oppo Pencil 2 Pro. The Oppo tablet uses China ROM while OnePlus Pad 3 has the global ROM for international customers.

Upgrades from the previous OnePlus Pad 2 are:

• Snapdragon 8 gen 3 to Snapdragon 8 Elite
• RAM increased from 8GB & 12GB to 12GB abd 16GB
• Display size increased from 12.1 to 13.2-inch, with higher resolution
• Number of speakers increased from 6 to 8 (4 woofer, 4 tweeters)
• Android 14 to 15. Oxygen OS 14 to 15.

The price increase is quite significant, from from USD 549 to USD 699 for the model with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage.

While the tablet has some good upgrades, the pen is the same OnePlus Stylo 2 released together with the OnePlus Pad 2, and the performance isn't as good compared to competition.

Bottom line

The OnePlus Pad 3 is a well made tablet that looks and feels premium. You can expect powerful performance from the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor and smooth animation from the 144Hz refresh rate. Display is bright, vibrant and sharp. Audio quality is excellent. The hardware is great.

The 7:5 display aspect ratio is the main selling point to me. 7:5 aspect ratio is better for productivity compared to 16:10 or 16:9 because given a fixed width, the 7:5 aspect ratio shows more vertical content, and it's also more usable in portrait orientation. Downside is you'll get thick black bars at the top and bottom when watching videos in fullscreen.

By the way, not having an OLED display is not a downside to me.

My first impression of the price is it's expensive, but when you consider there aren't many tablets with Snapdragon 8 Elite processors at the same pricing, the USD 699 seems more reasonable. You can still get cheaper tablets that have good performance unless you know you want the best processor in your Android tablet.

Other tablets you can also consider around this price point are:

• 12.7-inch Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus for SGD 729 (USD 569) with Snapdragon 8 gen 3, pen included
• 11.2-inch Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro for SGD 629 (USD 492) with Snapdragon 8 gen 3, pen sold separately
• 12.4-inch Samsung Tab S9+ for SGD 1019 (USD 799) with Snapdragon 8 gen 1, pen included

Specifications

Video review

Pricing

Official retail price of the tablet with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage is USD 699.

Here in Singapore, prices are lower than the US prices:

• 12GB RAM & 256GB storage: SGD 649 (506)
• 16GB RAM & 512GB storage: SGD 699 (USD 545)

The OnePlus Stylo 2 pen is sold separately for USD 99.

I managed to purchase my tablet and pen together at SGD 510 (USD 399) from Shopee SG thanks to SGD 200 voucher that appear out of nowhere. The average discounted price on Shopee SG is around SGD 580 without the pen.

Things included

In the box, you will get the tablet, quick start guide and a red USB-A to USB-C cable. There's no charger included.

OnePlus Stylo 2 is sold separately, and in that box you'll get the pen, quick start guide and one replacement pen nib.

I did not buy the original OnePlus flip case and keyboard case because those are overpriced. I had bought a generic US$10 flip case instead.

Design

Design of the tablet looks clean and simple. The design actually looks like the many other Android tablets out there with thin bezels with rounded corners for the body and display. Edges are beveled so the tablet is comfortable to hold. Build quality is excellent. It's a tablet that looks and feels premium.

There's a landscape 8MP camera with face unlock and auto-brightness. Face unlock is not the secure-type so it cannot be used to unlock banking apps.

The back is matte textured metal. There's rear 13MP camera with a flash. The camera bump is big so it's best to get a case to prevent scratches.

This tablet has 8 speakers (4 woofers and 4 tweeters) and the audio quality is fantastic. Audio is loud, clear and there's a decent amount of surround.

The USB-C port has USB 3.2 gen 1 transfer speed (5Gbps), video output (mirror mode only) and supports fast charging up to 80W. Generic high-power GaN chargers can charge the tablet fast but to get the 80W charging you'll have to use the OnePlus SUPERVOOC 80W charger which is sold separately. I don't think there's a need to buy the OnePlus charger if you already have a high-power GaN charger.

The tablet does not have any microSD card slot, so make sure you get enough storage, either 256GB or 512GB.

Weight of the tablet is 675g which isn't considered too heavy for a 13.2-inch tablet. The big size of the tablet together with the weight does make the tablet more unwieldy to handle with one hand compared to a smaller 11-inch tablet. You can consider this a table-top tablet.

When drawing, I'll always have it on my Parblo PR100 tablet stand. When not drawing, it's on an elevated tablet stand.

If I'm using the tablet outdoors for sketching, I'll definitely have the tablet on a table or on my lap.

Shown above is the 13-inch M4 iPad Pro beside the OnePlus Pad 3 (right). The two tablets look very similar because of the size and aspect ratio. The OnePlus Pad 3 can be considered as an alternative for the 13-inch iPad Air or iPad Pro if don't want to buy the Apple tablets for some reason, but there are many differences of course besides the looks, e.g. OLED vs LCD, iPadOS vs Android, app variety.

OnePlus Pad 3 uses the 7:5 aspect ratio which is better for productivity but for watching videos you'll get thicker black bars at the top and bottom. Android tablets that use the 16:10 aspect ratio are more suited for watching videos.

The advantage of the 7:5 aspect ratio is this is more usable in portrait orientation. When in portrait orientation, the display is wider and less narrow compared to 16:10. When drawing, there's more space to rest you palm, or show the UI.

I find that web pages also look better due to the extra width in portrait orientation.

The 7:5 aspect ratio is one of the main selling points of this tablet. If you don't find value in this aspect ratio, you should consider other tablets instead.

OnePlus Pad 3 is almost the size of an A4-size paper. There's plenty of space for drawing, or note taking, for anything you may want to do on this tablet. Other advantages of having a big display is multi-tasking split screen mode works better and the tablet works great as a wireless external display with wireless external display apps.

Display

Resolution of the 13.2-inch IPS LCD is 3392 x 2400 with pixel density of 315PPI. Brightness is up to 600 nits with high-brightness mode up to 900 nits. This is a bright, vibrant and sharp display.

I don't like how reflective the display is since there's no anti-reflective coating.

Colours on the LCD look great. OnePlus advertised 98% DCI P3 colour gamut. Even though this tablet is not using an OLED display, it's not really a deal breaker to me. A good LCD can still look great. Viewing angle of this display is wide with minimal colour shift and drop in brightness.

The tablet has this Adaptive Tone feature which can adjust its colour temperature automatically but this feature does not work well because the colour temperature shift can be quite dramatic so it's better to tweak the colour temperature manually.

The display is laminated so there's no gap between the LCD and the glass surface, so parallax is not noticeable.

The 144Hz adaptive refresh rate does make the tablet look and feel very responsive. However, the 144Hz refresh rate actually does not improve or affect the latency. There's still noticeable latency when drawing and writing on the tablet, and the amount of latency will vary depending on the app used. Shown above is the Medibang Paint app which usually has more noticeable latency, and my main drawing app Concepts has better latency performance. Anyway, latency is not really a big issue when writing or drawing. Apple and Samsung tablets do have better latency performance than the OnePlus Pad 3.

Performance

This tablet is using the Snapdragon 8 Elite processor which is the latest and best processor for Android tablets in 2025. The processor obvious has no issues with running graphics intensive games.

This tablet can be purchased with either 12-16GB RAM and even 12GB RAM is more than sufficient for most users. The reason to go for 16GB RAM is so that you can get 512GB storage instead of 256GB storage.

12GB RAM allows you to keep many apps in memory without having reload apps often, even for apps opened a long time ago.

Oh, apps are also quick to launch, and the Wifi download speed is really fast, and that reminds me that this tablet does not support cellular.

OS and software

OnePlus Pad 3 is running on OxygenOS 15 on top of Android 15. The tablet will get 3 Android OS updates and security patches up to Jun 2031.

OxygenOS has many useful features that you can discover from the Settings, eg. double tap to sleep, tap to wake.

The side panel lets you add shortcuts that you can access from any page.

Even though the tablet is big, the dock can only fit six apps together with the app drawer on the left and recent apps on the right. This is a downside and limitation from OnePlus Pad 2.

Another downside is there's still no way to rotate portrait apps when using the tablet in landscape orientation. You have to use a third party app to help with rotating specific apps.

There is no desktop or PC mode like SamsungDex.

OnePlus file management does not have Integration with OneDrive and Google Drive.

Pen

OnePlus Stylo 2 is the pen that was released with OnePlus Pad 2. One replacement pen tip is included in the box. To find pen tip replacement, just search AliExpress for "oppo pencil 2 pen tips"

The pen is made with plastic and feels quite solid. The surface is rough and provides good grip.

The pen can attach to the side of the tablet for charging and Bluetooth pairing. You keep the pen by attaching it to the side of the tablet, so the next time you use the pen, the battery life is almost always full, so you don't have to worry about the pen running out of battery halfway.

Line tests

Line tests below were created with Medibang Paint.

1. Initial activation force of the pen is low enough but I find it difficult to draw thin lines when a thick brush is selected. There's a tendency to draw thicker lines, and there's pressure variance with the lines even if you do your best to maintain consistent pressure when drawing with a light touch.

There's slight wobble or jitter with diagonal lines that are drawn slowly, or sometimes drawn with moderate speed.

2. Lines are able to taper smoothly and sharply.

3. It is difficult to draw thin lines after drawing thick lines. This tells me the pen has difficulty detecting minimal changes in pressure when drawing with minimal pressure. There's also diagonal line wobble and pressure variance.

4. Lines with consistent width can be drawn easily by maintaining consistent pressure. Note the diagonal line wobble.

5. Dots can be drawn easily.

6. There are no issues with cursor misalignment.

Performance with tilt sensitivity varies depending on the app. Tilt does not work consistently with Infinite Painter and Concepts. Tilt works better with Sketchbook. Of course I am not able to test tilt sensitivity with all the drawing apps.

OnePlus Stylo 2 pen performance is quite similar to an USI pen. Diagonal line wobble and pressure variance will affect drawing accuracy, so this pen is not at the minimal standard required for creating professional art.

Tablet works well enough for note taking. Below's a video on the note taking experience. There's noticeable wobble with some of lines which are meant to be smooth. The lines are mostly uniform so there's no obvious thin and thick variance that gives the lines character.

Drawing experience

Drawing experience is affected by the pen performance, how smooth the pen tip is on the glass and palm rejection.

This was drawn with Medibang Paint. Sometimes the lines would not taper. Some of the line are affected by diagonal line wobble.

There are occasional issues with palm rejection. Resting my palm on the display may activate double-tap undo and it's very annoying when that happens.

I find the pen tip to glide too smoothly on the glass surface. This is good for writing because when writing you want to write fast, but for drawing you don't want the pen to glide that easily. I'm not sure if matte screen protectors are available for this tablet yet, but using one on the display will affect the image quality.

This was also drawn with Medibang Paint

This too.

This car drawn with Medibang Paint has many diagonal lines, and many of them are affected by diagonal line wobble. The diagonal line wobble may not be obvious when looked at the scaled down image of the drawing, but if you look closely you can definitely see that the lines are affected by the wobble, and that affects the accuracy of the drawing, even for a simple sketch like this.

This was drawn with Concepts app.

This was drawn with Concepts app.

The pen and tablet is good enough for casual drawing but I won't recommend it to anyone thinking about creating professional art because the pen performance is not up to standard.

Battery life

Battery life is around 12-15 hours with auto brightness. Battery life is incredible.

Conclusion

The hardware is amazing.

The 7:5 aspect ratio is a key selling feature. If you don't see value with this aspect ratio, you should just look at other Android tablets because nowadays there are many Android tablets with good hardware out there too. Even an Android tablet with Snapdragon 8 gen 3 is no slotch.

The Open Canvas multi-tasking feature is another key selling point. Switching between apps is so fluid and fast.

OnePlus should definitely work on the software because there are still

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Premium feel
+ Comfortable to hold in hand
+ Big. vibrant, bright, sharp display
+ 144Hz refresh rate
+ 7:5 aspect ratio is good productivity with landscape and portrait orientation
+ Fantastic sound quality
+ Fast, smooth, responsive performance
+ Good gaming performance
+ Open Canvas multi-tasking works really well
+ Face unlock is effective and fast
+ 12-15 hours of battery life
+ 80W fast charging
+ Pen can be attached to the tablet for charging and pairing
+ 12GB or 16GB RAM options
+ Android 15
- Slight jitter or wobble with diagonal lines
- Pen has difficult detecting minor changes in pressure
- Palm rejection is not flawless
- Weight can be an issue when holding for long
- Adaptive Tone does not work well
- No headphone jack
- No full backup options
- Pen is sold separately
- Display too slippery for the pen
- No microSD card slot
- Portrait apps cannot rotate when tablet is in landscape orientation
- Dock can only fit six app selection
- File browser has no integration with cloud storage services
- Most apps cannot take advantage of the 2ms pen latency
- 7:5 aspect ratio will have huge black bars at the top and bottom for 16:9 video content
- Face unlock cannot be used with high security apps, e.g. bank apps
- Much higher price point

Availability

OnePlus Pad 3 is available on Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | ES)

The tablet is also available on Shopee SG.