Oppo Pad Air review: you won’t need anything else as a sofa tablet

Oppo Pad Air is the company’s first tablet to arrive in Europe. A mid-range product on which the technical data sheet tells everything and the opposite of everything: 4 GB of RAM are few, anyone will have thought, yet the Color OS for Pad by Pad Air makes the most of them; the display is at 60 Hz, but if you contextualize them to the product van just fine. In short, Oppo Pad Air is a product that must be tried. We kept it for a long time, that’s how it went.

A tablet with a modern design. The chassis of Oppo Pad Air is as slim and boxy as many recent products it is in metal (and it was not taken for granted) and communicates a pleasant feeling of solidity: it weighs enough not to look like a cheap product. There front surface it has a perfect display in width due to its nature and with frames around it neither large nor small but uniform in thickness, which gives the feeling of having a recently conceived product in your hands.

On back instead we can argue. The gray color is very sober – the only one available – and in general the whole system of the surface is so, interrupted only by the tone-on-tone Oppo logo. What does not convince the writer, but we are in the field of personal opinions, is theplastic insert obtained in the long side of the rear camera: when you look at it turning around it with a nearby light source, as the company says, it gives a 3D effect that is also quite pleasing to the eye, what is not convincing is the sensation to the touch.

One fifth of the rear surface of Oppo Pad Air is in plastic or in any case in a material of plastic derivation, which next to the metal disappoints the fingertips. I wish I had anywhere sobriety hi tech and the pleasantness to the touch of metal, rather than a plastic solution that is nice to look at but less to touch. A tablet is mainly held in the hand, while a vase must be beautiful to look at. The regret is accentuated by the fact that the Oppo Glow processing it is scratch and fingerprint resistant as the company says, so a really good job has been done on the metal.

The physical buttons are well positioned – you could do without the switch on and off thanks to the software – and the front camera, placed where you would like it using the tablet horizontally. Too bad that we have gone to the savings on oleophobic treatment of the screen, it could have retained less fingerprints.

If I had to define Oppo Pad Air’s 10.36-inch display with one word I would say honest. Despite being an IPS i blacks are sufficiently “black”, the definition is more than good in relation to the diagonal (2K resolution that is 2,000 x 1,200 pixels, which make a density of 225 pixels per inch) and the 360 ​​nits of brightnesswhich on paper may seem few, are sufficient to make it legible even under the direct light of the October sun.

In this regard, I would like to point out that it is low even the minimum brightness, not a secondary factor for a tablet that is a tool to be used even in bed, with the lights off: it doesn’t bother you, and the twilight sensor near the front camera does its duty with punctuality. Very good. I do not even dwell on chromatic accuracy since the Oppo Pad Air “job” is another: it is a sofa tablet, professionals looking for chromatic fidelity look at other products.

On the question of refresh rate instead a few more words should be spent. Oppo Pad Air has a 60 Hz screen. Would I have wished for more? Clearly yes, and anyone with a 90 or 120 Hz smartphone would express themselves more decisively in front of animations and scrolls. It’s a mortal sin? Noit’s a choice stretched that on a product with a price tag of 300 euros, in 2022, can still pass. After all, it is a tablet with a calm nature, devoted to videos, streaming, video calls, all operations, including social networks, which at present take place at 60 Hz.

I repeat what I have just written at the end of the previous paragraph. Oppo Pad Air is a tablet that prefers ordinary operations to do on a sofa, then video calls, browsing, news, newspapers, social media, documents and, above all, video playback. Oppo’s first tablet has “scary” sound: four symmetrical 1 watt full range speakers with 0.8 cc chambers impeccable for volume (very high) and quality (relative to a tablet, it is useless to imagine jolting bass).

Audio is undoubtedly the most evident feature of Oppo Pad Air, the best arrow in his bow. Moreover, the help of Dolby Atmos puts the sound power on the right path, and makes the multimedia experience quite engaging. A real pleasure to watch something on YouTube, on Netflix (there is the Widevine L1) or elsewhere comfortable on the sofa or bed, also thanks to the TÜV certification for blue light emissions.

Too bad there is no fingerprint reader: you take refuge in unlocking on your face so as not to have to constantly type the unlock code or the classic Android sequence. But it is a 2D recognition, with its “physical” limitsunavoidable: it works well during the day or in a well-lit room, but when the light goes down, in the dark and more generally when the light or perspective are not ideal to allow the camera to see well, you have to resort to the “old ways” .

With Oppo Pad Air you can do everything: you can open heavy documents, have fun with games that are also fairly demanding, visit poorly optimized pages and therefore heavy to digest for the hardware which, however, has no record resources. The 4GB of RAM and the 8nm Snapdragon 680 can’t work wonders, so the more you ask, the more you have to be forgiving, just as after several hours of standby time you have to give them a couple of seconds to rub their eyes. The average common user plays great, but i gameslike other demanding operations, they are not his bread.

It’s a relaxation tablet to which it is better to approach without expecting immediate answers, despite being pleasant to use and free from too obvious or annoying lag. In the several days of testing I had no problems with background apps or with web browsing. I didn’t expect anything different from a product in this price range. I was surprised autonomy: never done less than 4-5 days with a recharge with the classic use from the sofa with navigation and lots of streaming, in stand-by it consumes about 5% per day. Charging is partially fast: 18 watts, but you are unlikely to be struggling with the battery. Excellent Wi-Fi reception.

I tried Oppo Pad Air with the latest firmware available at the time of writing, that is Color OS 12.1 for Pad (build A.16) with Android 12 and security patch of September 2022. Unlike the Reno8 Lite 5G, the Pad Air is almost completely lacking in bloatware, and it is an aspect that I appreciate a lot, as well as the presence of patches not too “seasoned”: no manufacturer – in an ideal world, unfortunately – should snub the release of corrective devices that lock down the devices, at least when they are new.

Oppo Pad Air comes standard with Google Kids Space, a platform of apps, books and videos dedicated to children with integrated Family Link control, the main Google apps, and the classic Color OS system apps. An inexplicable lack did not go down: there is no way – or at least, in several days in the company of him, I have not found him – to have the battery percentage within easy reach. There isn’t inside the icon and that’s fine, but the remaining percentage doesn’t even appear when you pull down the notification curtain. You have to open the settings and go to the section Battery: uncomfortable to say the least.

The Color OS for Pad is a variant optimized for larger screens. Nothing game changer, mind you, but there is no lack of the possibility of split the screen in half to place two apps side by side, there are the floating windows with a handy smart sidebar that with a swipe allows you to open a floating app of your choice at any time (screen above). Plus it screen turns on with a double tap and turns off in the same way: the power button may not be there.

It holds up despite the 4 GB of RAM, a sign that a good optimization job has been done on the interface. We will have to understand how performance will evolve over time: Oppo is expected to support Pad Air for four years, how will the hardware hold up to time and storage fill?

The camera on a tablet is only one, the front one. Mind you: the rear one is there (8 MP) and all in all it offers decent results, but on a product of this type, unlike on smartphones, it cannot be considered the main one. And I will be brief anyway, because in the overall judgment even the front one has a relative importance: the 5 megapixel sensor on the forehead takes just discreet photos and videosexpendable for video calls and little else, as long as there is no lack of light.

In difficult conditions the noise video increases considerably, but fortunately the increase is less than the loss of detail. More could be done.

If you are looking for a tablet to relax, Oppo Pad Air is perfect. It does not have a high refresh rate display, but for its vocation it is not a red pen flaw, it is forgiven (albeit great) with a reference audio for the price range, which significantly raises the level of the multimedia experience. It is well built and for what it costs, if you don’t need the performance of a sprinter, is to be recommended. Council, take it with 128 GB of storage: a tablet is a product that lasts on average for a long time, better to be “wide” with space.