With the Pad Air, Oppo is entering the European tablet market, a difficult segment if ever there was one. The Chinese brand is betting on a correct product at a very affordable price. A touchscreen slate ideal for entertainment-oriented use?
Oppo has long teeth and seeks to become a major player in mobility on the European market. In parallel with its smartphones, the Chinese firm is attempting an incursion into the tablet segment with a first product 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 limited. A risky bet, given that touch slates are no longer really popular today and that other brands, such as 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 daily 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 as well as at partner resellers. It is marketed at the price of 299 euros for the model with 64 GB of storage and 349 euros for the version with 128 GB of storage. It is possible to add more with a microSD card.
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 it into account in our verdict.
A technical sheet in line with the price
The Oppo Pad Air offers a technical sheet in line with its price, something modest, but which wants to be effective in what is asked of it. The tablet has a 10.36-inch 2K LCD screena suitable panel at this price, as well as an entry-level Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 processor which seems sufficient for entertainment-oriented use.
| Oppo Pad Air | |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 245 x 154 x 6.9mm |
| Weight | 440 grams |
| Screen | 10.3″ LCD 2000×1200 pixels, 60Hz |
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 |
| RAM | 4GB |
| Front sensor | 5MP (f/2.2) |
| Rear sensors | 8MP (f/2.0) |
| Storage | 64 or 128 GB |
| Battery | 7000mAh |
| BONE | Android 12 + ColorOS 12.1 |
| Price | 299 euro or 349 euro |
On the photo side, the tablet is satisfied with the minimum with an 8-megapixel rear sensor and a 5-megapixel front sensor. Finally, the 7000 mAh battery seems decent for the proposed configuration. In short, Oppo is betting on a product that is certainly not very powerful, but balanced. It remains to be seen whether the recipe works on a daily basis.
A wise design that goes to the essentials
With its Pad Air, Oppo wants to go to the essentials and does not make waves in terms of design. We have unibody aluminum chassis with the most classic flat edges. The only visual peculiarity of the tablet is this slightly warped plastic strip that runs on the back cover. It’s discreet, but it allows you to recognize it.
The presence of flat edges gives a small premium side which is not to displease on a terminal at 300 euros. A design code already used by some competitors, since we have seen it on the Realme Pad Mini or even on the Galaxy Tab A8. We’re surprised by the button layout, though, with the volume keys on one side and the power button on another. 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.
Regarding the facade, we are once again on familiar ground. Not a fart wrong, everything is calibrated, seen a thousand times, but devilishly effective. We regret the slightly prominent edges (9 mm), but overall, nothing very noticeable. The screen / facade ratio is not very high, at 83%, but it is still acceptable.
In hands, the tablet is pleasant. We appreciate its thinness of 6.9 mm which really gives the impression of having a slab placed on a thin metal plate.
Its weight of 440 grams is extremely well balanced and allows you to easily carry it everywhere with you. Its reduced dimensions of 245 x 155 x 6.9 mm make it very mobile and it will easily find its place in a bag.
Oppo provides a plastic cover with his tablet. If it is a little cheap and rigid in use, especially at the level of the foot which sometimes has difficulty in holding well, it fulfills its contract and provides a certain security during transport. We appreciate that it is provided and not sold separately.
Note that this is only a protective cover. No integrated keyboard, SO. As a result, it limits use to simple entertainment, such as watching a movie on the train, for example.
Oppo is not revolutionizing the world of tablets with its Pad Air. Well-calibrated design terminal, it is effective and pleasant in 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 definition of 2000 x 1200 pixels. To note that the screen is limited to 60 Hz. Admittedly, this is enough to consume content or work, but it is a bit rough in 2023. We would have appreciated a 90 Hz screen at least. Damage.
The first thing that strikes while using the Oppo Pad Air, it is the very low brightness of the panel. An impression confirmed by our measurements, since our probe determined a maximum brightness of 370 cd / m². This is little. Very little ! This means that it is complicated to use your Pad Air outdoors. Watching a series in a park on a sunny afternoon? Unthinkable.
Read also – Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra test: does the size matter?
A pitfall all the more regrettable as the rest of the data is good for an LCD panel. The latter displays a contrast of 1500:1, perfect for discerning shades of gray, as well as an average temperature of 7000K, very correct and approaching the 6500K of the video standard. The image pulls very slightly towards blue, but nothing very dramatic.
The average Delta E is 2.7, with only exaggerated greens. In short, it is correct. Our big regret is that Oppo only offers one color mode in the options. Too bad, we would have liked to have the choice, even if it is possible to adjust the temperature with a wet finger in the parameters.
The audio part, meanwhile, is totally missed. The speakers are however well located, on either side of the chassis, but the sound delivered is terrible. Turning up the volume, we immediately hear a nasty distortion that is unpleasant to the ear. The sound is also unbalanced, which gives nasal voices very far from the stamps that the tablet tries to transcribe. The icing on the cake, we have an unattractive box effect, you can feel the chassis shaking when the volume is above 75%. In short, Oppo has tripped over the carpet at this level.
Average performance, but controlled heating
The Oppo Pad Air is not a thunderbolt: it was simply not designed as a high-performance machine. However, she wants to provide a smooth experience for entertainment and this requires the use of a correct processor. Here is the Snapdragon 680, an entry-level SoC, which was chosen.
We obviously carried out our usual battery of benchmarks and the results obtained are not surprising. We have a not very powerful SoC, located in the lower range of the market, without however reaching the bottom. In fact, this means that we have a product designed to perform simple tasks, such as streaming videos, reading, browsing the net or writing emails. You should not think of using your Pad Air as a work machine, multitasking is not necessarily optimized. Gamers will not find their account there either.
If the big games from the PlayStore launch on it, you’re going to have to make some big concessions to take advantage of it. Genshin Impact, for example, runs smoothly (30 frames per second) only when its graphics are at their lowest. And again, we have a lot of slowdowns. The result is not more conclusive on Diablo Immortal, the Blizzard game even allows us to warn that our tablet is not suitable. Only strong point, the heating is well managed; our fingers do not encounter unpleasant heat on the chassis.
To use your Pad Air as a game machine, you will have to turn 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 use, we noticed that it dropped from 100% to 0% in just over 11 hours of video playback, and this with the panel set to 200 cd / m². It is in the market average. On the other hand, the management is a little less controlled on the games, the autonomy melting like snow in the sun (-20% in 40 minutes), but remember that it is not designed for such use. In normal use, it is recharged approximately once a week.
Oppo provides an 18 Watt charger in the box, which is appreciable. On the other hand, do not rely on fast charging, since we repowered the tablet to 100% in just over two hours. A little bit too long.
A tablet suitable for limited use
Technically, the Pad Air is in perfect harmony 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.
It is the ideal tablet for those looking for a terminal to watch Netflix on the train or to surf the net after a hard day. We clearly do not have a product designed for productivity, evidenced by the lack of keyboard in the shell supplied with the machine. Its 5 megapixel front camera, of poor quality, does not make it an ideal terminal either for visios.
In short, a good extra tablet, but nothing more. It really could have become essential in this price segment with a 90 Hz screen or a slightly more powerful processor, but overall, it is a good copy that Oppo gives us.
