WED, AUG 7
NimishAndAkriti
There was a time when a tablet was supposed to be, well, a tablet. The "third screen" that lay between a notebook and a phone, mainly to look at content. That phase passed, and now it is rare to see a high-end tablet being released without a tablet or a stylus of some sort. The OnePlus Pad 2 is no exception. The tablet is perhaps the most powerful out there on the Android side, thanks to its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, but can it cut it as a notebook? Read on.
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Like almost all high-end tablets, the OnePlus Pad 2 also comes with its own special keyboard and stylus. The keyboard is called The Smart Keyboard and like Apple's folio keyboard for the base iPad, it comes into two parts - a back cover with a kick stand that snaps on to the back of the OnePlus Pad 2 and the key board itself. The stylus is called Stylo 2, Interestingly, both connect magnetically to the OnePlus Pad 2, but also connect over Bluetooth - so you can actually use that keyboard with the OnePlus Pad 2 without actually magnetically connecting it!
When attached to the OnePlus Pad 2, the keyboard does not add too much weight to the tablet - it is slightly over half a kilogram. So the weight of the OnePlus Pad 2 with the keyboard attached to it, is a little over 1 kg. That's pretty light for a notebook. And in a neat touch (pun intended), there is a touchpad on the keyboard too - something that not too many keyboard. covers have.
The keyboard is pretty comfortable to use, although we would have preferred slightly larger keys. The touchpad is a little iffy in terms of palm rejection - we often had accidental touches on it. A VERY innovative feature is the inclusion of NFC on the keyboard, which lets you transfer large files from your phone to the tablet in a single touch - very Apple feels. The catch of course is that this works only with certain OnePlus phones. There is no official battery life given, but we have got through days of use without any problems at all. We are not sure we like the idea of the keyboard cover being in two parts, but the kick stand does give you more viewing angles!
The stylus, the Stylo 2, is a very smart looking one with a leather-like finish, and comes with a very impressive 16,000 levels of sensitivity,. which makes it great for sketching and writing. There is one huge drawback, though - there is no support for handwriting recognition, which is a bit of a bummer.
The keyboard is for Rs 8,499 and the Stylo 2 is priced at Rs 5,499. Which adds about Rs 13,998 to the price of the Rs 39,999 to the OnePlus Pad. Now, that is much more than the keyboard and stylus of the Redmi Pad Pro, which are priced at rs 3999 each, but to be fair, these are more powerful options - the keyboard has a touchpad and different viewing angles courtesy that kickstand as well as NFC, and the stylus has much higher levels of sensitivity.
The big question of course, is whether all this together can step in and replace a notebook? At least for a while, anyway? The answer is: we think it can. The large 12.1 inch display with 7:5 aspect ratio of the OnePlus Pad 2 gives one a lot more "display real estate" than routine tablets and there is a lot of hardware muscle in there to run a word processor (we prefer Google Docs), handle some basic spreadsheets, and even do some handy image and video editing without any lags. A dozen hours of battery life means you can use this comfortably for a work day, and the 67W charger gets it from 0-100 per cent in battery terms in about 1 hour and 40 minutes. Pretty good!
Of course, it is not a.perfect set up. If you are looking at extensive heavy duty Wordpress editing or even making very elaborate presentations, then the OnePlus Pad 2 will struggle to keep pace of matters. But if all you want is a tablet that can morph into a notebook that lets you do lots of writing, and some multimedia editing, the OnePlus Pad 2 with its keyboard and stylus is as close to tablet notebook perfection as you can get. For about Rs 55,000, this is good value for money if you are someone who wants a REALLY powerful tablet!