The OnePlus Pad Go 2 is a cool upgrade, with one big selling point

The OnePlus Pad Go 2 is a significant upgrade over the original OnePlus Pad Go, but it’s entering not only a crowded OnePlus tablet market, but also a swamped wider market too.

I’ve used it for a short while, and although the tech is good, there's one big advantage to the Pad Go 2 over much of its competition.

Big, but heavy too

Less eye-catching design

The first OnePlus Pad Go had that unusual top-center, circular camera module on the back, making it look very different to most other Android tablets. This has been abandoned for the OnePlus Pad Go 2, which hides its single camera in the corner of the rear panel.

There are two colors available, either a bright Lavender Drift, or the Shadow Black seen in our photos. Like the black version of the OnePlus 15, the Shadow Black tablet quickly collects fingerprints and smudges.

It’s a serious piece of kit. It’s a gram under 600 grams in weight and 6.83mm thick, making it quite a handful, and noticeably heavier and thicker than the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11.

Part of this is due to the 12.1-inch LCD screen, which hasn’t been all that impressive in my short time with the tablet. The auto-brightness is poorly calibrated, and constantly wakes the screen up at the very lowest brightness level, forcing you to up it manually.

Despite having the screen on its automatic refresh rate, the 120Hz maximum rarely activated when just using the operating system, but was far more effective when switching it to the high refresh rate mode.

These small issues may well be teething problems and cured with a software update, but as I noted the same problem on the OnePlus Pad Lite, it may be a “feature” and not a bug.

Audio and performance

Expectations kept in check

The OnePlus Pad Go 2 has a MediaTek Dimensity 7300 Ultra processor with 8GB of RAM and a choice of 128GB or 256GB of internal storage. It’s also OnePlus’s first tablet with a 5G option, and there’s space for a physical SIM inside the body.

I remember being impressed with the audio on the OnePlus Pad Lite, but less so with the OnePlus Pad Go 2, which doesn’t seem to have the same depth or presence, and is tinnier and more distorted the higher the volume gets.

You can use the new OnePlus Pad Go 2 Stylo stylus with the Pad Go 2. It is recharged using a USB-C connection and returns 20 hours of use time, but unfortunately there are no magnets inside to attach it to the tablet’s body for safe keeping.

The stylus is quite thick, making it pleasant to hold, but the button used to change modes isn't very easy to locate due to being flush against the body. There are various special modes, and I really liked the option to take a note on the lock screen just by tapping it.

What else do you need to know?

OnePlus’s OxygenOS has the excellent Open Canvas split screen mode, which is intuitive and useful, plus there’s a host of AI features based around note-taking and photo editing to try out. The software is otherwise the same as you’ll find on the OnePlus 15, and is a smooth, logical take on Android 16.

The 10,050mAh battery is a big step up from the 8,000mAh cell in the first Pad Go, and from the 9.340mAh battery in the Pad Lite. OnePlus estimates 15 hours of continuous video playback from a single charge.

It’s the same recharging performance as the other two tablets, with the 33W SuperVOOC wired charger taking about 130 minutes to fully recharge. The smaller battery inside the Galaxy Tab S11 takes about 85 minutes to recharge.

A hard sell?

So much choice

OnePlus makes the OnePlus Pad 3 and only recently introduced the OnePlus Pad Lite, with the OnePlus Pad Go 2 fitting somewhere in-between the pair. Oppo makes the Oppo Pad 3 Pro, Oppo Pad SE, and Pad Air, which makes a total of six tablets from the two intertwined manufacturers alone.

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S11 and Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra, along with the Galaxy Tab S10 FE, are all very tempting, despite being quite expensive compared to the OnePlus Pad Go 2, but do boast higher quality AMOLED screens and better sound systems.

After a few hours with the OnePlus Pad Go 2, I wondered what would make it worth buying over any of the others. Is it the 5G connection? The 12.1-inch screen? The stylus? While decent features, they don’t make the Pad Go 2 especially unique.

What's going to sell the OnePlus Pad Go 2 is its price. It costs $399 for the 8GB/128GB model. In the UK, it's £319 for the 8GB/128GB model, and £399 for the 8GB/256GB model. This is significantly less than the Galaxy Tab S11, and as I've found out many times, the best tablets are often the most reasonably priced ones.

If it's a general media tablet you're after, the OnePlus Pad Go 2 is worth a good look.