OnePlus is about to do something Apple has spent years avoiding: put its absolute best processor inside a tablet and price it for humans. The OnePlus Pad 4, launching in India on April 30 at 12 PM, runs the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 — the same silicon that powers $1,200 flagship phones — inside a 13.2-inch slab that’s expected to cost around ₹60,000. For context, the iPad Pro 13-inch starts at ₹1,19,900 in India. That’s not a price gap. That’s a philosophical disagreement about what a premium tablet should cost.
The Specs That Actually Matter
Let’s skip the marketing language and talk about what the OnePlus Pad 4 actually brings to the table. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 packs two performance cores clocked at 4.61 GHz and six efficiency cores at 3.63 GHz, paired with the Adreno 840 GPU and up to 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM. This is desktop-adjacent performance. Video editors, multitaskers, and anyone running heavy apps will notice the difference from last year’s Pad 3.
Storage tops out at 512GB, which is generous for a tablet in this price range. The 13.2-inch display runs at 3,392 x 2,400 resolution (OnePlus calls it “3.4K”), with a 144Hz refresh rate, 1,000 nits HBM brightness, and Dolby Vision support. At 315 ppi, text is sharp enough for document work, and the high refresh rate makes scrolling and stylus input feel buttery.
A 13,380mAh Battery That Changes the Conversation
Here’s where OnePlus makes its most aggressive move. The Pad 4 ships with a 13,380mAh battery — roughly double what you’d find in most flagship phones and significantly larger than the iPad Pro’s estimated ~10,000mAh cell. Combined with 80W SuperVOOC charging, you’re looking at a device that can run all day and refuel in under an hour. Apple still ships 20W charging with its tablets. In 2026. Let that sink in.
For Indian consumers who use tablets as their primary entertainment device — streaming on trains, watching cricket on lunch breaks, bingeing shows in bed — battery life isn’t a spec. It’s the entire product. OnePlus clearly understands this.
Eight Speakers, Because OnePlus Wants to Kill Your Bluetooth Speaker Too
The Pad 4 comes with eight hi-fidelity speakers, which is the kind of overkill that actually makes sense on a large tablet. Combined with Dolby Vision on the display side, this is a device that’s pitching itself as a portable home theatre. Most tablets in this price range ship four speakers and call it a day. OnePlus doubled it and basically dared you to find a reason to carry a separate Bluetooth speaker.
Design and Software: Familiar but Refined
The metal unibody design comes in two colorways — Dune Glow and Sage Mist — both of which are clearly targeting the premium aesthetic without the premium price tag. It runs Android 16 with OnePlus’s OxygenOS on top, which means you get proper file management, sideloading, and the kind of multitasking flexibility that iPadOS still restricts behind arbitrary limitations.
OnePlus is also launching the Stylo Pro stylus and a Smart Keyboard as accessories, sold separately. This is the company’s clearest signal yet that the Pad 4 isn’t just a media consumption device — it’s a laptop replacement play. Whether OxygenOS can deliver a genuine productivity experience comparable to a laptop remains the open question, but the hardware clearly isn’t the bottleneck.
The Real Competition Isn’t Samsung — It’s Apple’s Pricing
The Indian tablet market has a peculiar structure. At the budget end, you’ve got Xiaomi and Realme tablets under ₹20,000 that are fine for YouTube and not much else. At the top, Apple’s iPad Pro demands over ₹1,00,000 and locks you into an ecosystem that charges extra for everything — the keyboard, the pencil, even iCloud storage. The middle is where the real fight is, and OnePlus has been slowly colonising it.
Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S10 series competes here, but Samsung has a habit of launching at premium prices and then discounting aggressively three months later, which makes the launch price feel like a suggestion rather than a commitment. OnePlus, by contrast, tends to price aggressively from day one. If the Pad 4 comes in at ₹59,990 as expected, it’ll be the most powerful tablet under ₹60,000 in India by a significant margin.
Who Should Actually Care
If you’re a student who needs a large screen for notes, PDFs, and the occasional Netflix binge, the Pad 4 is an obvious consideration. If you’re a professional who wants a secondary screen or a travel device that doesn’t require a laptop bag, same story. If you’re a parent looking for a family entertainment device that won’t die mid-movie, the battery alone makes this worth a look.
The people who should not care are those already deep in the Apple ecosystem. If you’ve got an iPhone, AirPods, a Mac, and an Apple Watch, the iPad’s integration advantages still outweigh raw specs. OnePlus knows this, which is why it’s not trying to convert Apple users — it’s trying to capture everyone else before they default to Apple out of habit.
The Verdict Before the Verdict
The OnePlus Pad 4 is a statement product. It says that in 2026, you shouldn’t have to choose between flagship performance and a reasonable price — not in India, not anywhere. The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, the massive battery, the 3.4K display at 144Hz — these are specs that would headline any premium tablet launch. The fact that they’re arriving at roughly half the price of an iPad Pro is the story.
April 30 is three days away. If you’re in the market for a premium Android tablet in India, it’s worth waiting to see how OnePlus prices this thing. Because if the rumoured ₹59,990 holds, the entire tablet market in India just got a lot more interesting.
