I was holding the iPad Pro 11 in my hands and was almost ready to place an order. My finger hovered over the button — and then I closed the tab and bought the OnePlus Pad 4. Recently, my colleague, AppleInsider.ru expert Ivan Kuznetsov, bought the OnePlus 15 instead of the iPhone 17, and now I’ve fallen for OnePlus too. It’s a strange decision for someone who has lived in the Apple ecosystem for years. But the longer I compared the specs of the two tablets, the less I understood what exactly they were asking me to pay almost twice as much for.
The tablet also looks stylish
Let me say right away: this is not an article claiming “Android won, Apple is done.” This is an honest breakdown of why specifically for me and my specific tasks, the OnePlus Pad 4 turned out to be a much better purchase than the iPad Pro 11 with the M5 chip. And where Apple remains untouchable.
Large or Compact Tablet: What’s More Convenient for Everyday Life
My tablet has always served one role — couch, YouTube, articles, sometimes notes with a stylus. For this I was honestly eyeing the iPad. But over the past year, my tasks have grown: formatting texts on the go, running multiple windows side by side, watching movies without an external speaker.
The tablet is really big and it’s awesome
And that’s when an unpleasant thing became clear. The iPad Pro 11 is 11 inches and 444 grams in a thin body, but the screen is still small for serious multitasking. Meanwhile, the OnePlus Pad 4 offers 13.2 inches. The difference looks minor on paper, but in your hands — it’s a different class of device. Yes, it’s heavier — 672 grams. This is a tablet for a desk and your lap, not for reading while lying down with one hand. I accepted that right away.
You’re probably thinking: “Well, there’s a 13-inch iPad Pro too.” To which I’ll reply: “Just look at its price, and all questions will disappear.” I’m not considering the iPad Air due to the lack of a 120 Hz display.
Which Tablet Is Better for Movies and TV Shows
This is where Apple should have crushed the competition. The iPad Pro 11 features a Tandem OLED Ultra Retina XDR — the best panel on the tablet market, with perfect blacks and insane brightness. There’s no arguing with that.
OnePlus doesn’t have OLED, but the screen quality is incredible
But OnePlus responds not with pixel quality, but with scale. The 13.2-inch panel has a 3.4K resolution (3392 × 2400), 144 Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision, 12-bit color, and up to 1000 nits peak brightness. It’s LCD, not OLED — and the difference is visible in a dark room. But the display itself is noticeably larger, and for content and work, screen area and smoothness matter more to me than absolute blacks.
The sound sealed the deal. The OnePlus Pad 4 has eight speakers: four woofers and four tweeters, with spatial audio. The iPad sounds good, but the eight-channel system is practically a portable cinema. I watch movies on my tablet more often than I draw in Procreate, and for me, this was the deciding argument.
Which Processor Is Best for a Tablet in 2026
I was sure that the M5 would demolish any Android chip — and Apple, let’s be honest, has long hinted at the same thing. But with tablets, the situation turned out to be less clear-cut.
The chip in the OnePlus Pad 4 is powerful and its performance will last a long time
In terms of raw performance, nobody is taking Apple’s crown, and iPadOS apps are better optimized. However, inside the OnePlus Pad 4 is a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 on a 3nm process, up to 12 GB LPDDR5X, and up to 512 GB UFS 4.1. Reviewers call it the fastest among Android tablets, and for my tasks — formatting, a browser with a dozen tabs, video — the headroom is more than enough.
As for battery life — it’s not even close. The OnePlus packs a 13,380 mAh battery, one of the largest on the market. The manufacturer promises up to 20 hours of video and about seven hours of gaming. The iPad Pro 11 has a battery of approximately 8,160 mAh. And the OnePlus charges at 80W — I forgot about Apple’s charger and its modest speed like a bad dream.
Downsides of Switching from Apple to Android
Now let’s be honest about the downsides, because I feel them every day.
- First — the Apple ecosystem. I have an iPhone 16 Plus, and features like Continuity, Handoff, AirDrop, and the shared clipboard were all lost at once. Android and iOS don’t play well together, and this inconvenience isn’t going anywhere.
- Second — software. iPadOS apps are polished: professional editors, LumaFusion, graphics — everything works predictably. On Android, tablet software has historically been weaker, although OxygenOS 16 with multi-window mode and a proper file manager significantly improves the situation.
- Third — it’s still not OLED, and fans of perfect blacks won’t understand me. Plus, Apple’s camera is better and it has proper Face ID, but for a tablet, I honestly couldn’t care less about that.
What to Choose: A Flagship Android Tablet or an iPad
The price gap is enormous: the OnePlus Pad 4 in Russia starts at around 45,000 ₽ for the 12/256 GB version, while the iPad Pro 11 with M5 starts at nearly 85,000 ₽ for the base 256 GB. That’s exactly a twofold difference, and for that I get a bigger screen, a bigger battery, more powerful sound, and faster charging.
I chose the OnePlus tablet and have no regrets
In return, Apple offers a better panel, ecosystem, and software. If you live in professional tasks on iPadOS and own a Mac and iPhone — get the iPad, don’t hesitate, it’s a different league of integration. But I needed a large media powerhouse with plenty of performance and battery life at a reasonable price. And in this role, the OnePlus Pad 4 wins hands down.
