For almost as long as human history has been written, iPads have dominated the tablet space, and for very good reason. They look sleek, perform amazingly, integrate well with other Apple devices, and, most importantly, run an OS that supports all the apps. These metrics have, for the better part of a decade, made Android tablets almost irrelevant. A niche that only a few want. However, the brand we all know for its flagship killers, OnePlus, has been quietly reviving the Android tablet world with devices that encapsulate that OnePlus feeling without Apple’s pricetag. The latest entry in the lineup is the OnePlus Pad Go 2, which comes with a big, bright display, four speakers, and new multitasking abilities, all for just INR 23,999.
As soon as I heard about those features and the price, I called my friends over at OnePlus and got the tablet in for review. It’s been over a week since that phone call, and I’ve been using the OnePlus Pad Go 2 as my everyday multimedia and document-editing machine. This review will culminate my experience with the tablet and help you decide whether it’s worth the hard-earned money. Spoiler alert, it’s a tablet that’s hard to fault.
OnePlus Pad Go 2 Review
Summary
At INR 23,999, the OnePlus Pad Go 2 is a tablet that’s really hard to fault. That’s because, despite the price, you get a big, crisp, and beautiful display that supports HDR, speakers that can fill a party room, performance that can handle any task, stylus support, helpful AI features, and insane battery life. Honestly, the Pad Go 2 is one of, if not the best, mid-range tablet I’ve ever tested
Design & Hardware
Compared to smartphones, expectations for tablet design differ. Most people don’t want flashy or gimmicky designs that hinder the practicality of using a device for both work and multimedia consumption. If you’re in this camp, then the OnePlus Pad Go 2 would feel right at home. It doesn’t do anything new, but sticks with the basics that work. The tablet is made of aluminium, which not only adds durability but also gives the finish a premium feel. There’s a single camera cutout at the back that doesn’t protrude much, so working with the device lying down is possible. The sides are flat, which adds a bit more grip, and also makes the 6.28mm thickness feel almost nothing.
The Pad Go 2 comes in two finishes: understated black or lavish lavender. Both colors carry the same storage, but if you want 5G connectivity, it’s only available in the black version. The weight for both models is pretty respectable, hovering around 599g. I had no issues carrying the tablet every day in a backpack or holding it just above my face to watch content. The only gripe with the design is the number of fingerprints it picks up, which made taking review photos quite a challenge.
Beyond that, there’s no fingerprint scanner for unlocking. Instead, the Go 2 uses facial recognition, which isn’t as safe but works every time. While I did not drop the tablet by accident or on purpose, it should handle minor scuffs just fine thanks to its construction. Also, there’s no IP rating, so please keep the device away from any liquids. OnePlus sells a folio case for the tablet, which does a really good job of protecting the device from the elements.
Pen Support
For all my drawing friends out there, the Pad Go 2 has stylus support. Specifically, the tablet supports the new Pad Go 2 Stylo, which offers 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity. The stylus lasts for 20 hours on a single charge, and can be recharged in under 25 minutes using the Type-C port. Unfortunately, I’m no artist, but in my experience, it worked really well for taking notes and had decent palm rejection. Beyond that, OnePlus has also bundled features to make the writing experience even better. There’s handwriting recognition, which, as the name suggests, analyzes your handwriting and converts it into digital text. In practice, it’s honestly magic because it understands my handwriting, which sometimes even I struggle with.
Display & Speakers
If all you need is one reason to choose the OnePlus Pad Go 2 over the base model iPad, it’s the display. OnePlus has nailed it out of the park with a 12.1-inch 2.8K (2800×1980) IPS display that runs at 120Hz. The panel also supports Dolby Vision and has a peak brightness of 900 nits. Honestly, displays, especially at this price, won’t get any better. The picture quality is exceptional, with crisp details, really aesthetic colors, and HDR performance that tackles the very best of premium laptops. I had heaps of fun watching The Studio on the Pad Go 2.
It’s not just about content, though, as the panel covers 98% of the DCI-P3 color space, making it plenty accurate for some Photoshop work as well. OnePlus’ 7:5 is something that I loved more than I thought, simply because it makes for a more productive environment for scrolling the web or editing documents. Beyond that, there’s TÜV Rheinland Smart Care 4.0 that promises to reduce eye strain in darker environments, though if you’re like me and doomscroll reels late at night, the certification won’t help much.
If you asked me for two reasons to recommend the OnePlus Pad Go 2, the first would obviously be the screen, and the second would be the speakers. The tablet has four of them in total, and oh boy, they are fantastic. I’ve never heard speakers sound better than the ones on my MacBook, but it finally happened. The four on the Pad Go 2 sound really full, capable of filling the entire room, with really nice bass, accurate highs, and mids. Honestly, if you just want a multimedia device to watch movies on, look no further than this.
Performance & Software
Under the hood, the OnePlus Pad Go 2 is powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 7300 Ultra, which features eight cores and the Mali-G615 MP2 GPU. In addition, my review unit came with 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of UFS 3.1 internal storage. Keeping the specs out of the way, the everyday performance of the Pad Go 2 has been really good. Apps open in a jiffy, there’s not even a hint of lag when switching between apps, and everything stays in memory. As you may already know, OxygenOS is perhaps my favourite Android skin, simply because it’s just so refined. Every little thing you do has an animation tied to it, which makes using any device a lot more premium. Also, love the animations, which come out beautifully on the large display.
OnePlus has also optimized the software for better multitasking capabilities. Swiping down with two fingers opens split-screen mode, allowing you to take notes while reading a lesson plan. Beyond that, the tablet has all the AI bells and whistles, including an AI writing assistant, AI image editing tools, and an AI speaker that helps you read articles and books. OnePlus also has an App Relay feature, where you can control your OnePlus phone directly from the tablet. I tried it with my Nord 5, and it worked pretty sweet.
To push the Dimensity 7300 to its limits, I also ran a series of benchmarks. In Geekbench, the Pad Go 2 scored 939 in the single-core test and 2345 in the multi-core test. On the other hand, in AnTuTu, the device reached a respectable 1,035,000 points. For the price, these numbers are really good.
Moving things over to gaming, I played a lot of BGMI (PUBG) and Clash Royale during my testing period. In BGMI, the Pad Go 2 delivers a solid 60FPS gameplay at the Smooth and Extreme settings, which is not bad at all. Sure, I’d have wished for some higher frame rates, but it’s not a complaint by any means. For lighter titles like Clash Royale, the experience was pretty amazing.
Battery Life
The OnePlus Pad Go 2 features a 10,050 mAh battery and lasts more than a test cricket match. For context, I primarily used the tablet to consume content and browse the web, and it lasted about 3-4 days before needing a recharge, with screen-on-time up to 15 hours. When it was time to recharge, OnePlus’s 33W SUPERVOOC came to the rescue, fully charging the tablet from 0% in about 2 hours.
Verdict
At INR 23,999, the OnePlus Pad Go 2 is a tablet that’s really hard to fault. That’s because, despite the price, you get a big, crisp, and beautiful display that supports HDR, speakers that can fill a party room, performance that can handle any task, stylus support, helpful AI features, and insane battery life. Honestly, the Pad Go 2 is one of, if not the best, mid-range tablet I’ve ever tested, and if you’re in the market for such a device, it’s hard to ignore.
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![OpenAI’s existential questions | TechCrunch
OpenAI has been all over the news recently, whether that news is about acquisitions, competition with Anthropic, or bigger debates about AI’s impact on society.
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I did our best to round up all the latest OpenAI news. While the company’s latest acquisitions seem to be classic acqui-hires, Sean suggested they also address “two big existential problems that OpenAI is trying to solve right now.”
First, with the team behind personal finance startup Hiro, the company may be hoping to come up with a product that has “more hooks than just a chatbot, and maybe something worth paying more for.” And with new media startup TBPN, OpenAI could be looking to “better shape its image in the public eye, which lately has not been great.”
Read a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity below.
Anthony: [We have] two deals that are worth mentioning, one is that OpenAI acquired this personal finance startup called Hiro. And that comes after another deal that was literally announced when we were recording our last episode of Equity, so we didn’t get to talk about it: OpenAI had also acquired TBPN — a business talk show, like a new media company.
And I think both of these deals are pretty small compared to the scale of OpenAI. These are not things that people expect to really change the course of their business or anything like that, but they’re interesting because it suggests that there’s still this [attitude of,] “Let’s try out different things.”
Especially [with] the TBPN deal […] particularly at this time when it feels like OpenAI, from all the reporting we’re reading, is also trying to really refocus on making ChatGPT and its GPT models really competitive in an enterprise context with programmers.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
Is running a tech talk show, should that really be on the to-do list?
Kirsten: No, this should not be on the to-do list. That’s it.
I do want to mention Hiro because to me, that’s an interesting one, because Julie Bort, our venture editor, super talented, she wrote about this and was I think the first to write about it. She dug in a little bit and basically this looks like an acqui-hire. The company is folding. They basically said, “By this date, you won’t be able to access this anymore.”
This is a personal finance startup. And they only launched two years ago. So this absolutely is about getting talent on board. So I’m very curious to see if OpenAI is going to be just absorbing them into the ether at OpenAI, or if they’re actually interested in some sort of personal finance product that they want to work on. To me, it’s not really clear.
Sean: I think you look at both of these as acqui-hires to a certain extent. I mean, the TBPN acquisition, allegedly they are going to retain their editorial independence on the show that they make every day. And all respect to those guys who’ve put that out there and gotten it off the ground so quickly and grown it into what it has become.
I think any person who follows the media should have a healthy dose of skepticism that when you acquire something like that and you put the people who make the show under the org of the public policy people and comms or marketing adjacent people higher up at the company making the acquisition, that you could have good questions about whether or not saying “editorial independence” is enough. It’s not an incantation that just works.
But you know, what’s interesting to me about these two, while they are similar in their acqui-hire-ness, I think they both represent two major problems that OpenAI is facing.
One is Hiro. OpenAI has a very successful product in ChatGPT. As far as whether or not that will actually ever make them enough money to become a sustainable business that’s not raising the largest private rounds in the world, ever, to keep things going, is a big question. And they also seem to be struggling to keep up on the enterprise side of things where the real money seems to be, so bringing in a team like this seems like taking a shot at, “What else can we do?”
The guy who founded Hiro seems to have a serial entrepreneur streak of creating consumer apps, and so this seems to me like a bet on them being able to come up with something else that may have more hooks than just a chatbot, and maybe something worth paying more for.
And then TBPN is an acquisition made to help better represent what the company does and better shape its image in the public eye, which lately has not been great and certainly is under more questions now than just a few weeks ago, because Ronan Farrow just led a report at The New Yorker that dropped suspiciously right around the time that this and a couple other announcements from OpenAI came out last week.
I think those are two big existential problems that OpenAI is trying to solve right now.
Kirsten: So the thing that you didn’t say is, there’s Anthropic kind of looming in — not in the shadows, I mean, they’re very much taking up a lot of space here — but they’re having a lot of success on the enterprise side of things.
It feels like these guys are competitors and they also feel like very different companies in a lot of ways. Anthony, I’m wondering if you see them as direct competition to OpenAI? Or [are they] just finding their stride in enterprise and in a way, these two companies are clearly going to coexist and they’re really not directly competing with each other — maybe on talent, but not necessarily as we initially thought of them?
Anthony: I think they’re directly competing with each other. There’s definitely a scenario where if AI as an industry, as a technology, is as successful as its proponents hope for, they could both be very successful companies, they could just be the one and two. And the success of one does not necessarily mean that the other will just fade into obscurity.
And again, none of this is official, but there’s just been a lot of reporting around how it seems like OpenAI, more than anyone, is obsessed with and upset about Anthropic’s rise.
Our reporter Lucas [Ropek], he did a great piece over the weekend about the HumanX conference, where he was talking to everyone there and they’re sort of like, “Yeah, ChatGPT is fine, too,” but like they were all about Claude Code. And I think that is exactly what OpenAI is worried about.
Because again, in theory, there could be many other opportunities for generative AI, but it feels like the big growth area, the area where the most money is and where they could at least see a path to having a sustainable business in the future, is in these enterprise and coding tools.
#OpenAIs #existential #questions #TechCrunchAnthropic,Equity podcast,OpenAI](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/GettyImages-2266645295.jpg?w=1024&ssl=1 "OpenAI’s existential questions | TechCrunch
OpenAI has been all over the news recently, whether that news is about acquisitions, competition with Anthropic, or bigger debates about AI’s impact on society.
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I did our best to round up all the latest OpenAI news. While the company’s latest acquisitions seem to be classic acqui-hires, Sean suggested they also address “two big existential problems that OpenAI is trying to solve right now.”
First, with the team behind personal finance startup Hiro, the company may be hoping to come up with a product that has “more hooks than just a chatbot, and maybe something worth paying more for.” And with new media startup TBPN, OpenAI could be looking to “better shape its image in the public eye, which lately has not been great.”
Read a preview of our conversation, edited for length and clarity below.
Anthony: [We have] two deals that are worth mentioning, one is that OpenAI acquired this personal finance startup called Hiro. And that comes after another deal that was literally announced when we were recording our last episode of Equity, so we didn’t get to talk about it: OpenAI had also acquired TBPN — a business talk show, like a new media company.
And I think both of these deals are pretty small compared to the scale of OpenAI. These are not things that people expect to really change the course of their business or anything like that, but they’re interesting because it suggests that there’s still this [attitude of,] “Let’s try out different things.”
Especially [with] the TBPN deal […] particularly at this time when it feels like OpenAI, from all the reporting we’re reading, is also trying to really refocus on making ChatGPT and its GPT models really competitive in an enterprise context with programmers.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
Is running a tech talk show, should that really be on the to-do list?
Kirsten: No, this should not be on the to-do list. That’s it.
I do want to mention Hiro because to me, that’s an interesting one, because Julie Bort, our venture editor, super talented, she wrote about this and was I think the first to write about it. She dug in a little bit and basically this looks like an acqui-hire. The company is folding. They basically said, “By this date, you won’t be able to access this anymore.”
This is a personal finance startup. And they only launched two years ago. So this absolutely is about getting talent on board. So I’m very curious to see if OpenAI is going to be just absorbing them into the ether at OpenAI, or if they’re actually interested in some sort of personal finance product that they want to work on. To me, it’s not really clear.
Sean: I think you look at both of these as acqui-hires to a certain extent. I mean, the TBPN acquisition, allegedly they are going to retain their editorial independence on the show that they make every day. And all respect to those guys who’ve put that out there and gotten it off the ground so quickly and grown it into what it has become.
I think any person who follows the media should have a healthy dose of skepticism that when you acquire something like that and you put the people who make the show under the org of the public policy people and comms or marketing adjacent people higher up at the company making the acquisition, that you could have good questions about whether or not saying “editorial independence” is enough. It’s not an incantation that just works.
But you know, what’s interesting to me about these two, while they are similar in their acqui-hire-ness, I think they both represent two major problems that OpenAI is facing.
One is Hiro. OpenAI has a very successful product in ChatGPT. As far as whether or not that will actually ever make them enough money to become a sustainable business that’s not raising the largest private rounds in the world, ever, to keep things going, is a big question. And they also seem to be struggling to keep up on the enterprise side of things where the real money seems to be, so bringing in a team like this seems like taking a shot at, “What else can we do?”
The guy who founded Hiro seems to have a serial entrepreneur streak of creating consumer apps, and so this seems to me like a bet on them being able to come up with something else that may have more hooks than just a chatbot, and maybe something worth paying more for.
And then TBPN is an acquisition made to help better represent what the company does and better shape its image in the public eye, which lately has not been great and certainly is under more questions now than just a few weeks ago, because Ronan Farrow just led a report at The New Yorker that dropped suspiciously right around the time that this and a couple other announcements from OpenAI came out last week.
I think those are two big existential problems that OpenAI is trying to solve right now.
Kirsten: So the thing that you didn’t say is, there’s Anthropic kind of looming in — not in the shadows, I mean, they’re very much taking up a lot of space here — but they’re having a lot of success on the enterprise side of things.
It feels like these guys are competitors and they also feel like very different companies in a lot of ways. Anthony, I’m wondering if you see them as direct competition to OpenAI? Or [are they] just finding their stride in enterprise and in a way, these two companies are clearly going to coexist and they’re really not directly competing with each other — maybe on talent, but not necessarily as we initially thought of them?
Anthony: I think they’re directly competing with each other. There’s definitely a scenario where if AI as an industry, as a technology, is as successful as its proponents hope for, they could both be very successful companies, they could just be the one and two. And the success of one does not necessarily mean that the other will just fade into obscurity.
And again, none of this is official, but there’s just been a lot of reporting around how it seems like OpenAI, more than anyone, is obsessed with and upset about Anthropic’s rise.
Our reporter Lucas [Ropek], he did a great piece over the weekend about the HumanX conference, where he was talking to everyone there and they’re sort of like, “Yeah, ChatGPT is fine, too,” but like they were all about Claude Code. And I think that is exactly what OpenAI is worried about.
Because again, in theory, there could be many other opportunities for generative AI, but it feels like the big growth area, the area where the most money is and where they could at least see a path to having a sustainable business in the future, is in these enterprise and coding tools.
#OpenAIs #existential #questions #TechCrunchAnthropic,Equity podcast,OpenAI")
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