The days of the iPad being the go-to tablet choice could be nearing an end if the latest Android rival from OnePlus is anything to go by. The tech firm has just announced the OnePlus Pad Go 2, and it looks like a far more capable and powerful tablet than its £319 starting price tag suggests.

The Pad Go 2 ramps up its capabilities from its predecessor, the £399 version packing in a 5G-ready SIM card slot to easily upgrade your tablet experience for hassle-free connections on the move. It’s rare to find this on a tablet this cheap, especially when iPads are moving to eSIM only.

That pricier model is the first ever OnePlus tablet to feature a SIM card slot – not even the superb £529 OnePlus Pad 3 I reviewed earlier this year has one. It’s a major boon for the cheaper Pad Go 2.

A luxurious 12.1-inch LCD display with up to 120Hz refresh rate is also present and correct, outshining the 11-inch LCD of the latest £329 iPad, which tops out at 60Hz. OnePlus also trumps Apple with four stereo speakers compared to the iPad’s two, so you’re getting better sound out of the Pad Go 2 no matter which way you hold it.

“Powering OnePlus Pad Go 2 is a MediaTek Dimensity 7300-Ultra octa-core chipset, built on an advanced 4nm process, which means OnePlus Pad Go 2 delivers powerful and reliably smooth performance from day one all the way to four years away, as certified by TÜV SÜD Fluency testing,” OnePlus said in a press release.

You should also be good for up to 15 hours of video playback when you’re really hammering Netflix thanks to a large 10,050mAh battery. Apple only promises 10 hours on the iPad. Better still is the OnePlus tablet’s 33W charging speeds that allow you to recharge extra fast – but in the UK there’s only a cable in the box and no charging brick, so you’ll have to fork out £40 for the official OnePlus one to get top speeds.

Available in black or lavender hues, the OnePlus Pad Go 2 is also the first in the Pad Go range to support a stylus, in this case the optional £79 Pad Go 2 Stylo. With it you’ll be able to prod around the Android operating system, as well as take handwritten notes or create sketches and art in first or third party apps from the Google Play Store.

That Android software is handy if you want to do a bit of multi-tasking too thanks to OnePlus’s innovative Open Canvas mode, which lets you quickly flit between three windows, with two apps in split screen and a third ready to bring into the fray, or as a floating window. It’s intuitive, and Apple has had to play catch up by introducing windowing on iPads for the first time this year with iPadOS 26.

The OnePlus Pad Go 2 looks like great value starting from £319 for the model with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. £399 gets you 256GB storage and that handy 5G SIM card slot.

Pre-orders are live now, and the tablet will ship and go on full sale on December 24.