OnePlus Pad Lite vs OnePlus Pad Go: What’s the difference?

Launched across Europe in early 2024, the OnePlus Pad Go was marketed as the affordable counterpart to the OnePlus Pad. Interestingly, OnePlus has now introduced an even cheaper tablet with the Pad Lite. 

Although we’re yet to review the OnePlus Pad Lite, we have reviewed the OnePlus Pad Go and awarded the tablet a solid four-star rating. Should you pay a bit more for the Pad Go, or does the Lite offer enough?

We’ve highlighted the key differences between the OnePlus Pad Lite and Pad Go below, so you can decide which tablet will suit your needs best.

Price and Availability

At the time of writing, the OnePlus Pad Lite is available for pre-order at a discounted price of £169. Once the tablet is officially available from 19th August 2025, the price will then increase to £199.

Although the OnePlus Pad Go has a starting RRP of £299.99, it’s not uncommon to find a price drop for the tablet. In fact, at the time of writing, the Pad Go is just £249.99 on the official OnePlus website.

OnePlus Pad Go has a higher display resolution

The OnePlus Pad Go is not only marginally larger than the Pad Lite, measuring at 11.35 inches compared to 11 inches, but it also boasts plenty of display technology too. While the Lite sports a 1920 x 1200 resolution, the Go benefits from a 2.4K Eye-Care display. 

Although it’s a long way off the 3.4K display on the OnePlus Pad 3, we still found the OnePlus Pad Go’s display to be vibrant and colourful, making it ideal for streaming content and playing the occasional game. 

Otherwise, both tablets have a max refresh rate of 90Hz, which trumps the likes of the pricier iPad and iPad Mini’s 60Hz.

Both tablets run on MediaTek processors but differ in their exact offerings, with the Pad Lite running on Helio G100 while the Pad Go favours G99.

Although we haven’t reviewed the Helio G100 chip yet, MediaTek promises it provides “all-day gaming performance, outstanding battery life, enhanced camera capabilities, smooth display experiences and dependable global connectivity”. We’ll have to wait and see how the tablet performs during our review to confirm these claims.

Otherwise, we found the Helio G99 chip within the Pad Go to be fairly responsive, albeit with the occasional lag and stutter. It’s also worth noting that while the cheaper Helio G100 promises powerful gaming, the Helio G99 struggled during 3D games. While this can be improved by amending the graphics settings, we’d argue this might not be the best tablet if you’re a keen gamer.

OnePlus Pad Go has 8MP front and rear lenses

Neither the OnePlus Pad Lite nor the Pad Go boast particularly impressive camera hardware. Having said that, the OnePlus Pad Go does take the edge with 8MP front and 8MP rear sensors.

The OnePlus Pad Go’s horizontally-orientated front lens is perfectly adequate for taking video calls and maybe the odd selfie, although we did find the resolution looks washed out. 

The OnePlus Pad Lite is fitted with 5MP front and rear lenses instead and, though we haven’t reviewed the tablet, we can reasonably expect a slightly worse performance than the Pad Go’s counterpart. However, we have reviewed other tablets with similar 5MP sensors, like the Amazon Fire HD 10, and found they were sufficient for video calls. 

OnePlus Pad Lite has a larger battery

Surprisingly, as it’s the cheaper of the two, the OnePlus Pad Lite has a larger 9340mAh battery compared to the smaller 8000mAh found in the Pad Go. Even so, we still found the OnePlus Pad Go should be a multi-day device for most people, as it can even hold a charge when not in active use. With this in mind, we can expect a similar performance from the OnePlus Pad Lite.

Both tablets support a relatively slow 33W charging, although you’ll need to invest in a SuperVOCC adapter to really benefit from any speeds.

OnePlus Pad Go comes with LTE as standard

One of the main selling points of the OnePlus Pad Go is that it comes with 4G LTE connectivity as standard, which is a feature that’s rarely seen at this price point. Essentially, LTE is a wireless mobile network and enables you to keep your tablet connected when you’re out and about, without relying on Wi-Fi.

Considering most tablets, even the seriously expensive iPad Pro M4, needs users to pay extra for mobile or LTE privilege, the fact it comes as standard on the OnePlus Pad Go is seriously impressive. 

However it’s worth noting that you can upgrade the OnePlus Pad Lite to support LTE for an additional £30. 

Early Verdict

At the time of writing, OnePlus hasn’t explicitly stated how many years of Android and Security updates we can expect with the Pad Lite. However, it has stated just a minimum of one year of Android and three years of Security updates for the Pad Go, which means the tablet is essentially already nearing its end of life.

With this in mind, it seems like the OnePlus Pad Lite is an easier recommendation. However, we’ll be sure to update this versus once we’ve reviewed the new tablet.