If you thought you could escape the seemingly endless reach of artificial intelligence by journeying to the very depths of the tablet pool, think again. Even Oppo, the talents of which typically include decent budget and mid-range devices, is sticking AI into the most six-thousand-Randest tablet out there, the Oppo Pad SE.
Ignore all its shortcomings, for want of a better word, and the Pad SE makes a case for being a decent, though not exactly budget, tablet. It won’t boot up Assassin’s Creed or Resident Evil anytime soon, or ever, for that matter, but it should make for a decent Netflix streamer and comic-book reader, mostly due to the massive 9,340mAh battery. That got your attention, didn’t it?
Size matters…
We’d bet that Oppo is at least a little bit mad that Eskom finally decided to pull itself up by its bootstraps and end load shedding, at least temporarily, with a battery like that. We can’t attest to the company’s claims of 11 continuous hours of video playback or 80 hours when confining your habits to music until we have it in hand, but we have no qualms taking Oppo’s word. For now.
Good batteries cost, though, and nowhere is that clearer than Oppo’s choice of chipset: the 6nm MediaTek Helio G100. While not exactly bottom of the barrel, it still falls outside of the realm of what we’d call ‘good’. It seems about right for a R6,000 tablet, though. It does at least enable Oppo’s built-in AI functionality as well as some Google Gemini features, if you’re into that sort of thing.
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Keep those expectations low, however, and the G100’s imperfections likely won’t ever appear on your radar. As long as it can boot up YouTube and/or Netflix without much fuss first, it’s easier to focus on the generous 11in 1,200 x 1,920 matte IPS LCD. A 90Hz refresh rate is likely all you’ll ever need here. We don’t expect much out of the Pad SE in terms of gaming.
If that sounds at all interesting, you won’t have to wait long before Oppo’s latest and, maybe not greatest, turns up in South Africa. Oppo expects these to be on shelves as soon as 1 July 2025, though you’ll have to make do with the Twilight Blue colourway.
