Galaxy Tab S9 FE vs OnePlus Pad 2: Is the 2024 Model Worth the Change?
Galaxy Tab S9 FE or OnePlus Pad 2? We compare price, measured performance and real-world trade-offs to work out which is the better buy.
Tom Halvorsen
The short answer
Galaxy Tab S9 FE 9h 15m, OnePlus Pad 2 9h 50m — the same test, run the same way. Where they part company is who they suit: the Galaxy Tab S9 FE is the one to get if you are families who want something durable for media and homework, the OnePlus Pad 2 if you are value hunters who want performance rather than polish.
Price difference: The Galaxy Tab S9 FE undercuts the OnePlus Pad 2 by £50. That gap only matters if the extras below are ones you will actually use.
Specifications side by side
| Specification | Galaxy Tab S9 FE | OnePlus Pad 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | £449 | £499 |
| Our score | 3 / 5 | 4 / 5 |
| Display | 10.9in IPS, 90Hz | 12.1in IPS, 144Hz |
| Chip | Exynos 1380 | Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 |
| RAM | 6GB | 12GB |
| Storage | 128GB | 256GB |
| Weight | 523g | 584g |
| Battery | 8000mAh | 9510mAh |
| Screen-on time | 9h 15m | 9h 50m |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent ten days as the reviewer’s only portable screen, with the keyboard and stylus the maker sells. Screen at a metered 200 nits, the same eleven apps on every unit, and Wi-Fi 6 on a fixed access point three metres away.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Screen-on time | A scripted day — three hours of browsing and documents, two hours of video, thirty minutes of stylus work — repeated three times and averaged. |
| Sustained performance | A thirty-minute 4K video export, reporting the figure at the end rather than the peak. |
| Stylus latency | High-speed capture at 240fps against a ruled grid, measured from contact to first ink. |
| Charging | From 2% to 100% with the charger in the box, at 22°C ambient. |
| Weight in use | Held one-handed in portrait for as long as comfortable, timed, by three testers. |
We deliberately do not report manufacturer battery claims, which are measured at brightness levels nobody uses.
The honest caveat: Stylus figures are specific to the pen the maker supplies; third-party styluses were not tested.
Where the Galaxy Tab S9 FE wins
- IP68 rated, which almost no tablet at any price is
- The S Pen is in the box
- A metal chassis at a plastic price
It also has the edge on the intangibles: it survived a week of genuine kitchen use including two spills.
Where the OnePlus Pad 2 wins
- Flagship silicon at a mid-range price
- 144Hz on a panel this size is rare below £700
- Charges to full in 80 minutes
And in day-to-day use, it is the only tablet under £500 that did not throttle in our sustained run.
The trade-offs
Neither is flawless. The Galaxy Tab S9 FE has one clear weak point — the Exynos chip struggles with anything beyond browsing and video — and the OnePlus Pad 2 has its own: the 7:5 aspect ratio letterboxes most video. Weigh those against how you actually work rather than against the spec sheet.
The value case
The OnePlus Pad 2 costs £50 more and scores 1 point higher — roughly £50 per point of difference. Whether that is good value depends on whether the extra buys you flagship silicon at a mid-range price, or only a number. In our testing it is the former, but only just.
If neither quite fits
Look at the iPad Pro 13 (M4) at £1299 — it scored 5 out of 5 and suits illustrators and video editors who already work inside the Apple ecosystem. If the budget will not stretch, the Fire Max 11 at £249 is the cheapest option in this category we would still put our name to.
Living with each of them
On paper the gap looks like a specification difference; in use it is a habits difference. With the Galaxy Tab S9 FE the thing you adjust to is the Exynos chip struggles with anything beyond browsing and video, and you do adjust — within a week it stops registering. Its display (10.9in IPS, 90Hz) is the part you stop thinking about. The OnePlus Pad 2 asks for a different accommodation: the 7:5 aspect ratio letterboxes most video, against a display of 12.1in IPS, 144Hz that holds up better than the number suggests. Neither compromise is severe. They are simply different, and which one you would rather not think about is a more useful question than which is objectively smaller.
Which one ages better
The OnePlus Pad 2 is 1 year newer, which usually means 1 more year of security updates at the far end of ownership — the part of the decision nobody weighs at the till and everybody feels at year four. The other half of ageing is the weak point you already know about: the 7:5 aspect ratio letterboxes most video on one side, the Exynos chip struggles with anything beyond browsing and video on the other. Weaknesses of that kind do not improve with firmware, so assume you are buying them for the life of the device and price the decision accordingly.
Our recommendation
For most people we would take the OnePlus Pad 2, which scored 4 out of 5 in our testing against 3 for the other. That said, a score is a summary, not a substitute for knowing what you need.
Buy the Galaxy Tab S9 FE for iP68 rated, which almost no tablet at any price is. Buy the OnePlus Pad 2 for flagship silicon at a mid-range price.
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the tablets we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Galaxy Tab S9 FE vs Pixel Tablet: Which Suits You Better? and Galaxy Tab S9 FE vs Surface Pro 11: Is the 2024 Model Worth the Change?.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
