LG G Pad 8.3 review

Even though it has a slightly larger screen, the price of the LG G Pad makes the excellent Google Nexus 7 its closest competitor. Although the G Pad 8.3’s screen has the same 1,920×1,200 resolution as the Nexus 7, the G Pad 8.3 has a lower pixel density of 273 pixels per inch (PPI) because those pixels are stretched across an 8.3in panel rather than a 7in panel.

In practice, the 50ppi gap between the two tablets doesn’t make a lot of difference; images still look sharp and detailed, while text appears crisp and easy to read. The IPS panel has fantastic viewing angles and produces vivid yet accurate colours. The screen size difference is notable however, those 1.3in diagonally may not sound like much, but the G Pad’s screen is actually 40% larger by area.

LG G Pad 8.3 Features

The tablet is comfortable to hold in one hand. There are no physical buttons to take up space above or below it either, as LG has opted for onscreen buttons instead. You can’t use it with one hand, but it’s much less of a stretch on your fingers than an iPad Mini, which uses a 4:3 aspect ratio rather than the 16:9 one seen here.

With a slim body that’s just 8.3mm thick and made from a combination of plastic and brushed metal, the G Pad 8.3 is a beautifully built tablet. Whether the brushed aluminium rear is superior to the Nexus 7’s rubberised plastic will likely fall to personal preference; the G Pad looks fantastic but the Nexus has slightly more grip.

There’s not much in the way of connectivity, with just a Micro USB charging port at the bottom and 3.5mm audio jack on the top, although the G Pad does include a microSD card slot. With it, you’ll be able to add an additional 64GB to the 16GB of integrated storage. That will be great news to anyone with lots of apps, music or films, as well as anyone that has avoided buying a Nexus 7 because of its limited storage capacity.

We also like the G Pad 8.3’s stereo rear-facing speakers, which sound loud and clear. The speakers mean you can enjoy iPlayer or Netflix without reaching for a pair of headphones.

LG G Pad 8.3 Camera

A 5-megapixel camera also appears on the rear of the tablet. The sensor isn’t paired with a flash, so the G Pad 8.3 won’t rival a modern smartphone camera for low-light photography, but the camera manages to capture a reasonable amount of detail in brightly lit outdoor scenes. The G Pad 8.3 consistently overexposed the sky, but otherwise the camera captured colours accurately using auto white balance.

LG G Pad 8.3 Specifications

The LG G Pad 8.3 is powered by a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor running at 1.7GHz. The Snapdragon 600 might not be quite as fast as the flagship Snapdragon 800, but it’s powerful enough to run Android smoothly. Indeed, we couldn’t spot any signs of slowdown or stutter when loading or switching apps, swiping between Android home screens or playing Full HD video files.

The LG G Pad 8.3 completed the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark in 1153ms, which is very similar to the Best Buy-winning Nexus 7’s performance of 1,132ms in the same test, further illustrating the good performance of the G Pad 8.3.

The Snapdragon 600 processor is paired with an Adreno 320 graphics chip, which had no trouble playing 3D games such as Real Racing. We experienced very little slowdown or jerkiness in any of the games we tested, including the notoriously demanding Shadowgun, so it should happily play anything currently available in the Google Play Store. It beat the Nexus 7 in the basic 3D Mark Ice Storm test, but fell behind in the Extreme and Unlimited tests with scores of 6211 and 9459. The Nexus 7 managed 7154 and 10592 in the same tests respectively.

Happily, the G Pad 8.3’s good performance doesn’t impact too greatly on battery life. The G Pad 8.3’s 4,600mAh battery lasted for eight hours and 26 minutes in our video rundown test, which is over 20 minutes longer than that of a Nexus 7. That means you should be able to squeeze a working day’s use from a single charge if you stay away from high-powered apps like games.

LG G Pad 8.3 Android

Naturally the G Pad 8.3 uses LG’s custom Android skin, as seen on the LG G2 smartphone. It’s a versatile custom skin with a host of useful tweaks including waking and locking the tablet with a double tap. Others, such as the gesture-based Q Swipe multitasking mode, awkwardly sit on top of existing Android features, and may not see a lot of use if you’re used to Google’s operating system already.

Pop-up tips and tutorials flood the screen for the first few minutes, but once you’ve dismissed them it’s easy to start customising the home screen and app drawer. Being able to hide specific apps is a welcome inclusion, especially because LG has added plenty of its own. The two most useful are QPair, which sends phone, text and other notifications from your smartphone to the tablet. QPair will also let you tether your G Pad to your Android phone so you can access the internet, but we were sadly unable to test this feature. There’s also a SmartRemote app, which uses the tablet’s IR sensor to control your home entertainment system.

The LG G Pad 8.3 has also received an update from Android 4.2.2 up to Android 4.4.2. This brings a few handy additions, including reduced power usage when using Bluetooth devices; OpenGl ES 3.0 support for improved graphics in supported games; improved wireless printing support, so you can print pretty much anything straight from your phone to a cloud-connected printer; easy access to Google Drive files from within other apps, such as Quickoffice; and built-in Chromecast support. There’s also album art shown when your device is locked and a full-screen immersive mode.

We haven’t yet had to chance to check that all these features have made it across to LG’s take on Android, but they were present in the LG G2 update, so it’s a safe bet they will be here too.

LG G Pad 8.3 Conclusion

Although the Nexus 7 is cheaper, the G Pad 8.3 has a substantially larger display, a faster processor and a microSD card slot for adding extra storage. Right now there’s no better 8in Android tablet available, and arguably no better small Android tablet of any size.

In addition to all that the tablet has dropped in price from £230 when we originally reviewed it, down to just £199 now, you can pick it up at that price from Asda. That puts it on a par with the smaller and older Nexus 7. The price drop and update confirm this as our favourite small Android tablet at present.