A tablet with a built-in Steam client that can run PC games locally. Let that sink in for a second. iQOO just launched the Pad Ultra in China, and it’s not just another Android tablet with a fast chip and a big battery. This thing is genuinely trying to collapse the line between mobile gaming and PC gaming, and the spec sheet backs that ambition up in a pretty convincing way.
The display is 8.8 inches with a 165Hz OLED panel, which is exactly what you want if you’re playing fast-paced games. But the real story is what’s inside. iQOO put Qualcomm’s 2nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip in here, paired with up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB of UFS 4.1 storage. That’s a serious amount of horsepower for a tablet, and iQOO clearly knows it because they also built in an active cooling system to manage the heat. We’re talking a 30x30x3.5mm fan, dual vapor chambers, and a copper block sitting right over the CPU. That’s more thermal engineering than most gaming laptops bother with.
There’s also a secondary chip called the Q4, developed in-house by iQOO, specifically to handle frame interpolation and ray tracing. So the main chip isn’t doing all the heavy lifting alone. This kind of dedicated co-processor setup is something we’re seeing more of in high-end Android devices, and it’s a smart move. It keeps the primary chip running cooler and more efficiently during long sessions.
For gaming controls, the Pad Ultra has dual X-axis linear motors for haptic feedback and a 500Hz gyroscope for motion-based aiming. An optional telescopic controller can attach to the device, which would make it feel a lot like a Nintendo Switch in handheld mode. The software side runs OriginOS 7 HD, which includes a Game Space hub that pulls together mobile games, cloud gaming via Tencent START, and that Steam integration for PC titles.
Beyond gaming, iQOO built in a multitasking feature called Atomic Workbench that lets you run up to five apps on screen at once without overlapping windows. It also supports file and clipboard sharing with compatible vivo phones, which makes sense given iQOO sits under the vivo umbrella.
The hardware rounding things out includes:
- 9,020mAh silicon-anode battery with 66W wired charging
- 13MP rear camera with customizable RGB lighting in six effects
- 13MP front camera for video calls
- Metal unibody chassis at 5.74mm thin and 298 grams
- Color options: Star Armor Silver and End Shadow Black
Pricing starts at 5,999 yuan, which is roughly $894, with sales kicking off October 15th in China. That’s not cheap, but compared to what you’d pay for a gaming laptop with similar ambitions, it starts to look more reasonable. The bigger question is whether this reaches global markets, and if it does, what happens to that price tag along the way. For now, iQOO is clearly playing to its home crowd, but the ideas packed into this tablet are worth watching closely.