iQOO has confirmed an 8.8-inch OLED display with a 165Hz refresh rate for the Pad Ultra, its compact gaming tablet. Announced on 25th September, the display specifications arrive ahead of the tablet’s China launch on 29th September 2026 alongside the iQOO 16 smartphone.
iQOO is vivo’s performance-focused brand. As we reported on 8th September, the Pad Ultra is aimed at people who want a gaming device between a phone and a conventional large tablet. The OLED specification, which was still a leak then, is now confirmed.
The display has equal 2.65mm bezels on all four sides and a 93.3% screen-to-body ratio. That ratio describes how much of the front is occupied by the screen. iQOO also quotes a pixel response time below one millisecond, a measure of how quickly pixels change rather than how often the whole screen refreshes.
What the 165Hz OLED screen changes
A 165Hz refresh rate means the screen can update 165 times a second, or roughly once every 6.06 milliseconds. A compatible game can display more frames within the same second, which can make movement appear smoother.
The game still has to produce those frames. A title capped at 60 frames per second will not produce 165 different images simply because the screen supports them. Game support and sustained performance determine how much of the display’s refresh rate players can use. Running a display faster than a game’s frame rate can also consume extra power without adding new frames.
OLED describes how the panel produces light. Its pixels emit their own light, without the separate backlight used by liquid-crystal display, or LCD, screens. That design allows brightness to be controlled at the pixel level and supports higher contrast. It also allows manufacturers to make thinner panels.
iQOO quotes up to 4,500 nits of local peak brightness. Nits measure screen brightness, but the area being measured matters: this figure applies to a small bright part of an image. It does not mean the entire screen reaches 4,500 nits during a game or while displaying a white webpage. A full-screen brightness measurement would be more useful for that comparison.
A cooling fan inside a 298g tablet
The Pad Ultra has an all-metal body that is 5.74mm thick and weighs 298g. It also has a built-in cooling fan. iQOO has shown a stretchable controller accessory and a separate rear grip for the tablet.
For players who prefer on-screen controls, iQOO lists up to 500Hz multi-touch sampling and up to 5,000Hz instantaneous touch sampling. These figures describe how frequently touch input can be sampled. They are separate from the display’s refresh rate and do not measure the total delay between a finger touching the screen and a game responding.
Cooling matters during longer sessions because excessive heat can force a device to reduce processor speeds. The fan is intended to help manage that heat. Its effect on sustained frame rates will need to be established through testing, including how the tablet performs after it has warmed up.
The China launch is scheduled for 7pm Beijing time on 29th September, or 2pm in Kenya. iQOO’s display announcement does not include a retail price or an international release date. Those details will determine what the Pad Ultra costs to buy and where it will be available beyond China.
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