Oyster Card question

Yes. One question though, do you currently have Oyster Cards? If not, other options will save you money.

Another question....are you going to Paddington for a reason or just because the Elizabeth line goes there? Is there any place you are actually going? The tube might be cheaper and more convenient.

If you are only doing this for one day, you could save the price of the Oyster card and use a contactless credit card or Apple Pay/Google Pay on your phone instead.

I see from earlier posts that you are only in London for 2 days. An Oyster card costs £7 to buy upfront in addition to any travel costs and even if you qualify for travel discounts it would be hard to recoup. Just use a contactless payment method (card, phone etc).

Thanks for everyone's inputs.
London is our stopover this time, we are having a transit flight on the third day. We are planning to stay at Paddington area is because our fight arrive at LHR at night and our transit flight is in the early morning, so it's easier and quicker to get to and from LHR/city by Express or Elizabeth from Paddington. Two days is definably not enough to explore London, we will come back again for another visit in the future. That's why we probably use Oyster.

you can certainly invest your £7 each into Oysters but you get the same benefits by using a contactless card. All the trips in one day are consolidated and you are only charged one charge per day. The same cap applies as it does on Oyster.

But if you spend the £7 you do get a nice card. These days you never get that £7 back - years ago you used to get the purchase price back, but not now.

Unless you already have Oyster cards there is really no point in paying out £7pp for non-refundable deposits as you will pay exactly the same just using contactless cards without the deposits.
What time is your early train on day 3? It could be that you will need to be at Heathrow before the HEX or Elizabeth lines start. The first HEX is only at 7.25 so probably no good. The first Elizabeth Line Mondays to Saturdays gets you to Heathrow between 5am and 5.12am depending on terminal. On Sundays that would. be between 5.38 and 5.55. Given you may need to be at Heathrow 3 hours before your flight that could rule out a lot of early flights. The alternatives would be an expensive car service or staying at the airport the night before. In the latter case it might then be easier to stay both nights at one of the hotels actually at one of the terminals and commute in rather than changing hotels.

Don't buy an Oyster card. The system has been updated to work with contactless credit/debit cards and mobile phones. It is actually cheaper in some cases not to use Oyster.

I'm sure contactless works most of the time for most people. However I received panicked texts from a friend who was in London for a few days before a cruise and had planned to use contactless payment. Only one of the two cards she and her husband carried would work with the system at all, and the other would only work for one of them because they just had plastic and nothing on their phones. I ran through various scenarios to try, but in the end she bought an Oyster Card.

I personally bought and used an Oyster Card on this last trip. It's sitting in a dresser drawer in the Alice in Wonderland cover I bought for it at the British Museum. A nice little reminder of our last trip, and trips to come.