Xiaomi Pad 7 review: A good balance of price to performance

Does the Xiaomi Pad 7 deliver a satisfactory performance? Let's find out
Does the Xiaomi Pad 7 deliver a satisfactory performance? Let's find out

Summary

The Xiaomi Pad 7, which comes in at under 30,000, may not be a top-grade tablet like the iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab, but is pretty unbeatable at its price range. Find out if this budget-friendly tablet is the right choice for you

Brands have become very good at knowing the target audience for all their products, and in no category is this more apparent than tablets like the Xiaomi Pad 7. While Apple’s iPad line of tablets (and, to an extent, Samsung’s Galaxy tablets) are trying to be everything to everyone and a potential replacement for your laptop, the rest of the market isn’t. They’ve got three major focus areas.

First, they are meant to be a portable and lightweight alternative to laptops when you don’t need to do any of the heavy lifting (for example, photo and video editing or writing and running code). Second, much of the time spent on a tablet would be spent consuming media, whether bingeing on the latest Netflix show or watching Australia take back the Border-Gavaskar Trophy after a decade. Third, it is meant to be an extension (if you get the keyboard and stylus) of your laptop for the creative folks out there. If you’re an artist or a writer, a tablet can become your preferred medium for a large part of your daily life.

As a journalist, there are many occasions when I’ve only relied on a tablet, say while covering the Dharamshala International Film Festival a few years ago. My graphic designer friend likes to go to cafes to bring out the inspiration. He doodles on the tablet and then exports them to his computer for editing and adding the final touches.

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The Xiaomi Pad 7 checks all these boxes. Launched in India at a starting price of 27,999 for the 8GB RAM/128GB storage variant and 30,999 for a 12GB RAM/256GB variant, it also has an ace up its sleeve: a nano-texture display (which Apple employs across various products) edition (retailing for 31,999) that reduces the glare thanks to AR optical coating and AG nano texture. In essence, 99% of glare and 65% of reflectivity is lowered by this coating. I checked out a model with nano-texture coating during a press briefing by Xiaomi and it made a lot of difference to the display. Unfortunately, the Pad 7 that Xiaomi shipped for review is with the standard display, so I won’t be able to give my full opinion on this.

Xiaomi had a tough job following up on last year's impressive Xiaomi Pad 6, one of the best Android tablets on the market. With this one, it also significantly undercuts the OnePlus Pad 2 ( 35,999), especially once you factor in the accessories. There’s not much else in the market worthy of discussion in this price range.

Let’s return to the product at hand and compare the Pad 7, starting with the design and display aspects.

Design and display

Design-wise, this is the same mix of aluminium and glass and looks like many other tablets on the market. What’s changed is the display. It’s expanded ever so slightly and is now an 11.2-inch display (compared to the 11-inch one on the Xiaomi Pad 6), the aspect ratio is 3:2 (instead of 16:9), and it comes with higher native brightness. The 11.2-inch size is ideal for taking on an aeroplane. It’s a gorgeous display. I streamed the BGT match during my trip to Thailand and was impressed. The 3.2K CrystalRes Display shone. It has 345 PPI Ultra Pixel Density, 800 nits of HBM brightness, and a 144Hz refresh rate. The colours were sharp, the text was crisp, and the taps worked even when your fingers were damp/wet.

It’s comfortable to hold if that’s how you prefer to use it. The Pad 7 is 6.18mm thick and weighs just 500gm.

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Consuming media

At times, when consuming content on a tablet with a friend, you need an immersive sound experience. Xiaomi has got it just right. There are two speakers at the top and two at the bottom. The quad-speaker setup comes with Dolby Atmos support. They get loud! There’s an immersive sound option, along with Dolby Atmos, that you must enable in the settings. This provides for a superior sound output, and you can clearly hear all the background sounds during a movie scene. I wouldn’t recommend going over 85% volume, as there is a bit of a crackle. There is a Volume Booster Mode, but it’s best left untouched.

There is one downside, though. If you plan on taking this tablet on trips to binge-watch or stream sports with friends, then please get the nano-texture display variant. With the normal display, the viewing angles aren’t great. There’s a lot of glare, and that’s not a pleasant experience.

An extension of your laptop

For the Pad 7 to be a proper extension of your laptop, you need to get a keyboard. The pen is good, but I feel it isn’t a necessary purchase. The brand has done a lot of work around the keyboard, and it shows. There are proper keys (no number pad), which are backlit. There is also a touchpad. The keys (well, most of them) are correctly sized, and I noticed that my speed never decreased while typing on this keyboard. It didn’t take me long before I was hitting my stride.

There is a Smart Connector on the back of the tablet. This aligns perfectly with the pogo pins on the Focus Keyboard case. Just snap them together, and the connection will be automatic. With the Focus Keyboard, the display is slightly raised and appears above your fingers, which I liked. The build quality is superb here. Another good thing is that the tablet doesn’t fall off, even if you try and shake it. The hinge is solid, with a good amount of resistance. The angle can be adjusted from 0-124 degrees.

What more could you ask for, right? Well, turns out, there is a lot. For one, the touchpad is a big letdown. It may be wide, but it just isn’t tall enough. While swiping or scrolling, your fingers will invariably drift outside of the border, automatically stopping the gesture you’re performing. Secondly, the touchpad is very sensitive. It may not have the tap-to-click feature, but even the slightest ‘click’ can trigger something on the screen that isn’t what you’ve selected. The Pad 6 had a fantastic keyboard, and this one just seems like a slight miss. I’d personally recommend springing for a third-party keyboard from Logitech once it becomes available on the market.

What’s better than the Focus Keyboard is the all-new Focus Pen. It resembles a pencil and is extremely comfortable to hold and doodle with. It also charges quickly. All you have to do is attach it to the tablet. There’s a new spotlight button on the Focus Pen, which has three functions. It can become a pointer, a highlighter, and even a remote shutter. The pointer is helpful during presentations, highlighting is useful when taking notes, and the remote shutter may be useless (for those who take photos with a tablet), but it's better there than not.

Artists will be delighted by the new Focus Pen. This pencil-like pen is fluid and easily glides across the screen, making it ideal for doodling and drawing. It’s no Apple Pencil Pro, but it’s better than anything Xiaomi has done before. I used it to take notes, quickly jot down to-do lists, and even sign documents. There’s Mi Canvas, but I’d recommend any other great note-taking and drawing apps already in the Android ecosystem.

Under the hood

The tablet comes with HyperOS 2 (based on Android 15), which is filled with AI features. The best part, though, is the NFC technology present on the Pad 7. Using that, you can pair your Xiaomi smartphone with the tablet and use it as an extended screen or just use your smartphone from the tablet itself.

I won’t delve deep into the cameras because who even uses a tablet to click photos? Nonetheless, the selfie camera is good for video calls, and the microphone is crisp and clear. If you just need to scan a document in HD, then that’s very much possible with this camera.

The tablet runs on Qualcomm’s old, yet capable, Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3. I’ve had no issues multitasking with this tablet. It’s fast and fluid, and opening apps and websites is a breeze. Battery life is impressive on the Pad 7. There’s an 8850mAh battery included. I got about 12 hours on a single charge (when I wasn’t constantly gaming). In fact, on most days, I could eke out over two days of “office hours" usage on this tablet. There’s a 45W charger, which will take an hour and twenty minutes to fully charge the tablet.

The competition

The competition in the Android tablet market is fierce, especially in the budget and mid-range segments. Saying that, there aren’t a lot of other tablets that are worth checking out. In the premium space, the Apple iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab tablets are superior options, but they come in at double the price. The most immediate competition to the Pad 7 is the OnePlus Pad 2 (also fantastic in its own right, but more expensive). Then, there is the Pad 6 from last year, which Xiaomi still sells at a discount. According to some reports, the only downside of the Pad 6 is that it may not get the update to Android 15. That’s a massive letdown.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE, Honor Pad 9, and Lenovo Tab Plus all cost under 30,000, but they all fall behind the Pad 7 in one way or another.

Verdict

The Xiaomi Pad 7 makes a hard pitch for itself in the under- 30,000 segment. It’s got almost everything you’d want in a tablet (unless you’re a photo/video editor). It wins in media consumption, productivity, creative tasks, multitasking and more over similarly priced tablets. It’s stylish, doesn’t break the bank, and fast and fluid (thanks to the excellent Qualcomm chip on the inside).

On the downside is the fact that it doesn’t have any cellular connectivity. It also has a hit-or-miss keyboard, but overall it strikes a good balance of price-to-performance.

Please do not expect to be able to game on this tablet. Casual gaming, yes. But for longer hours of serious gaming, just buy a laptop or a gaming handheld instead. I got asked this the other day at a cafe I was sitting at and I thought it worth mentioning here. I’d recommend holding off on the keyboard and buying a third-party one for a better experience. The Focus Pen, though, is a must-buy.

It wins in media consumption, productivity, creative tasks, multitasking and more over similarly priced tablets.

The Pad 7 is a fantastic upgrade over its predecessor and worthy of the crown in the under- 30,000 segment. I just wish the Focus Keyboard was slightly better. Maybe Xiaomi can quickly release a Focus Keyboard 2.

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