Xiaomi Pad 6 Review: Good tablet with few shortcomings

The Xiaomi Pad 6 is promising and offers a pretty decent upgrade over last year’s Xiaomi Pad 5. We get a better chip, a more responsive and vibrant display, and a marginally bigger battery.

Xiaomi is back with another tablet. The Xiaomi Pad 6 comes on the back of the success of its predecessor, the Xiaomi Pad 5 that was launched as a critically-acclaimed offering last year, but faced a major shortage of stocks. This time around, the Xiaomi Pad 6 comes with a “Do It Better” tagline with a focus on Entertainment, Productivity, and gaming. But we also get a ₹2,000 price hike, excluding the launch discounts. 

So is the Xiaomi Pad 6 worth the Rs 28,999 price tag? Is the tablet a considerable improvement over the predecessor? We used the Xiaomi Pad 6 for some time and put the tablet to test at the Digit Test Lab to see if this is actually a good option for those looking for an Android tablet, and how big of an improvement do we get for a ₹2,000 premium. Let’s take a look:

DESIGN:

Design of the Xiaomi Pad 6 is very safe. It is in-line with the company’s new design language that places a square-ish camera module on the top corner of the back panel. The camera module design is very similar to the one we saw earlier this year on the Xiaomi 13 Pro, but here we only get a single camera. The back panel has a certain brushed aluminium finish, which gives the tablet a premium in-hand feel. Xiaomi has launched it in two colours - Graphite Grey and Mist Blue. We got the Graphite Grey for our review and as much as I hate to say it, the in-hand feel is very similar to the Apple iPad Air.

Up front also, the Xiaomi Pad 6 resembles the Apple iPad. The even bezels, along with the orientation, we can’t help but notice the similarities with the iPad. In fact, even the default wallpaper on the Xiaomi Pad 6 looks inspired by the Apple iPad Air. Now, this could work well for the brand since India is a market with a lot of aspirational buyers, and this could make for a poor man’s iPad in the near future, but at the same time, it shows lack of innovation and reliability on a tried and tested model.

Apart from this, an important design change here is that the Xiaomi Pad 6 has the front camera placed in the side bezel instead of the top, making it easier for the user to keep themselves in the center while taking video calls. Further, the Pogo Pins to attach accessories is also placed on the back panel’s bottom right corner, which is a bit of a weird placement in terms of the overall scenario, but this doesn’t really matter since the accessories will be made with this orientation.

Overall, it is a safe design approach from Xiaomi. The size of the tablet is perfect with the 11-inch display and slim bezels (by tablet standards). We get a flat-edge design, making the Xiaomi Pad 6 look more seamless when the tablet is lying on a desk or any flat surface. It is also very slim at just 6.51mm thickness, and the weight is also pretty decent at 490 grams. Yes, it does look like the iPad Air from the front, but that is not entirely a bad thing in my opinion.

DISPLAY

The display on the Xiaomi Pad 6 is an 11-inch 2.8K display, which means a 308.75 PPI pixel density. Alongside that, we get 144Hz refresh rate which is one of the highest on any tablet in the market so far. We also get support for HDR10 and Dolby Vision, along with a 99 percent DCI-P3 coverage and a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is quite a proportionate layout. 

The display quality on the Xiaomi Pad 6 is quite nice. The colours are vibrant and accurate, and the Dolby Vision support makes watching content on the device a pleasing experience. Since display is an integral part of all the three focus areas of the Xiaomi Pad 6 - Entertainment, Gaming and Productivity, the company has put in a lot of features in order to try and make this display stand out. For example, MEMC, which stands for Motion Estimation, Motion Correction. This technology works by forcing frames in the middle of two frames, which gives the display that extra level of smoothness.

In terms of colour accuracy, the Xiaomi Pad 6 display is pretty decent. We tested the display for colour accuracy using a Calman setup, and in sRGB colour profile, the Xiaomi Pad 6 showed a  average DeltaE of 2.4, which is pretty good. The smartphone struggled to get the whites and browns right overall, but apart from that, the Xiaomi Pad 6 showed pretty decent colour accuracy on our sRGB colour checker analysis. The answer to inaccurate whites, however, lies in the Greyscale test, where the Xiaomi Pad 6 didn't really get the whites right. The display uses a bit too much blue to make the whites brighter, resulting in a spike in the blue value. It also showed a contrast ratio of 1255 in the sRGB Greyscale test which is about standard for an IPS LCD panel but falls drastically short of AMOLED displays that we are used to on smartphones these days. 

In the DCI-P3 colour checker analysis, the Xiaomi Pad 6 again showed an impressive average DeltaE of 2.5 and here also, the display only struggled in getting shades of white and brown right, along with similar results in the grayscale test, where the Xiaomi Pad 6 display uses too much blue to make the whites appear brighter.

Coming to brightness, in the Calman test, the Xiaomi Pad 6 showed a peak luminance of 503 nits. We also used a Lux Meter to measure the Xiaomi Pad 6's maximum brightness, and the tablet showed a peak luminance of 623 nits, and a minimum brightness of 3 nits on a plain white screen. This is also a pretty good range for an IPS LCD display. I did use the tablet on a flight on a bright sunny day with the windows open, and while it was pretty good most of the times, there were moments or spots where the sun was shining too bright for me to see anything.

Furthermore, we also get a Video Toolbox feature that enables several video-specific features for any app you want to. For example, the Video Toolbox allows you to record your screen, cast it on other devices, and take screenshots. On top of that, you can adjust the colour profiles on each app separately, and you can play around with the sound and Dolby Atmos settings separately on every app that you activate the feature for. There is also an HDR setting in the colour profiles, forcing HDR on non-HDR content across all apps that you have activated it for. 

Now, while this could be good in the sense that it makes the picture appear more vibrant and bright, but it is a bit confusing since it takes a bit away from the creator’s intent, since non-HDR content is meant to be consumed in SDR, and HDR content is meant to be consumed in HDR. We did ask Xiaomi about how the brand aims to preserve the creator’s content here, but haven’t received a response yet. We will update this story as and when we get a response from the brand. 

Over and above the good colour accuracy and brightness, and the quirky features like Video Toolbox, we also get a 144Hz refresh rate, which makes the Xiaomi Pad 6's display super slick. The high refresh rate also allows users to play games like Call of Duty Mobile on a "Max" frame rate setting so that is always good!

PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY

Coming to performance, the Xiaomi Pad 6 uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 chipset, which was quite a popular chipset used for many performance or gaming-centric smartphones from last year. This is also an upgrade over last year’s Xiaomi Pad 5, which used a Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 chipset. The Snapdragon 870 is paired with 8GB of RAM, which should be enough for all kinds of tasks users will throw its way.

The performance numbers on the Xiaomi Pad 6 are also good. The tablet showed pretty decent improvement over last year’s Xiaomi Pad 5 and even managed to beat the latest OnePlus Pad in a few CPU-based benchmark tests. It is important to note here that the OnePlus Pad starts at ₹37,999, so the Xiaomi Pad 6 beats out a tablet that costs about ₹9,000 more than the Xiaomi Pad 6. Good. In Geekbench 6 and PC Mark Work 3.0, the Xiaomi Pad 6 beats the OnePlus Pad, which also has a newer chip, the MediaTek Dimensity 9000.

We also tried to run GPU-based benchmarks on the Xiaomi Pad 6, but weren’t able to run them since Xiaomi products usually have these benchmarks blacklisted for some reason. However, I did play games on the Xiaomi Pad 6 and my experience was pretty good. The smartphone smoothly runs games and the loading times were also minimal. Yes, playing mobile games on a bigger screen feels a bit odd since I’m used to the smaller screen on games like Call of Duty: Mobile and the likes, but the games ran very smoothly and at times, the bigger screen helped in making things more visible.

Keeping the testing and benchmarks aside, I used the Xiaomi Pad 6 for work, entertainment, and gaming. And in all three areas, the tablet performed pretty well. I took the Xiaomi Pad 6 on a work trip and used it as my only work and entertainment device for about 2 days with the keyboard and the Xiaomi Pencil. The experience was as good as any other tablet I have used in the past. You can easily run three apps at once on the tablet, which is great for people like me who have to write a lot for work - be it scripts or articles, I was able to write and research at the same time. Further, the Xiaomi Pencil also works pretty well. While I’m not much of an artist, I loved using the pencil in attempts of unleashing my creative side. The latency is very good, and the pencil is also pressure sensitive, along with shortcut control. Pretty cool.

There are other convenience and productivity features on the Xiaomi Pad 6, like this new phone connectivity feature. Now, while it is a very convenient feature for those who want to transfer files or sync data from their smartphones to their tablets, or even cast their smartphone screen, but the feature is only limited to the Xiaomi 13 Pro smartphone for now, which means it basically doesn’t exist for the majority of people who will go ahead and buy this device. Apart from this, the Xiaomi Pad 6 also comes with 4K output, meaning that if you connect it with a 4K display, the tablet’s output will be in the full 4K resolution. Very cool.

Apart from this, Xiaomi has also done well to keep the keyboard shortcuts very similar to what we use on a Windows laptop. Being a Windows user, I can appreciate this feature and how much it affects the productivity or the ease of working on this tablet, but you will really miss a trackpad more often than not. Another reason why I’d prefer the trackpad is that having one leaves borders below the keyboard setup for you to rest your palms. Yes, it doesn’t really matter on a flat surface like a desk or a tabletop, but since I used this on my lap a lot, I missed that extra space to rest my palms and keep the tablet balanced at the same time.

Coming to battery, the Xiaomi Pad 6’s battery is an 8,840mAh unit, which is pretty big on paper. In our battery tests, however, the results were a bit mixed. For example, the Xiaomi Pad 6 lost a whopping 12 percent of the battery while using GPS navigation for 1 hour. While playing Call of Duty Mobile for 15 minutes, the tablet lost about 5 percent of the battery, and while streaming HDR content for 30 minutes, the Xiaomi Pad 6 lost 8 percent of the battery. This, despite the large 8,840mAh unit, doesn’t really show good battery optimisation.

Coming to charging, the Xiaomi Pad 6 comes with 33W fast charging, which charges the tablet from 0 to 100 in about 124 minutes or 2 hours and 4 minutes. Now, while this is not the fastest charging we have seen on a tablet, it is not too bad for a large 8,840mAh battery.

CAMERA

Coming to cameras, the camera on the Xiaomi Pad 6 is average. The rear camera is something that won’t be used as much as the front camera, so having an average quality isn’t really a deal breaker. However, the images from the rear camera aren’t really good per se. The photos are usually more hazy and lack a certain level of detail and sharpness. The colours also seem quite washed out from this 13-megapixel shooter.

The front camera, on the other hand, is an 8-megapixel shooter, which is good for 1080p video recording at 30FPS. This also isn’t very good if we compare it with some other, more premium devices, but for your video calls and online meetings, this does the job pretty well. Yes, the selfies won’t be as good as a smartphone, but for other tasks, this will get the job done pretty well.

VERDICT

So that was my review of the Xiaomi Pad 6. The tablet is promising and offers a pretty decent upgrade over last year’s Xiaomi Pad 5. We get a better chip, a more responsive and vibrant display, and a marginally bigger battery.

The design is also pretty handy and compact and it does look like the iPad Air from the front. Even the default wallpaper looks inspired by the iPad Air’s wallpaper, but I’m not sure if that’s exactly a bad thing. The display and performance are pretty good, but the battery optimisation and camera are just about average.

Xiaomi has also put a lot of effort into providing convenience and productivity features, but there are a few things here and there that require an explanation or better compatibility. Furthermore, there are things you can’t help but miss like a trackpad on the additional keyboard accessory and cellular connectivity, but these are things you’ll only miss if you are a certain type of user. Overall, the Xiaomi Pad 6 is a nice product and I had a good time consuming content and working on this tablet. What remains to be seen is if Xiaomi has enough stocks, in case this enjoys the same level of popularity as its predecessor.

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Good tablet with few shortcomings Review

The Xiaomi Pad 6 is promising and offers a pretty decent upgrade over last year’s Xiaomi Pad 5. We get a better chip, a more responsive and vibrant display, and a marginally bigger battery.

Xiaomi is back with another tablet. The Xiaomi Pad 6 comes on the back of the success of its predecessor, the Xiaomi Pad 5 that was launched as a critically-acclaimed offering last year, but faced a major shortage of stocks. This time around, the Xiaomi Pad 6 comes with a “Do It Better” tagline with a focus on Entertainment, Productivity, and gaming. But we also get a ₹2,000 price hike, excluding the launch discounts. 

So is the Xiaomi Pad 6 worth the Rs 28,999 price tag? Is the tablet a considerable improvement over the predecessor? We used the Xiaomi Pad 6 for some time and put the tablet to test at the Digit Test Lab to see if this is actually a good option for those looking for an Android tablet, and how big of an improvement do we get for a ₹2,000 premium. Let’s take a look:

DESIGN:

Design of the Xiaomi Pad 6 is very safe. It is in-line with the company’s new design language that places a square-ish camera module on the top corner of the back panel. The camera module design is very similar to the one we saw earlier this year on the Xiaomi 13 Pro, but here we only get a single camera. The back panel has a certain brushed aluminium finish, which gives the tablet a premium in-hand feel. Xiaomi has launched it in two colours - Graphite Grey and Mist Blue. We got the Graphite Grey for our review and as much as I hate to say it, the in-hand feel is very similar to the Apple iPad Air.

Up front also, the Xiaomi Pad 6 resembles the Apple iPad. The even bezels, along with the orientation, we can’t help but notice the similarities with the iPad. In fact, even the default wallpaper on the Xiaomi Pad 6 looks inspired by the Apple iPad Air. Now, this could work well for the brand since India is a market with a lot of aspirational buyers, and this could make for a poor man’s iPad in the near future, but at the same time, it shows lack of innovation and reliability on a tried and tested model.

Apart from this, an important design change here is that the Xiaomi Pad 6 has the front camera placed in the side bezel instead of the top, making it easier for the user to keep themselves in the center while taking video calls. Further, the Pogo Pins to attach accessories is also placed on the back panel’s bottom right corner, which is a bit of a weird placement in terms of the overall scenario, but this doesn’t really matter since the accessories will be made with this orientation.

Overall, it is a safe design approach from Xiaomi. The size of the tablet is perfect with the 11-inch display and slim bezels (by tablet standards). We get a flat-edge design, making the Xiaomi Pad 6 look more seamless when the tablet is lying on a desk or any flat surface. It is also very slim at just 6.51mm thickness, and the weight is also pretty decent at 490 grams. Yes, it does look like the iPad Air from the front, but that is not entirely a bad thing in my opinion.

DISPLAY

The display on the Xiaomi Pad 6 is an 11-inch 2.8K display, which means a 308.75 PPI pixel density. Alongside that, we get 144Hz refresh rate which is one of the highest on any tablet in the market so far. We also get support for HDR10 and Dolby Vision, along with a 99 percent DCI-P3 coverage and a 16:10 aspect ratio, which is quite a proportionate layout. 

The display quality on the Xiaomi Pad 6 is quite nice. The colours are vibrant and accurate, and the Dolby Vision support makes watching content on the device a pleasing experience. Since display is an integral part of all the three focus areas of the Xiaomi Pad 6 - Entertainment, Gaming and Productivity, the company has put in a lot of features in order to try and make this display stand out. For example, MEMC, which stands for Motion Estimation, Motion Correction. This technology works by forcing frames in the middle of two frames, which gives the display that extra level of smoothness.

In terms of colour accuracy, the Xiaomi Pad 6 display is pretty decent. We tested the display for colour accuracy using a Calman setup, and in sRGB colour profile, the Xiaomi Pad 6 showed a  average DeltaE of 2.4, which is pretty good. The smartphone struggled to get the whites and browns right overall, but apart from that, the Xiaomi Pad 6 showed pretty decent colour accuracy on our sRGB colour checker analysis. The answer to inaccurate whites, however, lies in the Greyscale test, where the Xiaomi Pad 6 didn't really get the whites right. The display uses a bit too much blue to make the whites brighter, resulting in a spike in the blue value. It also showed a contrast ratio of 1255 in the sRGB Greyscale test which is about standard for an IPS LCD panel but falls drastically short of AMOLED displays that we are used to on smartphones these days. 

In the DCI-P3 colour checker analysis, the Xiaomi Pad 6 again showed an impressive average DeltaE of 2.5 and here also, the display only struggled in getting shades of white and brown right, along with similar results in the grayscale test, where the Xiaomi Pad 6 display uses too much blue to make the whites appear brighter.

Coming to brightness, in the Calman test, the Xiaomi Pad 6 showed a peak luminance of 503 nits. We also used a Lux Meter to measure the Xiaomi Pad 6's maximum brightness, and the tablet showed a peak luminance of 623 nits, and a minimum brightness of 3 nits on a plain white screen. This is also a pretty good range for an IPS LCD display. I did use the tablet on a flight on a bright sunny day with the windows open, and while it was pretty good most of the times, there were moments or spots where the sun was shining too bright for me to see anything.

Furthermore, we also get a Video Toolbox feature that enables several video-specific features for any app you want to. For example, the Video Toolbox allows you to record your screen, cast it on other devices, and take screenshots. On top of that, you can adjust the colour profiles on each app separately, and you can play around with the sound and Dolby Atmos settings separately on every app that you activate the feature for. There is also an HDR setting in the colour profiles, forcing HDR on non-HDR content across all apps that you have activated it for. 

Now, while this could be good in the sense that it makes the picture appear more vibrant and bright, but it is a bit confusing since it takes a bit away from the creator’s intent, since non-HDR content is meant to be consumed in SDR, and HDR content is meant to be consumed in HDR. We did ask Xiaomi about how the brand aims to preserve the creator’s content here, but haven’t received a response yet. We will update this story as and when we get a response from the brand. 

Over and above the good colour accuracy and brightness, and the quirky features like Video Toolbox, we also get a 144Hz refresh rate, which makes the Xiaomi Pad 6's display super slick. The high refresh rate also allows users to play games like Call of Duty Mobile on a "Max" frame rate setting so that is always good!

PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY

Coming to performance, the Xiaomi Pad 6 uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 chipset, which was quite a popular chipset used for many performance or gaming-centric smartphones from last year. This is also an upgrade over last year’s Xiaomi Pad 5, which used a Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 chipset. The Snapdragon 870 is paired with 8GB of RAM, which should be enough for all kinds of tasks users will throw its way.

The performance numbers on the Xiaomi Pad 6 are also good. The tablet showed pretty decent improvement over last year’s Xiaomi Pad 5 and even managed to beat the latest OnePlus Pad in a few CPU-based benchmark tests. It is important to note here that the OnePlus Pad starts at ₹37,999, so the Xiaomi Pad 6 beats out a tablet that costs about ₹9,000 more than the Xiaomi Pad 6. Good. In Geekbench 6 and PC Mark Work 3.0, the Xiaomi Pad 6 beats the OnePlus Pad, which also has a newer chip, the MediaTek Dimensity 9000.

We also tried to run GPU-based benchmarks on the Xiaomi Pad 6, but weren’t able to run them since Xiaomi products usually have these benchmarks blacklisted for some reason. However, I did play games on the Xiaomi Pad 6 and my experience was pretty good. The smartphone smoothly runs games and the loading times were also minimal. Yes, playing mobile games on a bigger screen feels a bit odd since I’m used to the smaller screen on games like Call of Duty: Mobile and the likes, but the games ran very smoothly and at times, the bigger screen helped in making things more visible.

Keeping the testing and benchmarks aside, I used the Xiaomi Pad 6 for work, entertainment, and gaming. And in all three areas, the tablet performed pretty well. I took the Xiaomi Pad 6 on a work trip and used it as my only work and entertainment device for about 2 days with the keyboard and the Xiaomi Pencil. The experience was as good as any other tablet I have used in the past. You can easily run three apps at once on the tablet, which is great for people like me who have to write a lot for work - be it scripts or articles, I was able to write and research at the same time. Further, the Xiaomi Pencil also works pretty well. While I’m not much of an artist, I loved using the pencil in attempts of unleashing my creative side. The latency is very good, and the pencil is also pressure sensitive, along with shortcut control. Pretty cool.

There are other convenience and productivity features on the Xiaomi Pad 6, like this new phone connectivity feature. Now, while it is a very convenient feature for those who want to transfer files or sync data from their smartphones to their tablets, or even cast their smartphone screen, but the feature is only limited to the Xiaomi 13 Pro smartphone for now, which means it basically doesn’t exist for the majority of people who will go ahead and buy this device. Apart from this, the Xiaomi Pad 6 also comes with 4K output, meaning that if you connect it with a 4K display, the tablet’s output will be in the full 4K resolution. Very cool.

Apart from this, Xiaomi has also done well to keep the keyboard shortcuts very similar to what we use on a Windows laptop. Being a Windows user, I can appreciate this feature and how much it affects the productivity or the ease of working on this tablet, but you will really miss a trackpad more often than not. Another reason why I’d prefer the trackpad is that having one leaves borders below the keyboard setup for you to rest your palms. Yes, it doesn’t really matter on a flat surface like a desk or a tabletop, but since I used this on my lap a lot, I missed that extra space to rest my palms and keep the tablet balanced at the same time.

Coming to battery, the Xiaomi Pad 6’s battery is an 8,840mAh unit, which is pretty big on paper. In our battery tests, however, the results were a bit mixed. For example, the Xiaomi Pad 6 lost a whopping 12 percent of the battery while using GPS navigation for 1 hour. While playing Call of Duty Mobile for 15 minutes, the tablet lost about 5 percent of the battery, and while streaming HDR content for 30 minutes, the Xiaomi Pad 6 lost 8 percent of the battery. This, despite the large 8,840mAh unit, doesn’t really show good battery optimisation.

Coming to charging, the Xiaomi Pad 6 comes with 33W fast charging, which charges the tablet from 0 to 100 in about 124 minutes or 2 hours and 4 minutes. Now, while this is not the fastest charging we have seen on a tablet, it is not too bad for a large 8,840mAh battery.

CAMERA

Coming to cameras, the camera on the Xiaomi Pad 6 is average. The rear camera is something that won’t be used as much as the front camera, so having an average quality isn’t really a deal breaker. However, the images from the rear camera aren’t really good per se. The photos are usually more hazy and lack a certain level of detail and sharpness. The colours also seem quite washed out from this 13-megapixel shooter.

The front camera, on the other hand, is an 8-megapixel shooter, which is good for 1080p video recording at 30FPS. This also isn’t very good if we compare it with some other, more premium devices, but for your video calls and online meetings, this does the job pretty well. Yes, the selfies won’t be as good as a smartphone, but for other tasks, this will get the job done pretty well.

VERDICT

So that was my review of the Xiaomi Pad 6. The tablet is promising and offers a pretty decent upgrade over last year’s Xiaomi Pad 5. We get a better chip, a more responsive and vibrant display, and a marginally bigger battery.

The design is also pretty handy and compact and it does look like the iPad Air from the front. Even the default wallpaper looks inspired by the iPad Air’s wallpaper, but I’m not sure if that’s exactly a bad thing. The display and performance are pretty good, but the battery optimisation and camera are just about average.

Xiaomi has also put a lot of effort into providing convenience and productivity features, but there are a few things here and there that require an explanation or better compatibility. Furthermore, there are things you can’t help but miss like a trackpad on the additional keyboard accessory and cellular connectivity, but these are things you’ll only miss if you are a certain type of user. Overall, the Xiaomi Pad 6 is a nice product and I had a good time consuming content and working on this tablet. What remains to be seen is if Xiaomi has enough stocks, in case this enjoys the same level of popularity as its predecessor.

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Xiaomi Pad 5 Review: Heavy on features, light on pocket

Xiaomi is back in the tablet space and how! It sets a benchmark with its Xiaomi Pad 5 which goes heavy with features on offer but is light on the pocket. Its closest competitor is the Apple iPad (9th gen) which undoubtedly offers a better tablet experience, especially with its support of apps and games but, with the Pad 5 you’re getting some of the most high-end features at half the price, even when you include the supported accessories.

Xiaomi Pad 5 is packed with functional features to the brim and carries a reasonable price tag. It marks Xiaomi’s return to the tablet space in India after 8 long years and aims to offer a premium tablet experience rivalling Apple iPads. Xiaomi has enough experience with the Indian smartphone market that has helped it remain at the top of the game and with the Pad 5, it aims to replicate that success in the tablet segment. Right from the Dolby Vision certified display, powerful Snapdragon 800-series chipset, quad speakers and a large battery to boot, the Xiaomi Pad 5 offers everything you need for a great tablet experience and tries to make its case against the Apple iPad 2021 (9th gen). But does it have enough potential to be considered as an alternative to the mighty iPad? We try to find out in this review of the Xiaomi Pad 5.

Also Read: iPad Air (2022) Review - Utilitarian Maximus

Xiaomi Pad 5 review: Build and Design

The Xiaomi Pad 5 has a premium build and feels great to hold in the hand. The middle frame is made from aluminium while the rear panel is largely plastic with a glossy finish that’s resistant to fingerprints but not so much with smudges. The Pad 5 is thinner than the iPad (9th gen) at just 6.9mm but is slightly hefty at 511 grams. Still, you will be able to use it comfortably with both hands like when gaming or watching something casually on YouTube.

 

The Pad 5 has four speakers, two at the top and two at the bottom accompanied by a power button and a Type-C port respectively. The power button does not have an embedded fingerprint reader which I feel is a missed opportunity for Xiaomi and anyone who buys the Pad 5 will have to make do with either a pin or pattern to unlock the tablet. There is a magnetic connector to dock the Smart Pen and a three-pin pogo connector to attach the Keyboard. The Xiaomi Pad 5 is well-designed for daily use and feels every bit more premium than you would expect from a tablet at this price.

Xiaomi Pad 5 review: Display

The Pad 5 has a gorgeous and high-resolution 10-bit display even though it uses an LCD panel, the visuals are sharp with good contrast and details that make for a great viewing experience. The screen is certified for Dolby Vision and HDR10 playback which makes watching movies or TV shows on Netflix or Prime Video even more vibrant and enjoyable with supported content. While using the Smart Pen, the display may feel a bit slippery and as a result, I noticed some ghost touches sometimes when scribbling in the Notes app. Though it has palm rejection which works well almost all the time, you can always apply a matte screen protector to get a paper-like feel which is much better if you will be using the Smart Pen regularly with this tablet. 

Xiaomi claims 650 nits brightness in High Brightness Mode which we found to be accurate in my daily use. In our tests, the display goes up to 635 nits on average in high brightness mode (Sunlight Mode) and around 630 nits in the normal mode. Since it's not an OLED panel, the display doesn’t have perfect black levels and goes to 6 nits which is decent. It also has a colour temperature sensor like the True Tone in iPad which adjusts colours based on the ambient lights. The screen also has Gorilla Glass 3 protection.

Xiaomi Pad 5 review: Performance

The general day-to-day performance of the Pad 5 is really great and there’s really nothing that breaks the experience. From MIUI for Pad to system animations and multitasking, the Pad 5 is excellent for playing games and doing some work on the side. It offers solid performance across the board and is capable of sustaining it for a long time giving you a sense of dependability which can’t be said for many tablets in this price range.

The Snapdragon 860 is capable of lending enough power for tasks like sketching, taking notes, editing photos and gaming or watching content on the go. In synthetic benchmarks like AnTuTu, Geekbench, 3DMark and more, the Pad 5 received decent scores that only prove that it is capable of running all apps and games you can find on the Play Store without any issues. In AnTuTu, the Pad 5 got 534436 points while in Geekbench 5 it received 731 points in single-core and 2499 points in multi-core tests. In the CPU throttling test, the Xiaomi Pad 5 was able to hold out on its own giving us 94% of its maximum performance. Being a tablet with a large surface area, heat dissipation isn’t a problem and this tablet rarely runs hot. 

It runs intensive games like Genshin Impact, COD Mobile and BGMI without breaking a sweat though if you're coming from a smartphone, there’s a bit of a learning curve to play on such a large screen. The Xiaomi Pad 5 also has a great set of speakers that complement the visuals making for a great gaming and viewing experience. Though the presence of a 3.5mm audio jack is missed given that you will cover one speaker grille on each side when holding the tablet in landscape mode.

MIUI for Pad gives it a neat and minimal look which remains greatly responsive and smooth for the most part. The Android system still recognizes it as MIUI 13 based on Android 11 and there are still a lot many optimizations that are needed like the feed layout on Twitter or Instagram. However, my hope is that Xiaomi will continue to work on improving the MIUI for Pad especially since the Android 12 update is due which brings in much better support for large screens.

Xiaomi is offering a Smart Pen and a Keyboard dock as separate accessories with the Pad 5. The Smart Pen isn’t as polished as the Apple Pencil (2nd gen) but offers great pressure sensitivity levels with low latency, making it a great tool for taking notes in the Smart Note app or just sketching something in Sketchbook. It weighs just 12 grams and attaches to the top of Pad 5 when held in landscape. It charges wirelessly for the duration it is docked and takes just 20 minutes to fully charge.

The other accessory is the Keyboard for the Xiaomi Pad which makes it a versatile tool but remains unavailable at the time of writing this review. You can further pair it up with a wireless mouse and you’re all set to get some work done. The keyboard is good enough for some writing work or just generally browsing around the web but don’t expect a laptop-like performance especially if your use case requires you to deal with a lot of spreadsheets. Otherwise, it’s a great utility for students who have just gotten into college and are looking for a portable and lightweight device for daily use.

Xiaomi Pad 5 review: Battery Life

The Xiaomi Pad 5 has a pretty large battery which offers a long battery life. In my use, you could go on for a day or two of using the Pad 5 regularly. If you plan on watching occasional movies and TV shows, for the most part, expect around 3-4 days of battery life easily. In our video loop test, the Xiaomi Pad 5 ran a local 4K video file over VLC for around 14.5 hours before giving up on us. This was with the brightness set to maximum and refresh rate set to 120Hz which is pretty good.

Though the Pad 5 supports 33W fast charging, Xiaomi bundles a 22.5W adapter in the box. On average, it took around 1 hour and 55 minutes to fully charge the massive 8,720mAh battery. You can effectively reduce the charging time if you have a 33W Xiaomi charger handy otherwise it's not worth buying separately.   

Xiaomi Pad 5 review: Cameras

The Pad 5 has a 13MP rear camera which is decent and does a good job of scanning documents and sharing them when required. However, it’s not going to be a first choice for taking pictures for anyone who has a smartphone in their pocket. The front-facing camera is also good enough for video calls and it manages to put across sharp visuals with natural skin tones. However, its placement is the same as on the iPads which means you’ll never appear to be looking straight into the camera while on a call in landscape mode.

Xiaomi Pad 5 review: Verdict

Xiaomi is back in the tablet space and how! It sets a benchmark with its Xiaomi Pad 5 which goes heavy with features on offer but is light on the pocket. Its closest competitor is the Apple iPad (9th gen) which undoubtedly offers a better tablet experience, especially with its support of apps and games but, with the Pad 5 you’re getting an immersive display with 120Hz refresh rate, better audio experience, great battery life and 256GB storage for Rs 28,999 (iPad 2021 is Rs 44,900). Add in the cost of the Smart Pen (Rs 5,999) and you’re at around Rs 35,000 and while we don’t know the price of the Keyboard, it’s unlikely to go beyond the 44k mark. The first-generation Apple Pencil costs Rs 8,500 and the Smart Keyboard costs another Rs 13,900, totalling Rs 67,300. Did the math for you!

The Xiaomi Pad 5 is a solid showing from the company but it does have its fair share of drawbacks. The MIUI for Pad needs more optimizations be it in system or with apps but the cohesiveness of iPad OS is missing right now. The Pad 5 misses out on cellular connectivity, GPS, biometric fingerprint reader and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Save for the cellular option, all are essential features in my opinion. Then there’s the case of Xiaomi pulling a fast one by offering support for 33W fast charging but a 22.5W adapter in the box. 

The question remains whether the Xiaomi Pad 5 and by extension Android is ready and worth any kind of investment by users. Our review unit is running MIUI 13 which is sadly based on Android 11 but was able to handle multi-tasking and tasks like gaming and sketching with great ease. I can see Pad 5 being used by college students and creative pros who want to try their hands at sketching and designing. It runs the Microsoft Office suite so you can make your projects on this tablet and even write your first novel on it. It works as a great media consumption device too, but what it can’t do is be a laptop replacement and perform high-level tasks meant for laptops.

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Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition Review: Refined wine in a familiar bottle

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition adds quality of life improvements to an already amazing e-reader. But is it the right Kindle for you? Well, that depends on how important reading as a hobby is to you. If you are a casual reader, reading a couple of books in a year, then the entry-level Kindle should get the job done. As of writing this review, it is priced at Rs 8,000 and a great 6-inch e-reader. The Kindle Paperwhite, in our opinion, is the sweet spot for those that are avid readers and the price to performance ratio is also good. The 6-inch Paperwhite is priced at Rs 11,000, but I feel the Rs 14,000 6.8-inch Paperwhite is the better option with more LEDs backlighting a slightly larger 6.8-inch display. At the other end of the spectrum, we have the Kindle Oasis, which at Rs 22,000 gives the Rolls Royce Kindle experience with its uber premium build, 7-inch display with 25 LEDs backlighting, automatic rotating page orientation and much more. The Signature Edition Paperwhite bridges the gap between the Paperwhite and the Oasis by offering features that are practical - it has the same display, build and design as the Rs 14,000 Paperwhite with the auto-adjusting light sensor and 32GB storage being the stand out features. Qi wireless charging is a welcome addition as well. While storage options are subjective to your reading habits, I can tell you that once you get used to the auto-adjusting light on a Kindle, you can't go back. Overall, if you have a 10th gen Paperwhite, you can hold off upgrading to the Signature edition. But if you are coming from the entry-level Kindle or have a Kindle that's a few years older and want to upgrade your reading experience, then the Paperwhite Signature Edition makes sense over the regular Paperwhite as it adds quality of life improvements found on the Oasis without costing as much.

Amazon’s Kindle is a great device for the voracious reader, and just like the company’s Fire TV Stick, there is something here for everyone. You have the entry-level Kindle (review) targeted at those looking to move from physical books to e-books for the first time; you have the Paperwhite (review) which, in our opinion, is the voracious reader's best friend, and you have the Oasis (review) which gives you an absolute premium reading experience. 

With the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition, Amazon is looking at offering customers more refined wine in a familiar bottle. It adds some of the features found on the Oasis to the Paperwhite while retaining the same design and ergonomics found on the Paperwhite, which in my opinion, are very good. So, let’s find out if the new Signature Edition Kindle Paperwhite is the one for you. 

Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition: Key specifications at a glance Storage: 32GB  Screen Size: 6.8-inches Resolution: 300ppi LEDs: 17 Waterproof: IPX8 Wi-Fi: Yes 4G: No Weight: 208 grams Thickness: 8.1mm Price: 17,999

Unboxing and setting up the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition

In the box, you get the Kindle along with a USB cable. The Kindle has now been upgraded and charges using a USB-C port at the bottom. You get a USB-C cable in the box but no power brick. Amazon says the device can fully charge in less than 2.5 hours “with a 9W USB power adapter”. That’s all you get in the box. Setting up the Kindle is as easy as connecting to the Wi-Fi, logging in with your Amazon account and you are good to go. 

Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition: Build and design

One look at the device and you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a Paperwhite and that's ok as most of the upgrades are under the hood. Safe to say, if you’ve used a Paperwhite in the past, you are getting the exact same experience here with some upgrades. 

The front of the device is all black with slightly thick bezels around the display, adding to the grip. You have the light sensor on the top of the display. The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition has a large chin with the Kindle branding and I found this chin to be one of the most ergonomic places to hold the device for long reading sessions. The bottom has the USB-C port, LED indicator and sleep/wake button. 

The device has this nice rubbery smooth finish at the back which gives it a very good grip. The back is slightly curved adding to the ergonomics. Unless I was falling asleep reading a book, I did not drop the Kindle, not even by accident - that's how good the grip on the device is. The only downside, because of which you may want to invest in a case, is that the back can get dirty quite easily and the device can be a dust magnet. 

The ergonomics on the other hand are ever so slightly different when compared to the regular Paperwhite. The Signature Edition is slightly heavier (17 grams to be precise) and a hair thinner, both of which cannot be noticed by the naked eye. Amazon has gone with an “if it ain't broke don't fix it” policy for the design of the Paperwhite, save for the USB port, which has now been upgraded from micro-USB to Type-C, which I prefer. 

Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition: Display and performance

The display size, and resolution of the Kindle Paperwhite and the Paperwhite Signature Edition are the same. You get a 6.8-inch glare-free display with 17 LEDs for backlighting and a pixel density of 300 PPI. Like the Paperwhite, the Signature Edition also has adjustable warm light. However, the signature edition has auto-adjusting light thanks to the light sensor which the regular Paperwhite lacks. The light sensor and the auto-adjusting display are features found on the more expensive Oasis. Unlike the entry-level Kindle which has a mere 167 PPI, the 300 PPI of the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition makes content a treat to read. Bring the e-reader really close and you can make out the edges of the pixels, but at a comfortable reading distance, the text looks crisp, clear and easily readable.

Another feature from the Oasis that made its way to the Paperwhite Signature Edition is the warmer tone of the display. The display changes from white light to a warm amber to give you a better reading experience. You can manually set a time for the change in the display, but there is an auto option as well which changes the warm tone of the display based on the time of sunrise and sunset. I personally left it on auto and found it offered the best experience. You also have the ability to adjust how warm you want the display to be. This is a 24-point adjustment and I found that leaving it between 10 and 12 was the best. 

When it comes to everyday performance, the Kindle is as smooth as any e-reader out there. Sure, the display takes a second to refresh, and it isn't a 90Hz AMOLED panel found on your smartphone, and it isn't meant to be. Unlike your smartphone display, you can read on this e-ink display for hours without straining your eyes and more importantly, with a battery life that’ll last for weeks. Navigating the UI is easy as the device is responsive to the lightest of touch. 

Overall, the performance of the Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition is at par with the Paperwhite with some of the bells and whistles found on the Oasis. The auto-adjusting backlighting is a luxury you can't get away from once you've gotten used to it. 

Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition - Battery Life

Amazon claims that the Signature Edition Paperwhite can give you a battery life of up to ten weeks, “based on a half-hour of reading per day with wireless off and the light setting at 13”. With about an hour of reading every day, and the brightness set to 15 (with auto-brightness enabled), I’ve lost a tad over 20% battery life in 2 weeks which is very good. Voracious readers who read for 6 odd hours a day may need to resort to a charger once in 4 weeks, but with support for Qi wireless charging, you can always plonk the Kindle on a wireless charging pad before you sleep and never have to worry about reaching for a wired charger again. 

Yes, the device supports Qi wireless charging and we tried it with a standard Qi charger and it worked absolutely fine. Leaving it on the charger every day might be overkill for someone like me, but I found the device always had juice for a long reading session simply by ensuring it was kept on a wireless charger at the end of each day. 

Bottom Line

The Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition adds quality of life improvements to an already amazing e-reader. But is it the right Kindle for you? Well, that depends on how important reading as a hobby is to you. If you are a casual reader, reading a couple of books in a year, then the entry-level Kindle should get the job done quite well for you. As of writing this review, it is priced at Rs 8,000 and a great 6-inch e-reader. The Kindle Paperwhite in our opinion is the sweet spot for those that are avid readers and the price to performance ratio is good. The 6-inch Paperwhite is priced at Rs 11,000, but I feel the Rs 14,000 6.8-inch Paperwhite is the better option with more LEDs backlighting its slightly larger 6.8-inch display. At the other end of the spectrum, we have the Kindle Oasis, which at Rs 22,000 gives the Rolls Royce Kindle experience with its uber premium build, 7-inch display with 25 LEDs backlighting, automatic rotating page orientation and much more. The Signature Edition Paperwhite bridges the gap between the Paperwhite and the Oasis by offering features that are practical - it has the same display, build and design as the Rs 14,000 Paperwhite with the auto-adjusting light sensor and 32GB storage being the stand out features. Qi wireless charging is a welcome addition as well. While storage options are subjective to your reading habits, I can tell you that once you get used to the auto-adjusting light on a Kindle, you can't go back. Overall, if you have a 10th gen Paperwhite, you can hold off upgrading to the Signature edition. But if you are coming from the entry-level Kindle or have a kindle that's a few years old and want to upgrade your reading experience, then the Paperwhite Signature Edition makes sense over the regular Paperwhite as it adds quality of life improvements found on the Oasis without costing as much.

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