Xiaomi Pad 5 Review: An Affordable iPad for the Android Space

Xiaomi is now a leading smartphone manufacturer in the world but they are not limited to smartphones. They recently launched Xiaomi Pad 5, a tablet with solid spec and affordable price.

Xiaomi Pad 5 price in Nepal starts at Rs. 44,999 for the 6/128GB variant. It provides a flagship chipset for the price and has a pretty good screen too.

So, is it worth it? I’ll tell you all about it in this review of the Mi Pad 5.

Xiaomi Pad 5 Review

Design

Xiaomi Pad 5 looks pretty sleek and premium at a first glance. It has a plastic rear with a single camera. The plastic rear has a matte finish and does not feel like plastic whatsoever. But, it is a fingerprint magnet and as I found out, it is very hard to clean up. While the rear panel does not use premium material, it has a sturdy aluminum frame.

The Pad 5 has a flat frame and rounded corners and you can spot a couple of antennas strips as well. However, the Pad 5 is a Wi-Fi-only tablet and doesn’t take memory cards.

On the top, it has a power button and two speakers along with a microphone. The bottom part also houses two speakers to make it a 4 speaker system along with a microphone and a USB-C port.

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The volume button is on the right and there’s a white strip in the middle which is a magnet holder and wireless charger for the optional Smart Pen. It also has two additional microphones on the right side.

On the left side, there’s a pogo pin attachment for the optional magnetic keyboard case. The optional keyboard and pen are sadly not available in Nepal as of now.

So, it almost has everything except the fingerprint sensor. A fingerprint sensor on the power button would have made life much easier but the face unlock does a pretty good job. It worked well even in low light conditions.

Overall, the Pad 5 feels good on the hands along with a good grip. And, I felt that its size is just perfect.

Display

One of the key features of the Xiaomi Pad 5 is its excellent 11-inch LCD panel. To be precise, it is a 10.9-inch panel with a screen resolution of 2560 x 1600. While it is not an AMOLED panel, it has a 120Hz refresh rate, 10-bit color, HDR 10, and Dolby vision capabilities.

The LCD panel offers an excellent brightness level and it looks vibrant with the native 10-bit color support. Plus, it comes with Widevine L1 DRM and is recognized as HDR 10 and Dolby Vision devices by popular apps like Netflix.

Its high refresh rate implementation is not impressive though. It does not have an adaptive refresh rate option and even the 120Hz refresh rate doesn’t feel as smooth as it should be. This could be fixed via a software update.

The panel is more than bright enough for outdoor usage and the tablet can get much brighter when watching HDR content. On top of that, it does have pretty good black levels for an IPS panel.

To add to its display prowess, its quad speakers are good too. It supports Dolby Atmos and the speakers are quite loud with balanced output.

Overall, the Pad 5 offers an excellent multimedia experience.

Performance

Xiaomi Pad 5 is powered by the Snapdragon 860 chipset along with 6/8GB RAM and 128/256GB storage. Our review unit is the 8GB version.

Snapdragon 860 is a repackaged version of the Snapdragon 855+ with the same processor and graphics but with added support for camera and RAM.

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Xiaomi Pad 5 offers fast and fluid performance with absolutely zero lags. I did not have any problem with apps and multitasking. On top of that, it is very good for gaming too.

For gaming, I tested Genshin Impact, COD Mobile, and Real Racing 3. Genshin Impact was tested on Medium graphics preset with the max frame rate option set to 30fps. In this setting, I was getting average fps of 29 with occasional stutters. While the game was not totally smooth, it was more than playable.

Likewise, COD Mobile was tested on Very High graphics and Max fps settings. It ran very smooth with average fps of 59 and the frame drop was negligible as you can see via the graph below.

Moving on to Real Racing 3, we did see a bit more frame drop but it managed to maintain average fps of 59.8.

Last but not the least, it did not have any heating issue either. The device did have a max average temperature of 50 degrees celsius while playing Genshin Impact but its body was not uncomfortably hot. So, it does seem to have adequate cooling to handle most modern tasks and games.

Battery Life

Xiaomi Pad 5 runs on a large 8720mAh battery along with a 22.5W charger. Moreover, it also supports 33W charging.

On moderate usage, the Pad 5 lasted me for more than 2 days easily. I was getting around 14 hours of screen-on time as I spent most of the time watching Netflix and YouTube.

As for the charging, the 22.5W charger takes around 2 hours to take it from 0 to 100% which is very good for a tablet.

Cameras

Xiaomi Pad 5 has a 13MP rear camera and an 8MP front camera.

The camera quality is more than usable. Even the rear camera can capture decent pictures with good detail. Furthermore, it can also capture 4k footage at 30fps. The front 8MP snapper provides sharp selfies with true-to-life color. The dynamic range is not great though.

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Software

Xiaomi Pad 5 runs on MIUI 12 on top of Android 11 out of the box.

The software experience is similar to what you expect from any other MIUI. The interface has been extended to fit the tablet needs and some features have been reworked for landscape mode. But other than that it’s the same MIUI that you get on a phone.

The notification and control center are handled as on most tablets – the Notification area can be accessed from the top left whereas the Control center comes down from the top right area.

The app switcher is also the same but it can fit in more app cards. You can also tap and hold for the split-screen and floating window.

Conclusion

Xiaomi Pad 5 is the best tablet you can get for the price in Nepal.

Some of its competitors are the Apple iPad 10.2 2021 and Samsung Tab S7 FE. Surely, the iPad has most of the things and the iPad OS is better than the MIUI 12. But, the Dolby display and speaker of the Pad 5 gives it a slight edge. Also, the base variant of the iPad starts at Rs. 58,000 (64GB).

Moving on to the Samsung Tab S7 FE, not only it is expensive, it is underpowered as well. However, it does have Samsung DeX and the superior Spen.

Overall, the Xiaomi Pad 5 is a balanced tablet that is powerful, affordable, and practical at the same time. But, it would have been much better if the Spen or the keyboard was included in the box with the tablet.

What do you think about the Xiaomi Pad 5? Let us know in the comments!

Also, check out our review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE in Nepali.