Junaid Malik

Aug 16, 2022

Xiaomi Pad 5: The Ultimate android Tablet!

This is the Xiaomi pad five and this is the android's the best bet against the iPads because of two Reasons number one this is not crazy expensive and number two this is good, before I start let's get one thing clear where are android tablets lacking tablets? specific software features good accessory support and good specs right but the Xiaomi pad 5 gets all of those points right mostly.

Software so here's the Xiaomi pad 5 and I'll talk about the design and everything else the Xiaomi pad 5 comes with MIUI 13 for pad based on android 11 and Xiaomi has optimized a few things for the tablet experience first like on MIUI on phones the notification center opens up from the left and the control center opens up from the right side second-most of the Xiaomi apps have been optimized for the bigger screen be the settings, Be the file manager or the notes app all have this dual-panel UI that makes better use of the bigger screen

MIUI for pad also has this dock which, where have I seen this before yes iPad OS I mean Xiaomi's it's kind of expected anyway, the dock shows you the apps you have pinned on the dock on the left while the right shows you the most recent apps you have opened now this dock is available in all apps. I can just drag an app and drop it to open it in a floating window this is very cool and I know very iPad OS like.

the screen has been optimized for the bigger screen and you can also press hold on an app here to open it on a split-screen or you can open it in a floating window now these features are cool but if there's one area where Xiaomi needs to work on that's the ecosystem features because apart from me sharing there's no connected features between Xiaomi pad 5 and other Xiaomi phones and other Xiaomi laptops are also.

Source: Beebom

another interesting thing about MIUI on this tablet is bloatware actually, there's absolutely no bloatware only NetFlix pre-installed I mean this is a tablet fresh after setup and there are only a few new apps some google apps and that's all this is good I also did not notice any ads or even the infamous miui glass lock screen feature this is a clean experience which is kind of a pleasant surprise for me UI basically, the software experience here's good, and when Xiaomi hasn't revealed the software update schedule for this the device they have confirmed that they are working on the android 12 l update for this device which is definitely good news

Accessories moving on from the software to the accessories the tablet has this magnetic connector to wirelessly charge the Xiaomi smart-pen and there's this pogo pin connector on the opposite side to connect accessories like the keyboard now Xiaomi is selling a pen and a keyboard with the Xiaomi pad 5 separately and I have used them they're pretty cool accessories but we're not allowed to show them to you just yet.

Design & Looks the Xiaomi pack design is kind of inspired by the modern ipads with the square edges aluminum frame the narrow bezels on the front the back has this glass-like a polished finish that is actually plastic as for the in-hand feel this looks and feels like a premium tablet but this is an 11-inch tablet so you have to use it with two hands the size and weight is on par with that tablets.

Compared to the 9gen iPad this is thinner at 6.9 millimeters but it's slightly heavier at 511 grams in terms of ports and buttons, there are the USB-C port at the bottom a power button on the top volume rocker on the right top now there's no headphone jack or micro sd slot and there's no fingerprint the scanner just face unlock and there's no LTE variant for the Xiaomi pad 5 so there's no sim slot as well the design

* Apart from that Xiaomi pad 5 is all hyped up because it brings good specs for the price for example,

Display the display is a 10-bit ips LCD 120-hertz panel with high resolution and to be clear this display is not the best I've ever seen on a tablet but in this price range is an absolute beauty the colors are really excellent there's good contrast it's a sharp high resolution display the typical brightness is 500 similar to the 9 gen iPad air but it can go up to 650 nits in the high brightness mode also known for the sunlight mode I mean miui pad on this big higher refresh rate screen just looks so fluid and nice.

Sound & Vibration one thing to note the Xiaomi pad 5 does not have haptic feedback there's no vibration settings as well which are kind of fine because even ipads don't have haptic feedback although some Samsung tablets do have this so yeah something you should know the screen also supports hdr10 as well as Dolby Vision and it shows in apps like NetFlix I mean this is the playback specification page in NetFlix is not just this you can see the Dolby vision tag in shows and movies and this is fine but what really matters is that watching shows and movies is a fantastic experience on the screen the complementing this beautiful display are the quad speakers with Dolby atmos support there are two speakers on each side and the Xiaomi pad 5 uses the gyroscope to make sure that when you are using the tablet in landscape it detects the two speakers on the left as the left channel and when using the tablet in the portrait it changes the top left and bottom left speakers as the left channel it's a simple feature but it's pretty cool if you ask me as for the speakers they are good Xiaomi hasn't made any compromises here I mean as the base is not very punchy but other than that these are loud and crisp speakers

Performance Another area where the Xiaomi pad 5 feels good is on the performance front there's a snapdragon 860 lpddr4x ram UFS 3.1 storage and special mentioned to the fact that Xiaomi pad 5 has a base variant with the 128 GB storage unlike a lot of ipads and Samsung tablets now i know the snapdragon 860 is kind of old and I would have personally wanted snapdragon 870 because even the oppo pad which is like 28k in china has the snapdragon 870. anyway, 860 is also powerful as you can see from these benchmarks.

Source: Beebom

what's good is that this feels like a fast and smooth tab everything is super snappy to use and all the miui for bad gestures multitasking features work without any stutter or lag and I think you relate to this a lot of android tablets show lag when you switch from portrait to the landscape you know who these tablets are and there's no such issue here gaming is top-notch to asphalt on this tablet it looks great and plays great there's no lag it's a very good experience

and it's the same with BGMI suppose the highest graphic settings ultra HD and ultra and even on this intensive setting the game was very smooth and nice I mean I'm not used to playing on a tablet but the experience is down the line.

Battery the battery is an 8720 mah battery and there's a 22.5-watt charger in the box although this tablet supports 33 watt charging now I'm here to test the battery performance but the battery size is pretty standard for 10 and 11 inch tablets so it should be good

Camera the Xiaomi pad 5 has an 8 megapixel camera on the front capable of 1080p 30fps video and there's a 13 megapixel camera on the rear capable of 4k 30fps video the rear camera is obviously superior but I found the front camera to be fairly good too there are also four mics on the tablet For enjoying the videos so far

Connectivity

Lastly on On the connectivity front, there's a dual-band Wi-fi 5 Bluetooth 5.0 and one thing to know the tablet does not have GPS see apps like google maps do work showing your location using wi-fi but when i ran a couple of GPS test apps they came up black once again even on wi-fi only variants of the ipads there's no GPS only the cellular versions do so maybe GPS is only available with devices with cellular connectivity

Pricing coming to the pricing of the Xiaomi pad 5 started at rupees 26,999 with an introductory price rupees 24,999 till May 7 now this is really good pricing and at this price the nearest iPad is the 9th gen iPad

iPad 9th gen Vs Xiaomi pad 5 compared to the iPad 9 gen the Xiaomi pad has a more modern design with slimmer bezels and a slimmer frame it also has the better higher refresh rate screen and the performance is good in the Xiaomi pad 5 but the a13 bionic in the iPad is even more powerful now both of these support styluses and keyboard accessories and as for the software miui for pad is good but iPad os is just more mature in terms of apps and features also, the iPad 9 gen has LTE variants.

Source: Beebom

Final Verdict The Xiaomi pad 5 is probably android's best bet against the ipads because it might not be the ipads but if you're in the android ecosystem this is probably the best iPad alternative you have.