Unoriginal Looks, But A Great iPad Alternative

Xiaomi has been making affordable tablets for a while and its latest tablet is the company’s best slate 7 Series.

The PAD 7 and PAD 7 Pro are the same in appearance, size, weight, software, battery capacity and display resolution. There are only two differences: The more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 runs on the Advanced Pro device running on the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 used in the Standard Model.

The truth is that the latter silicon is already enough to accommodate 99% of consumers, so unless you do intensive video editing or gaming, I’m willing to bet you can’t tell any difference in performance either. The second difference is even more obvious: the Pro model has a variant with an anti-reflective matte screen.

The matte display achieved using nanotextures and surface horizontal coatings does indeed reduce glare and reflection without sacrificing color reproduction or display clarity. Obviously happy, but I think it’s more about luxury goods than essential luxury goods. The standard gloss panel on the tablet still looks great as long as you don’t have the direct light shining.

Basically, the two tablets are very, very similar. I started this review process with the Standard Model a month ago using the Standard Model three weeks later, except that the matte screen looks better when I was working out in the cafe, I can’t say I noticed any other differences. So even if the comment is titled Pro, it can double as a comment for the Standard Model.

design

There’s not much to talk about here: The Pad 7 Pro looks like every other tablet on Earth, which also means it looks like the most mainstream tablet – the iPad. This is an aluminum sleeve wrapped around the screen, surrounded by tablets, and these bezels are thin as tablet standard plates. The 11.2-inch display is an IPS LCD panel (not an OLED), but it can refresh at 144Hz, which looks very good. Of course, the OLED display of flagship phones looks better, but the tablet costs less than half the cost of these phones.

Four Dolby Atmos-tuned speakers, 8 or 12GB of RAM and an 8850 mAh battery inside the body, a thickness of 6.2mm and weighs 500 grams (about 1.1 lbs). There is a fingerprint scanner that can double as a power button while the usual volume rocker.

The 32-megapixel front camera is in landscape mode and located at the top of the center of the tablet.

There is no more coverage here when it comes to hardware: this is a tablet. With modern tablets, you may also need to pair it with a keyboard and stylus, while Xiaomi has them.

The stylus is named Focus Pen, which works similar to the last few Xiaomi Stylis, with its dedicated Clicky button located at the index finger usually in position. The stylus is very good and the price is very good.

It performed better, but gave me a strange feeling, the new premium keyboard called Pro Focus keyboard. Without sugar coating, this is essentially a clone of Apple’s magic keyboard. From the way the keyboard lifts the tablet slightly from the desktop surface to the design of the hinge to the color, it looks nearly the same as Apple.

This is good news from the practical level, because I have loved Apple’s magic keyboards since my debut five years ago, but I’m also a little uneasy because it’s Xiaomi’s old habit of replacing Apple’s designs.

The latter narrative (Xiaomi just replicates Apple) is something many Xiaomi critics often turn to when disbanding Xiaomi products, and it is a narrative I object to because I often find the allegations unfair. But this time, I can’t defend it. I hope Xiaomi even made some superficial changes to make the keyboard look slightly different.

If you don’t mind the lack of design ingenuity, the keyboard is absolutely great: use even keys, keys over 1mm and a row of function keys. The trackpad is not as good as Apple’s—the mouse cursor may be a bit slippery—but I prefer the trackpad on the keyboard provided by Samsung or OnePlus.

Performance

The Pro model of the Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 chip is the top performance in the Android tablet space, and over the past week I’ve been doing writing (including writing this post) and editing six minutes of 4K YouTube videos on Capcut Fine. I did notice that the video editing process is not as smooth as I edited Final Cut Pro on my recent iPad – there would be subtle frame rates or Studters if I scrubbed on the timeline quickly – but I’m not sure it’s a silicon software issue, or a sealing issue. Since Android’s app ecosystem just lacks something that seamlessly integrates with hardware like Apple’s Final Cut Pro, no Android tablet can go 100% smoothly like Apple’s tablet anyway.

But a smaller lag is not a deal-breaker. Of course, I have multiple iPads and have the right to turn to video editing, but if I’m not – if I’m a consumer with a budget and need to save some money, the Xiaomi PAD 7 Pro is definitely capable of editing and making videos.

If you don’t edit videos, there’s hardly any area where this professional tablet lacks power. Actually, as mentioned earlier, I think most consumers can choose a Qualcomm chip with a lower power and get a non-Pro model with the same performance. If your tablet usage includes scrolling on social media, watching videos, typing words, etc., then the PAD 7 Tablet Pro may not get the job done.

Battery life is great, too. It’s hard to measure how long the tablet can last for a single continuous use, but I used this tablet for four consecutive days in standby mode for about 1-2 hours a day for video calls and emails, and after four days, the tablet still has 67% of the battery left.

When I edited a YouTube video on Capcut, it took about 90 minutes of continuous editing, and the PAD 7 PRO would be about 30% of the battery battery battery, including exporting videos.

software

The top of the tablet is running Android 15 for Xiaomi’s Hyperos. HyperOS is fast and smooth, without going into the core Android features. The tablet has a complete Google Gemini integration, including a very useful search circle. Hyperos’ multitasking system is also good, but it is not as dynamic as OnePlus/Oppo. Still, you can easily handle two to three apps on at least this tablet.

There is also a new desktop mode that allows all application windows to open in re-overlapping floating windows, just like you are using a laptop. I found that the 11-inch screen was a bit cramped to execute more than two applications at a time. However, if you output a larger external monitor or AR glasses, I can see the benefits of being able to run three applications at once.

in conclusion

Xiaomi PAD 7 Pro and Standard Pad 7 are excellent Android tablets that do everything. I like it better than other brands of products thanks to the superior but non-original keyboard, Xiaomi’s fast UI, excellent speakers, and on the Pro model, Antirefflyceptive display. I also found the 11-inch size to fit my workflow well because it’s more portable than a 13- or 14-inch tablet. I think if I need the lightest machine that still does most of my work, the Xiaomi PAD 7 PRO will meet the bill. If I need more features for more intensive video work, I can carry a 13-inch MacBook Air or Pro. It doesn’t make sense to have a mid-range tablet as big and heavy as a laptop. I like the relatively petite size of the Pad 7 Pro.

The price of this tablet will depend on the region as usual. In Europe, for tablets alone, it costs about €550, and the keyboard and stylus add about €250. However, in Hong Kong and other Asian regions, the PAD 7 Pro deals are much better, with the tablet equivalent to $430, and the keyboard and stylus are also cheaper than their European counterparts.

This means in Asia you can get the entire set for under $650, while in Europe you’re close to $850. It’s still better than the iPad, but I think once you hit $700, people buy iPads.

Now, I’m a fan of Android flagship phones, and I laugh at the best Xiaomi or intrabody phones that need to be cheaper than iPhones. I think the best Xiaomi or intrabody phone has a noticeable superior camera than the iPhone, so it gets a high price status. But when it comes to tablets, no matter how great the Android tablet gets, the iPad’s lead in the App ecosystem and silicon is obvious. So in the tablet space, I do think Android tablets need to be cheap. The PAD 7 Pro in Asia is an excellent purchase. In Europe, it depends.