Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 In a Short Review

Is Xiaomi now also competing with Apple and Samsung in the tablet market? With the Xiaomi Pad 5, the first tablet from the Chinese manufacturer is now officially available in Europe and offers, among other things, a 120 Hertz display, a fast CPU and it can also be operated with an active stylus.

Solid Specs

The Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 is available in Europe for 399 euros (recommended retail price). For this price, buyers get a good, but not a perfectly processed device with a metal frame and a plastic back. There are a total of four speakers with good sound quality, but there is no classic headphone connection. A micro SD slot and a fingerprint reader are also missing.

The main camera has a resolution of 13 megapixels and has an LED flash. The image quality is okay for snapshots in between. The front camera with 8 megapixels is also sufficient for selfies and video calls, but it is located on one of the shorter sides of the tablet and is therefore not ideally placed.

Great performance, high-resolution display

Inside the tablet is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 860, which is supported by 6GB of RAM. The internal memory is either 128 or 256 GB and, as already mentioned, cannot be expanded with a memory card. The tablet has to admit defeat to the Galaxy Tab S7 in benchmarks, but it is still faster than most mid-range tablets with Android. The performance is, therefore, more than sufficient for current games as well.

The 11-inch display has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels and supports up to 120Hz. Brightness, contrast, and color saturation can convince in the test, even if there are of course brighter panels. Android 11 is preinstalled, the operating system has been optically modified quite heavily by Xiaomi and is somewhat reminiscent of a mixture of Android and iPadOS.

The stylus and keyboard cover are good

With an active stylus and a keyboard cover, Xiaomi offers two interesting accessories for the tablet. The pen differentiates between 4096 pressure levels and is charged by induction on the tablet. Although it does a little worse than the pens from Samsung or Apple in direct comparison, it is still better than the other competitors in this area. It is a pity that the pen does not benefit from the fast display: what is written lags slightly behind the pen.

The keyboard cover, which is also available as an option, is magnetically connected to the tablet. It is made of plastic and can only be set up at an angle. Xiaomi has dispensed with a touchpad. Otherwise, however, it is a good keyboard that is pleasant to type on.