Xiaomi Pad 5 review

 Hey everyone the Xiaomi pad 5 was first

introduced in china and is now launching

internationally it's a sleek high

performance tablet that has a lot of

features for a pretty low price so what

exactly are you getting here I'm Angie

for gsa marina and this is our review of

the Xiaomi pad 5.

first, the pad 5 is wi-fi only

model

Xiaomi does have the pad 5 pros with 5g

but they're not releasing it outside of

china just yet the pad 5 is a very

elegant tablet and it's easy to like the

the aluminum frame has a brushed finish and

is flat all around the device

there is a matte piece of plastic that

covers the rest of the aluminum chassis

on the back and internationally it comes

in pearl white like what we have here or

cosmic gray

the design choice that might annoy you

the most are that the camera piece juts

out a little on a tablet especially one

with pen support, you don't want any

wobbling so a flush camera would have

been much better on the front you'll

find very thin bezels while it collects

fingerprints like crazy it's easy to

clean

as a whole the pad 5 is lightweight and

properly balanced it's easy to hold and

provide solid grip too on the bottom

you'll find the USB-c port on the left side

of the tablet has three small pogo pins

where you can attach the optional

magnetic keyboard case and on the right

you'll find the volume keys the power

the key is on the top here I should mention

that there's no fingerprint reader and

that face unlock doesn't have any

security beyond the front camera still

you might want to use it since it's more

convenient than a pin or a password

the 11-inch IPS LCD panel has a pixel

the density of 274 PPI

which is in line with the competition

it supports 10-bit color so you'll get a

possible 1 billion colors

there are three color modes available

the default one is the vivid mode it's

fairly accurate saved for slightly

bluish whites if you opt for a warm

color temperature it's even better

in the screen settings, you'll also find

an adaptive colors option that adjusts

colors based on ambient light

much like apple's true tone

the display reaches a very good 478

minutes of max brightness and we had no

issues even on very bright days there

are very deep blacks here and there's a

great contrast ratio the LCD panel has a

120-hertz refresh rate

Xiaomi Pad 5 review

and you can choose whether the screen

should be at 60 hertz or 120 hertz

there's no adaptiveness if you choose

the high refresh rate so it'll stay at

120 hertz all the time unless you're

watching a video the pad 5 supports

Dolby vision and hdr 10 and comes with

wide vine l1 DRM it's nice to know that

out of the box, you can enjoy max quality

from all streaming services

the pad 5 supports Xiaomi smartpen which

is sold separately it's unusually

expensive for a Xiaomi product but the

pad 5 pre-orders get it bundled the pen

is minimalistic with a solid feel and a

With the matte finish on it, you'll find two keys

with pre-defined functionality the

the bottom key allows for quick notes or a

brush change while the top one lets you

take quick screenshots or change the

color of a brush

the screen supports 4090 pressure levels

and reads the stylus with a 240hz

sampling rate which makes writing and

drawing feel more natural on the right

side of pad 5 you'll find a magnetic

the dock where the pen recharges one minute

of charging gives you 20 minutes of

writing when the battery dies the stylus

doesn't work at all so you'll have to be

a little patient there's an improved

notes app that's optimized for the smart

pen along with all of the features that

you'll find on the smartphone version

now there's handwriting support and a

couple of different brushes to choose

from on pad 5, you'll find four

symmetrical speakers with Dolby Atmos

the support they had very good loudness on

our tests and have an incredibly

balanced output

you should keep Dolby atmos turned on

because it makes for a vastly better

sound experience with it on you'll hear

more bass and nicer midtones one of the

highlights of the Xiaomi pad 5 are the

snapdragon 860 chipsets the pad 5 offers

fast and lag-free performance and it was

noticeably better than the galaxy tab s7

which is nearly double the price we are

happy to report that the tablet aced our

hour-long stress test too

the tablet comes with six gigabytes of

ram and either 128 or 256 gigabytes of

ufs 3.1 based storage

Xiaomi Pad 5 review

there's no expandable storage here and

you should also know that this device is

wi-fi only and there's no GPS

now if you live in Asia you can go with

the pro model which has 5g support and

GPS along with eight speakers instead of

four and a higher-end dual-camera setup

on the back the 8

720 milliamp-hour battery got it 14

hours and 31 minutes on our web browsing

test and 14 hours and two minutes on our

video playback test these are great

numbers for a tablet our tablet is

bundled with a 22.5-watt charger and it

got the battery from zero to 27 in 30

minutes while a full charge requires two

hours we also tried how fast the

charging is with a 33-watt Xiaomi

the charger of our own as the Chinese model

is advertised to support that we were

pleasantly surprised to get 30 faster

charging this way on the software side

you get android 11 out of the box with a

tablet-oriented miui 12.5 on top

mini 13 should arrive by the end of the

a year and this tablet should be among the

first devices to get it

the interface has been stretched to fit

tablet needs and you'll find tablet

appropriate notification

and control centers you can summon

notifications from the top left while

the control center comes down from the

top right when using the task switcher

things are pretty much the same except

it can fit in more app cards than on a

phone

everything is very familiar if

you used miui recently perhaps the

the biggest difference is how much you can

customize the interface

there are no themes up here nor can you

take advantage of miui 12 super

wallpapers and we're not sure if this is

a tablet thing or a regional limitation

there's a single 13-megapixel camera

with a dual led flash on the back of the

tablet during the day photos was

outstanding they have a ton of detail

excellent foliage presentation and

balance sharpness the dynamic range is

wide contrast is excellent and the colors

are lively these photos are more natural

looking than a lot of high-end cameras

and we appreciate it in low-light

images were okay they had good color

saturation and balanced noise reduction

but we recommend using night mode

because in regular photo mode images are

underexposed with night mode switched on

the exposure was excellent

saturation contrast and dynamic range

were praiseworthy too the photos are

softer than we'd like but they look good

on the tablet screen and on social

networks so that should be fine for most

use cases arguably the 8-megapixel front

the camera might be more important than the

one on the back you're more likely to

spend a lot of time on video calls with

your friends than looking it around to

take pictures of the scenery

so we're happy to say that the selfies

we took are good subjects that are detailed

colors are true to life and the contrast

's okay it's one of the better

front shooters that we've seen from

Xiaomi

Xiaomi Pad 5 review

the rear cam can capture videos at up to

4k at 30fps while the front camera is

limited to full HD 4k videos had good

detail and sharpness and we liked the

colors to the dynamic range were above

average and footage doesn't look overly

processed

in low light 4k videos weren't bad

the footage is quite dark and the colors

aren't amazing but there's enough detail

and the clips themselves were pretty

usable

the Xiaomi pad 5 has a lot to offer and

it strikes an amazing balance between

features and price this screen is superb

the speakers are excellent and

performance is great

the smartpen is a very convenient

addition too though you should probably

get it bundled rather than on its own

because it's a little expensive

otherwise

well not without its competition the

Xiaomi pad 5 is one of the best androids

tablets that you're going to find under

400 euros and we easily recommend it

I love that android tablets are getting

better and better and I hope that with

this the market becomes more competitive

because I think that is high time

that someone gave pads a run for their

money