Xiaomi Pad 8 review: All-star content consumption tablet for the price
Tablets were once touted as the next big thing: the power of a computer with the portability of a smartphone. However, judging from the lack of tablets seen in your everyday coffee shop compared to smartphones and laptops, it’s perhaps easy to say that it hasn’t revolutionised our world as much as people thought it would.
That being said, tablets remain popular for one key reason: entertainment. As it’s more portable than your average laptop while packing a significantly larger display, it’s often times used mainly for content consumption. And having used the Xiaomi Pad 8 for a couple of weeks now, it’s safe to say that it might just be the best one yet for that purpose on the Android side of things.
Lightweight build, heavyweight performance
The Xiaomi Pad 8 may not be as flashy as the Pad 8 Pro on paper, but you’ll barely notice the difference in person. That’s because they share the same metal unibody design that’s just 485g light and 5.75mm thin, with our unit in a gorgeous shade of Pine Green that’s reminiscent of good ol’ British racing green. While not exactly a one-handed device, the Pad 8 is still light enough that holding it through a whole movie isn’t tiring, and is slim enough to easily sit next to my laptop in my bag.
Most people using a tablet however will care more about the screen than anything else, and I feel confident in saying that the Xiaomi Pad 8 doesn’t disappoint here. It has an 11.2-inch IPS display pushing a 3200 by 2136 resolution with a 144Hz refresh rate and adaptive HDR capable of up to 800nits of peak brightness.
In layman’s terms, the Pad 8 is an excellent choice for watching content on the go, be it on the couch, in bed, on the toilet, in the bus—you name it, you can probably enjoy the Pad 8 there. I had plenty of fun streaming everything from cinematic movies like Dune to your usual fare of YouTube videos and even sneaked in some doomscrolling on social media too. Those quad speakers get pretty loud and bassy too, yet never clips or loses clarity.
The Pad 8 is also great for reading beyond just news articles; a quick install of the Kobo app and I was basically using the Pad 8 as another eReader. The only minor nitpick I have with the display is that it can be a little reflective at times, especially if you’re sitting by a window or something.
As for raw performance, the Xiaomi Pad 8 comes with a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 system-on-chip. It’s not the most powerful piece of silicon out there, but you can expect performance close to a flagship mobile chipset of last generation here, which is to say it’s pretty darn good. It handled both casual games like TFT and demanding titles like Where Winds Meet just fine, and I was even running the latter on pretty high settings. That being said, it does get a little warm on the back under heavier loads.
Battery life is also mostly alright on the Xiaomi Pad 8. The tablet boasts a 9,200mAh battery, and I was able to get almost three days of use at about 2 to 3 hours of screen time each day. However, it does drain a fair bit faster when gaming, but you do at least get a charger in the box.
Of course, a tablet isn’t only just for entertainment. Having said that, while we’re very thankful to Xiaomi for the chance to review the Pad 8, we weren’t provided the accompanying Xiaomi Focus Pen Pro nor the keyboard cover that goes along with it, so we didn’t really use it with productivity in mind. I should also point out that if you do want to get those accessories, they’ll set you back a further RM599 and RM499 respectively.
Nevertheless, the Xiaomi HyperOS 3 skin of Android that it comes in should be sufficient for users who do want to do some work on the tablet. Split screen functionality was fairly intuitive to learn and use, while the window management and docking features worked just fine out of the box.
Android’s best iPad alternative?
Starting at RM1,699 for the base model with 128GB, the Xiaomi Pad 8’s biggest competitor probably won’t be a rival Android tablet. Instead, it’s closest competitor is likely going to be the base Apple iPad, which starts at RM1,599.
Like we mentioned earlier, we love the Xiaomi Pad 8 for its gorgeous display and great sounding speakers. But Apple’s tablets, even the base iPad, probably edges it out in terms of the software. iPadOS, while not as versatile as MacOS, is much better for productivity purposes, though the base iPad’s lower resolution display and lack of high refresh rate means that the Pad 8 edges it out if content consumption is your main priority.
It’s a bit of a toss up really between the two, and ultimately your choice would likely come down to which ecosystem you prefer. I can see most people who already have an iPhone prefer to stick with an iPad, while if you have an Android and you’re locked into that world—maybe you’ve bought apps or games on the Play Store already—you’d naturally want to stick with an Android tablet too.
If the latter sounds like you, then this tablet probably won’t disappoint. The Xiaomi Pad 8 is perhaps the best iPad alternative in terms of pricing and specs that Xiaomi have produced, and in fact it’s probably the best Android alternative to the iPad right now.
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