What? A cost-effective iPad?

It seems like Xiaomi has achieved what it had set out to with the Mi Pad: Providing a cost-effective iPad, at least, in terms of look and feel, says Himanshu Juneja

Photographs: Courtesy, Xiaomi

Xiaomi has enjoyed considerable success in the Indian market. Mobile phones with capable configurations without burning a hole in the consumer's pocket has been the driving force behind the company's sales. The flash sale has done its bit to spread the hype as well.

So when the company announced its intention to launch the much desired Mi Pad for the Indian customers, and without the hassle of the registration or the flash sales altogether, the buzz was unmistakeably high.

And seems like Xiaomi has been able to cement its place as one of the top producer of cost-effective, high-quality, gadgets as well.

Apart from few issues, the acclaimed Mi Pad has mostly wowed the target audience. Let's see how the different aspects of the Mi Pad perform upon closer inspection.

Construction

Photographs: Courtesy, Xiaomi

Dimension wise, this tablet measures 135.4 x 202.1 x 8.5mm and weighs at 360 grams.

Xiaomi is called as the Apple of China. Seemingly, many of its products 'borrow' the look and feel of the Cupertino giant. Xiaomi's Mi Pad doesn't buck the trend here either. The Mi Pad is all plastic though.

The 3.5 mm audio headphone jack is placed on the top of the tablet, where as the power and volume button are situated on the right hand side. The Micro SD card slot is located on the left. Last but not the least, the Micro USB port has been positioned on the bottom part of the device.

The tablet was overall impressive when held. The corners of the Mi Pad are slightly curved, and this provides a good grip on the otherwise slippery rear side. The camera and the two audio grills are found on the back side, making it a stereo speaker set up.

Display

Photographs: Courtesy, Xiaomi

The Mi Pad's screen is one of its strongest points, but as long as you are using it indoors.

The 7.9-inch IPS LCD screen is carrying the resolution of 1536 x 2048 pixels, which again seems like a nod towards the iPad Mini 2. The pixel density comes out to be ~324 ppi, and this retina display like specs we are talking here.

It makes up for more than adequate for a device which is not hitting hard on the pockets of the buyers.

The screen is very reflective and the performance takes a hit when used outdoors. But otherwise the display is very impressive with good contrast and satisfying deep blacks.

Hardware

Xiaomi has packed the tablet impressively vis a vis the internal hardware. The Mi Pad comes Nvidia Tegra K1 chipset and this alone should generate good interest.

Powered with a Quad-core 2.2GHz Cortex-A15 processor for raw power, and another secondary processor for non-intensive tasks, it is well stocked.

Along with ULP GeForce Kepler GPU, there is 2GB of RAM as well on board.

The Tegra K1 has at its disposal, the Kepler architecture, which means that the graphic prowess has enough credentials to be compared with some of the computer entry level gfx cards.

The tablet comes with 16GB on board memory, and can be expanded further up to 128GB Connectivity.

Connectivity

Photographs: Courtesy, Xiaomi

In terms of connectivity, Mi Pad offers Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 4.0 only. Xiaomi's decision to exclude cellular connectivity from any of its model is baffling.

Not every one is near a Wi-Fi connection to enjoy web browsing. There is no GPS either. These two factors combine to form perhaps the biggest drawback for the Xiaomi Mi Pad.

Operating system

Since it is a Xiaomi product that we are talking about, the operating system unsurprisingly is running MIUI 6 skin, which is based on Android 4.4.4.

Taking again cues from the iOS, the MIUI lacks the app drawer. Screens keep getting added as the excess software is installed. The notification system on the MIUI 6 also takes heavy inspiration from iOS, calling it Notification Center. The notifications are shown with date and time stamps.

As if this was not enough, the task switcher menu is again like that from iOS.

The drawback with out of the box OS is pretty obvious, that Mi Pad isn't offering the latest version of the MIUI skin, which should have ideally been based on Android 5, aka Lollipop.

Also, the missing widget on the lock screen was cringe worthy, especially when people have become used to customising the lock screen since quite sometime now.

The pre-installed apps are limited (which may or may not be a good thing), with theme store being a big casualty. The overall working of the OS was smooth and without issues.

Performance

Coming with a Tegra K1 chipset, Quad core processor and 2GB RAM the expectations were naturally high, and the Mi Pad didn't disappoint either.

The tablet performed without hiccups while playing high definition games or while playing videos with high bit rate. There were no plausible performance issues while multitasking and Mi Pad went about doing its task smoothly.

But the tablet isn't without issues here. The device gets heated up during graphic intensive usage, and the temperature was very evident. The plastic shell of the device possibly is the biggest contributor, as it is neither good at dispersing, nor dissipating heat on the fly.

This is something which Xiaomi really should have addressed.

Camera

Photographs: Courtesy, Xiaomi

Xiaomi did pull in a surprise by including cameras which would make a camera phone proud, spec wise at least. The performance report was eagerly awaited.

By and large, the tablets are not used for photography, but it does come in handy at times. The rear camera for Mi Pad happens to be an 8 Megapixel affair, and lacks an LED flash, thereby relying on ambient light a lot.

With good light conditions around, the pics came out to be clear and had good amount of details. Colours were reproduced with fair bit of accuracy as well. There was clear presence of noise in the photographs.

The camera is capable of clicking 1080p videos as well, but even though the colours came out good in the videos, the presence of noise is noticeable here as well. The overall quality was passable.

The front camera for the Mi Pad is a 5 Megapixel variant. It does a fair job at capturing the selfies.

Audio

It was heartening to see that Xiaomi went in for a stereo speaker set up with its tablet.

However, the speakers located at the back disappointed when tested. The sound levels are good, but the quality isn't. As the sound levels were increased, the quality degraded further, moving towards a muffled texture.

One can bear the occasional peak volume instance during gaming, but having designs on enjoying full fledged music collection or during movie viewing is asking too much.

To be fair, the speaker sound is manageable and shouldn't dent the overall impression by a big margin.

Battery

Since the rear panel of the Mi Pad doesn't come off, the device comes with a non-removable Li-Polymer 6700 mAh battery. The performance was pretty much adequate for a tablet.

Apparently, one can pull off about 11 hours worth of web browsing and it would be safe to assume that this should be worth a day's usage.

Verdict

It seems like Xiaomi has achieved what it had set out to achieve with the Mi Pad. Providing an option to the customers which would regale them in the form of a cost-effective iPad in terms of look and feel.

To add to it, Xiaomi did away with flash sale model which should help bring in good sale numbers as well. It is a fact that the tablet Mi Pad isn't perfect. Xiaomi should have addressed the heating issue and speaker distortions. Lack of LTE or any form of cellular connectivity will make many stay away from the Mi Pad. But bringing a relatively cheaper product with stellar hardware will not go unnoticed either.

At the moment, for Rs 12,999, Mi Pad provides a very attractive option for a well-built tablet, which is capable of delivering great gaming and good browsing experience.