If there was one product at the Xiaomi India launch event we’d have really wanted announced for the Indian market, it’d be the Mi Pad. Launched just a couple of months back, the tablet with a 7.9 inch 20148×1536 screen resembles a lot of the iPad mini. The form factor, the size and even the UI pretty much gives the fact away that Xiaomi has its cross hairs squarely aimed at the iPad, and is not afraid to show it. Sporting a really powerful Nvidia Tegra K1 chipset on the inside, the mini tablet claims to be really fast and powerful, but will be available at a price lesser than what the iPad mini with a retina display is selling for. The 16 GB version sells for approximately 14k INR, which is about half the price of the retina-display iPad mini. With that said, we were really interested to check the device out in person, so here is a quick hands on video we made from the event, to see what the device is like –
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B6J8uA2mkE
The first thing we noticed about the device was how good the build quality was, despite the price, but this is a mainstay that we’ve come to expect from Xiaomi. But yes, it does look and feel a lot like an iPad made of polycarbonate plastic.
The design reminds us of the Nokia Lumia 820, which has a very similar plastic build, with its colour showing off as the border of the device.
The display is a 7.9 inch IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 2048×1536, which is exactly the same as the iPad mini retina’s screen. The viewing angles and the sharpness are good though, We all know that MIUI takes inspiration from iOS, but the one on the Mi Pad looks closer to iOS 7 and its colour scheme.
The Mi Pad comes with a 8 megapixel camera on the back, which aligns with the idea of a capable iPad competitor, but sadly, running Android, the tablet will still need to bridge the app gap, which relies on the platform. For the price it comes at, the Mi Pad sure looks like a tablet one would impulse-buy, and with at least its hardware capabilities, it could end up satisfying people looking for a credible Android alternative to the iPad mini. Unfortunately, the device has only launched in China, and is still making its way into other markets including India, where the company does have plans to introduce it soon. Looking at the pricing of the other Mi devices, the Mi Pad should possibly reach an interesting price point, which is always good news for us, consumers. We’ll of course try and find a way to get this device in our hands for an extended time, but until then, this is all we have to say about the Xiaomi Mi Pad. Here’s another look at the specifications in case you are interested –
Xiaomi MiPad specifications
- 7.9-inch (2048 × 1536 pixels) display at 326 ppi with 4:3 aspect ratio and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection
- 2.2 GHz NVIDIA Tegra K1 processor with 192-core Kepler GPU
- Android-based MiUI ROM
- 8MP rear camera with Sony BSI stacked sensor, 1080p video recording, f/2.0 aperture
- 5MP front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture
- 8.5mm thick and weighs 360 grams
- WiFi 802.11/b/g/n/ac Dual Band (2X2 MIMO)
- 2GB of RAM, 16GB / 64GB of internal storage, up to 128GB expandable memory with microSD
- 6700 mAh battery
We have a photo gallery up, for a complete hardware walkthrough of the device, take a look.