A good budget tablet is a thing of joy. You get a functional device with hopefully a brilliant display that takes care of pretty much all your multimedia consumption needs — without breaking the bank. The new Redmi Pad Pro 5G promises to be all this, and a little more with its a host of productivity-focused accessories. I’ve been taking it along with me for work and play, and here’s how it fares.
Display and Design
Design-wise, the Redmi Pad Pro has a fairly understated design with an aluminium unibody design. I’ve got the Graphite Grey variant for review, although there’s a Quick Silver colourway as well. The tablet weighs around 571 grams but offers a slim profile. Apart from the power button and the charging port, there’s also a 3.5mm audio jack and a microSD card reader, which is nice to have, and something most tablets no longer include.
It sports a 12.1-inch display with up to 120 Hz refresh rates. The bright, vivid display with 16:10 aspect ratio is great for watching content and reading books. It’s also protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3 from possible damage.
The tablet comes with quad speakers, some of the loudest I’ve heard on a tablet. The lovely background music and dialogues from Pachinko stream through loud and clear.
Productivity
Redmi has included a bunch of accessories, which come at a separate cost, to highlight how much productivity can be achieved on this tablet.
There’s the Redmi Smart Pen — feels very premium. It’s smooth and responsive while doodling on the tab as well as when taking notes in a hurry. There’s a dedicated writing button, which helps trigger the Mi Canvas app for illustrations. I could also use the pen to take quick screenshots. While reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, I was able to use the pen’s buttons to flip over pages instead of having to swipe physically.
Through most of my use, I had the tablet docked on the Redmi Pad Pro Keyboard. The keyboard is sturdy with a firm lock-in for the tablet. While it was great to have a snappy keyboard alongside, the omission of a trackpad is something that marred the experience. I instinctively kept reaching out for a trackpad each time I used to keyboard for writing, scrolling or even reading. There’s also no backlight so using it during bedtime doesn’t really work. The Keyboard Cover itself has an integrated battery and charges via a USB-C port. Connecting to the keyboard was a breeze via Bluetooth.
The tablet sports an 8MP camera both on the front and rear. The rear camera delivered some very underwhelming, noisy photos even in decent light. The front camera was good enough for working meetings or webinars.
Tech Specs
The Redmi Pad Pro 5G runs on the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chip, a fairly capable processor. It ships with HyperOS 1.0.4 with Android 14 at its core. While there are new customisations possible with the display and appearance on the tab, the more meaningful addition is the ability to support up to four split-screen views, with different apps. To make things for a new user easy, there’s a Features for Tablets section which lets me get used to gestures to create floating windows and split screens.
The tablet runs on a massive 10,000mAh battery, and hence it was no surprise when I could easily go 2-3 days before having to charge it. Each day, I would use it anywhere between 2-4 hours reading and responding to emails, watching shows or YouTube videos, reading books, and the rare gaming session.
Verdict
The Redmi Pad Pro 5G makes for an interesting proposition at a price point that doesn’t hurt. It offers a great display and sound system, ideal for music, movies, shows, and more. It has productivity-focused software additions as well as accessories that help the cause but at a cost. It would have been even more appealing if one of the accessories were to be bundled with the device at its current MRP. However, those looking for a mid-range tablet should give the Redmi Pad Pro a place in their shortlist, before taking the plunge.
