realme Pad Review: Cheap Tablet For Netflix & YouTube

Starting at 199 Euros, the realme Pad is a direct competitor to very popular tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 and Amazon Fire HD 10. This tablet offers a 10.4-inch full HD screen, a full metal body, and an Helio G80 processor. Can it beat its competitors? That’s what you’ll learn in this realme Pad review.

Design & Built Quality

The design and build quality of the realme Pad is excellent, especially once you factor in its cheap price. We get a full metal body with a slim plastic strip at the top. It’s just 6.9mm thin and weighs 440g. You can get it in gold and grey.

As is still common in this price range, we get a standard 3.5mm headphone jack on the side, as well as a standard USB C 2.0 port and a microSD card slot. Like the Galaxy Tab A8, the realme Pad has four speakers, and the sound quality of those speakers is much better than Samsung’s. The bass is noticeably stronger.

There is no fingerprint scanner but you can unlock it using facial recognition. That is done using the webcam alone which works fine but isn’t very secure. Both cameras offer a resolution of 8-megapixels and while the webcam takes pretty good photos and videos, the main camera could be better. It’s a cheap 10-inch tablet, so we can’t expect high-end results, of course.

Display: 10.4 Inches

The realme Pad has a 10.4-inch LCD screen with a resolution of 2000 x 1200 pixels which is normal in this price range. I think the display is sharp enough, viewing angles are fine, and with 360 nits, it’s bright enough for inside use but too dark to comfortably use in direct sunlight.

I thought it was the same screen Samsung uses for the Galaxy Tab A8 but I think it’s not because colors look much nicer on the realme. The tablet has a Widevine level of L1 which means you can watch Netflix in HD quality. And thanks to the solid screen and good speakers, it’s a great affordable Netflix tablet.

Hardware & Performance

Inside the realme Pad runs a MediaTek Helio G80 octa-core processor with 3GB or 4GB of RAM and 32GB or 64GB of internal storage. You can get it with LTE too. I’ve gotten the version with 4GB and 64GB.

The Geekbench 5 benchmark shows that both the CPU and graphics performance is very similar to the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 and Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus. The differences are very minor. In the 3D Mark Wild Life test, the realme Pad sits a little bit below the Galaxy Tab A8. At the same time, it’s quite a bit faster than the Nokia T20, which is another direct competitor.

As you can guess by looking at those benchmarks, the realme Pad is not the best gaming tablet. However, it is capable of running most games, you just can’t select high graphics settings. PUBG Mobile, for instance, runs fine when graphics are set to HD but you cannot even select HDR or Ultra HD graphics. The same goes for Asphalt 9. It runs, but especially if you want a smooth race, you should select lower graphics.

Everyday tasks run fine, but it’s not as snappy as a high-end tablet, of course. You can watch YouTube and surf the web in Chrome at the same time without any problems. And other apps like Lightroom perform okay too. But if you switch fast between lots of apps, you will experience lags and stutters.

Software: Android 11

Out of the box, the realme Pad is running Android 11 with its realme UI which customizes Android very little. Basically, it’s vanilla Android with lots of Google apps pre-installed which includes a kids mode. You can open apps in a split-screen view, there’s a dark mode, a blue light filter, and so on.

Now, Android 11 is a bit old. But according to AndroidAuthority, realme wants to update the tablet to Android 12 later this year and is promising three years of security updates. That’s not perfect but pretty good.

Read: The Best Android Tablets Tested

Battery Life

In my battery test, the realme Pad got a runtime of 8.5 hours. For this, I’m always looping an HD YouTube video at maximum brightness until the tablet shuts itself off.

realme Pad Review: Final Verdict

So, is the realme Pad a tablet you should get? Well, maybe yes, but it depends on what you’re looking for. I think the realme Pad is a great choice if you’re looking for an affordable Netflix tablet. It offers a decent screen and, for this price range, very good speakers. I also like that we get a good amount of storage. The 64GB version costs as much as the 32GB version of most competitors, which is great. Its built quality is very good too.

Everything else, and that includes its performance, in particular, is very similar to the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8. Usually, Samsung is a bit better with updates. I’m expecting the Tab A8 to at least get Android 13. So, if you care about up-to-date software more, the Samsung is probably the better choice for you.