Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus Review: Great Tablet & One Outstanding Feature

The Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus is a very interesting tablet that, starting at around 300 US Dollars, offers a lot of interesting features. It has powerful hardware, a full metal body, integrated 4G and a fingerprint scanner. It has a lot of potentials and could be the best China tablet I ever reviewed. Is that true? I’m Andrzej for MyNextTablet.com and this is my Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus review.

Design & Build Quality

Let’s start this review with the design and build quality. Xiaomi is offering the Mi Pad 4 Plus in black and gold. While we do get an almost full metal body, there is a slim plastic frame around the screen. And there is a small cover on the back for the antennas which is made of plastic. The tablet is 7.9mm thin and weighs 485g.

Because of its metal body, the Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus feels and looks high-end. One reason for that is its slim bezels around the screen. We get a power button and the volume controls on the left side. On the right side, there are card slots for a Nano SIM and a MicroSD card. Yes, all versions of this tablet have 4G LTE built-in. Just keep in mind that the Band 20 is not supported which is important for some European countries.

There’s a standard headphone jack on the top and a USB C port on the bottom. Using that one you can connect accessories like external hard drives. Next to the USB C port are two speakers. The sound quality is fine but tablets in this price range from Huawei, Lenovo, and Samsung have better speakers and four of them.

Fingerprint scanner & cameras

Xiaomi wants us to hold the tablet in portrait mode. If you do that, there is a fingerprint sensor underneath the screen. Using that you can unlock the Mi Pad 4 Plus very fast and securely.

In theory, you could unlock the tablet using facial recognition too. However, it is using the standard webcam for that. There is no additional sensor which means it’s probably not that secure.

The 5-megapixel front-facing camera sits right above the screen and the 13-megapixel main-camera on the back sticks out a bit. As you might expect, the picture quality is not outstanding. But it’s totally fine –, especially for a China tablet.

Display

The Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus has a 10.1-inch IPS screen with a full HD resolution of 1920 x 1200. Yes, quite a lot of China tablets offer a much higher resolution. However, those are much slower and more famous brands have full HD screens too. And as with those, I always think that full HD on 10 inches is totally fine. Texts and photos look sharp enough.

Pretty much all other aspects of the display are good too. While it is bright enough to use inside and outside in the shadows, it’s a bit too dark for direct sunlight. Contrast and color reproduction are good. And you can adjust the screen output in the settings.

By the way, the Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus does not support any active stylus.

Hardware & Performance

Let’s take a look inside the tablet. The Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 octa-core SoC which is a middle-class processor. It consists of eight cores that clock with up to 2.2GHz. Additionally, we get 4GB of RAM and a 64GB or 128GB internal storage. The tablet supports Bluetooth 4.0, LTE, and GPS.

In the Geekbench 4 and AnTuTu benchmarks, the Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus gets better results than all other middle-class tablets I reviewed. It’s almost as fast as the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3. And yes, the performance is better than the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite 10 and Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.5 which cost about the same.

While some other Chinese tablets get great benchmark results, the real-life performance of the Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus is much better. In fact, you can play PUBG Mobile with HD graphics and high framerate without any stuttering. Only very few tablets are capable of that.

Other games like Asphalt 9 and Shadow of Death run fine too. And I played Shadowgun Legends without any issues. Into The Dead 2 runs with high graphics settings as well. So… while the performance is not as good as with the much pricier Samsung Galaxy Tab S4, it is capable of playing pretty much all games with nice graphics.

As you might expect, other apps like Chrome, YouTube, and Lightroom run great too. And that is the case for the operating itself. In total, the performance of the Mi Pad 4 Plus is excellent at this price.

Android Oreo & MIUI

The Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus is shipped with Android 8.1 Oreo. For a tablet, that sadly is up-to-date software because there are none with Android 9 yet. Will this one ever get a major update? I have no idea. With that being said, Xiaomi did release two smaller updates already. So, at least they are improving the software.

On top of Android runs the MIUI in version 10.2. That’s the own interface from Xiaomi and, as with its smartphones, the UI is heavily customized. For example, there is no app drawer anymore and all apps are installed onto the home screen. The design is customized too and looks more colorful.

I would prefer vanilla Android but I can live with it. Standard Android features like the split-screen-view are supported.

However, it’s a bit annoying that there are tons of apps pre-installed. A lot of them are in Chinese. You can uninstall some but not all. And, out of the box, there is no Google Play Store pre-installed. Instead, Xiaomi is using a different one and even their own browser.

Don’t worry though. It is very easy to install the Google Play Store and then you can install Chrome, Gmail and YouTube. That works without any problems.

By the way, like with most China tablets, you can watch Netflix in standard definition only and not in HD. The necessary DRM standards are not supported.

Battery Life

Inside the Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus sits a battery with a capacity of 8620mAh. In my battery test, it got a result of 17 hours. That is outstanding. As you can see in my comparison, the battery lasts longer than the ones of all Android tablets I reviewed recently.

For my battery test, I’m always looping and HD video at medium brightness and turned-on WiFi.

In real life, the battery life is very good too. I also like that not much energy is lost while in standby. If you use it normally, you probably won’t have to charge it for several days. But even if you use it a lot, it will last you a whole working day or a long-haul flight with heavy use.

Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus Review: Final Verdict

So, is the Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus a good tablet? Yes, it certainly is. Especially when considering the price, its performance and battery life are outstanding. Other aspects like the screen and build quality are pretty good too. And I also like that we get a fingerprint scanner and 4G. One of its few downsides are the two speakers. Most competitors in this price class offer better ones. But still, it’s the best China tablet I ever reviewed.

I can recommend the Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus especially when you can find a deal for around 300 US Dollars. Again, especially for that price, the battery life is outstanding.

Let’s check out some potential alternatives. Similarly priced ones are the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite 10, Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.5 and Lenovo Tab P10. The screens of those four tablets are very similar – but all of them offer better speakers than Xiaomi does. However, the Mi Pad 4 Plus is noticeably faster. So, it’s up to you what’s more important to you.

A very interesting alternative is the Huawei MediaPad M5 10. While it’s suggested price is more expensive, you often can get it a bit cheaper. That one has a better performance and better speakers than the Xiaomi. In this case, the Mi Pad 4 Plus has a longer battery life only.

Also, please compare the prices locally. I’m most familiar with German and US prices, but prices vary a lot by country.