Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro Review: Premium Exterior Full of Mediocrity

I have been intensively testing the new Android 15 based Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro – between hours of gaming in Fortnite and Genshin Impact and drawing (admittedly very bad looking) kittens in Mi Canvas, I’ve seen it all. And in some respects, the Pad 7 Pro truly impressed me. However, there seem to be some significant shortcomings when comparing this device to similarly priced competitors like the OnePlus Pad 2 and the Honor Magicpad 2.

Although Xiaomi has not officially released the Pad 7 Pro in western markets, it is currently available for purchase through importers – coming preinstalled with Google services. Whether it’s worth taking the plunge to order this device all the way from China is the question I will try to answer with our experience testing it.

Design and Build Quality

Xiaomi’s design team seems to have taken some inspiration from Apple’s iPad design philosophy, because I had significant difficulty telling the Pad 7 Pro apart from the recent iPad Air when they were both sitting on my desk. That being said, the design screams luxury in every way. The aluminium finish on its back and sides gives a premium look and feel to the tablet, and the rounded front and sharp edges provide a business-like elegance to its entire visual appearance. However, this is where I had my first problem with the design. Once the screen ends on the tablet, there is a sharp, almost 90° drop-off to the side. This choice in aesthetics comes at the cost of the comfort of holding the device. The Xiaomi Tab 7 Pro weighs 500g (1.1 lbs) and measures 251.2 x 173.4 x 6.2 mm (9.89 x 6.83 x 0.24 in) in size.

For some of you, the not-so-small screen bezels will be a turn-off, but I paid it very little mind. A bigger problem for me was the camera placement. The main camera sits at the top left of the device’s back, a design that looks slim and smartphone-esque, but causes an annoying wobble when used without a case on flat surfaces. This is especially inconvenient considering the more-than 100$ price tag of the keyboard cover, or 50$ even for the default cover.

The tablet is available in green, silver and black. I am currently testing the silver variant of the device, and the design is quite beautiful,

When held vertically, the charging port can be found at the very bottom of the device. This USB-C port supports USB 3.2 Gen1 speeds and can also be used as a display output. However, Xiaomi decided to go for a 3:2 aspect ratio, meaning that most displays will not be fully filled when connected to it. Working our way to the right bottom side, there is a magnetic pen dock that also supports wireless charging for the Xiaomi Focus pen. At the right top side, we find a very standard looking and feeling volume rocker.

Where it gets exciting is the power button. Placed at the top right corner of the device, Xiaomi has graced us with a power button with an inbuilt fingerprint reader! This is great news, as competitors at the mid-range often leave mediocre face unlock as your only option. These only sometimes work well and sometimes work too well when there is only one front facing camera/sensor, to the point where it’s a security risk rather than a feature. We are happy to say that the fingerprint reader works like a charm and is placed very conveniently.

Android 15 Tablet

The software is something that I am really conflicted about on the Tab 7 Pro. The Android 15 based HyperOS 2 which comes preinstalled is generally a very useful and well-designed operating system. This also means that the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro is one of the first tablets on the market to come with android 15 right out of the box. The only other tablets that are running Android 15 are Google’s own Pixel Tablet and the OnePlus Pad 2. This advantage, in theory, should help the tablet pull ahead in battery-life test against other tablets with similar chipsets and screens, as battery life optimisation is one of the selling points of the newer Android version.

HyperOS 2 comes with the usual range of Xiaomi customisation features, with various inbuilt options for skins and backgrounds. And here’s where I started having problems. Since the device is currently only officially available in China, the only options for language customisation are English or Chinese. While this may not sound like a huge issue for the majority of you, it is evident that there is still much work to be done on the English version of the UI. Which leads me to my next point.

Just casually browsing through settings or default apps, you will occasionally find random Chinese text when the device is set in English. Although this doesn’t make the device unusable, it does take away from the otherwise smooth user experience of HyperOS 2. Another big issue I had with the device is just the amount of random bloatware it comes with. The default music app, for example, is only in Chinese. There are numerous other Chinese apps, like Chinese video streaming platforms which come preinstalled. Although these can be uninstalled, they only worsen the user experience.

On the plus side, Xiaomi has made considerable advances on the user-friendliness of their Pad-UI. Three dots at the centre top of the screen activate the multitasking view of an application, which can then be dragged anywhere on the screen in the floating windows mode or switched to split screen mode. Unfortunately, Android 15’s built in desktop mode seems to not be supported on this tablet. However, as mentioned, connecting to a secondary monitor is still possible.

Xiaomi has not made any statements regarding the software support for the Tab 7 pro. However, typically Xiaomi provides at least 3 Android-version updates, as well as around 4 years of security updates for their high-end products. This is lacking in comparison to competitors like Samsung, who currently promise 7 years of OS and security updates.

When it comes to AI features, the Pad 7 Pro has an inbuilt spell-checker/text generator, as well as some AI translation and interpretation features. This is not a very impressive showing from Xiaomi, but we expect more features to come in future updates. An AI anti-fraud feature is also present when using the device in mainland China and seems to be a competitor for Google’s own range of anti-fraud services, but it seems unlikely that anyone living outside of China will be receiving this feature anytime soon.

Pen Performance

Something I personally am a fan of is Xiaomi’s focus pen, a recent product that combines great ergonomics with good functionality that does unfortunately run you around 80 dollars. The pen performance on this tablet is honestly quite comparable to that of Samsung or Apple devices, with mostly basic but some interesting features such as a laser pointer function that can be used from afar, much like a presentation pen. However, it is worthy to note that Samsung’s S and FE series of tablets come with an included pen and more mature software to go with it.

I will say, though, that Xiaomi’s UI improvements with HyperOS 2 really help set the feeling that this tablet is a more refined, professional and serious product. There is some minimal delay in certain art programs like Sketchbook, suggesting that Xiaomi might still have some way to go with stylus compatibility.

Hardware and Performance

The Pad 7 Pro is able to show its strengths when it comes to performance. Xiaomi decided to outfit the device with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, While the previous Xiaomi Pad 6 Pro came with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. It is really exciting to see a midrange device feature a modern chipset with similar performance figures to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which can be found in higher-end devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9. In a vacuum, this looks great, but the OnePlus Pad 2 at roughly the same price (sometimes cheaper) features a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3; a chip that performs significantly better in almost every scenario.

We see in our benchmarks, surprisingly, that the Pad 7 Pro pulls ahead of the Galaxy S9 in our GeekBench 6 GPU benchmarks, which should be very exciting news if you use your Tablet for anything graphically challenging. The strong performance should be especially obvious if your primary use case is for gaming. The iPad 10 is significantly faster in GPU tests and about on par in CPU speed, though this doesn’t mean the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro is a slouch in CPU benchmarks either.

The Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro comes with a default 8GBs of RAM and 128GB of UFS 4.0 storage, and is configurable to up to 12GB RAM and 512GB of storage. I have been testing the 8GB variant in various scenarios including demanding games, and the tablet remains snappy, responsive and proves that it is more than capable of handling whatever you throw at it. All in all, the performance of the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro is quite decent. I also have not noticed any issues with overheating in gaming or otherwise. The device becomes warm to the touch under heavy load, but not uncomfortably so.

Gaming Performance

For gaming, I was able to hit the 60 frames per second target on maxed out settings in almost every title I’ve tested, with an exception in Fortnite, where there was significant stuttering on very high settings and an average of only 40 FPS. This also saw Fortnite crash twice during a one-hour-long session. I was able to achieve 60 FPS on high settings, although only the medium preset could sustain a stable 60. Otherwise, there were but few issues during gaming.

Something that Xiaomi owners already know is that there is a “Game Turbo” prompt upon launching most games. This gives you the option to change the Power Mode to “Game Boost Performance”. All the gaming tests were done using the performance profile, although I found little difference in actual performance between the different modes. My suggestion for most users is to keep the power mode on default unless the tablet is performing badly in certain applications.

I tested the Tablet in other demanding titles such as Genshin Impact and PUBG mobile, both on their maximum quality presets, and found that the tablet was able to yield very smooth high-refresh rate gaming experiences in both titles. Battery drain also does not seem to be a severe issue under load; after an intense 25-minute-long game of PUBG mobile, the battery percentage only went down by 7%. This is altogether a very decent showcase of the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro’s gaming prowess, although an iPad 10 or OnePlus Pad 2 would definitely perform better in games.

Those of you who are considering this tablet purely for gaming performance should look elsewhere. Evident from the 3D Mark benchmark testing, the OnePlus Pad 2 produces far better results in both CPU and graphics benchmarks. However, the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro remains a decent contender for an allrounder tablet that also can perform when needed.

(Game-Turbo mode set to performance in Genshin impact)

Battery Life

Perhaps due to the IPS LCD panel, the 7 Pro sees some very average and frankly disappointing results. Our device lasted only 8 hours in a continuous YouTube video playback test, while current competitors like the Honor MagicPad 2 lasted 13 hours, though it does have a larger battery and an OLED display. By itself, 8 hours still seems like a decent battery life, but Xiaomi has traditionally packed very good battery life in their devices anyway. Last year’s Xiaomi Pad 5 Pro, featuring a similar display and battery size lasted a good 9 hours.

One potential explanation for the Pad 7 Pro’s mediocre battery life could be the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset. Although this chip offers some impressive GPU performance figures, it clocks its GPU significantly higher than similarly performant chips like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 at 1.1 Ghz instead of the 8 Gen 2’s 0.68Ghz. While we see some uplift in GPU benchmark scores and gaming performance, it comes at the cost of increased power usage.

On the plus side, the tablet supports 67-watt fast charging, up from last year’s 45 watt charging speed.

Display and Speakers

When it comes to the display of the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro, don’t expect it to blow you away. Although standard at this price range, we get an LCD IPS panel coming at 2136×3200 pixels. This gives us a pixel density of 344ppi. Compared with the Honor MagicPad 2’s 290ppi, this gives us more sharp details. The latter, however, does feature an OLED display with significantly better colours. The Xiaomi display supports variable refresh rates, up to a max of 144Hz, although I have found that the device refuses to run at 144Hz no matter what. HDR 10 is featured and does offer better contrast in applications and content that have native HDR support, and the panel gets to a maximum brightness of 800 Nits; generally enough for outside use and definitely better than other tablets like the iPad Air at 500 nits.

The panel measures 11.2 inches diagonally and comes in a slightly unconventional 3:2 aspect ratio. This choice gives you a lot more vertical real estate when using the tablet during split screen, for example. This is where the benefits end, however. Using the tablet in Fullscreen mode on YouTube will result in large black bars on the top and bottom sides of the screen, as most content is still created for a traditional 16:9 ratio. Those of you who are familiar with iPads would know what I am talking about, as they also tend to have squarer screens than the competition. In apps designed for vertical use, such as TikTok, this problem is even more apparent. Videos are displayed with huge and distracting voids on both sides of the screen, and the extra space is not utilised at all. If your primary use case is consuming video content, there are significantly better options for tablets that offer a superior experience, see the Honor MagicPad 2, for example.

The quad stereo speakers on the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro are generally decent for watching videos or listening to music. They do a good job at sounding clear and have minimal distortion at higher volumes. The speakers get loud enough to fill the room, however lack some punch when it comes to bass response. For most users, they are more than likely good enough.

Camera Test

Something that really stood out to me on this tablet was the marketed 50MP main camera with support for up to 4k 60fps video content. It is good to see Xiaomi pull ahead of the competition in this field, although most users would probably rather use their phones or a standalone camera for more serious photo shooting anyways.

In our tests, the camera is clear and sharp, although the heavy software processing tends to overcompensate and over-sharpen blurry parts of images. I have found the camera very handy for capturing bits of text, for example on a presentation slide, which then can be converted to text using Xiaomi’s AI text recognition tool. It is definitely modestly impressive to see a midrange Android device take decent photos. This camera is more than usable in a pinch.

The 32MP selfie camera, again, was a pleasant surprise in image quality and responsiveness. Selfies come out looking natural, though a little overcorrected and sharpened. It’s nothing to write home about but is more than good enough for a Zoom call or Microsoft teams meeting.

Final Verdict

It really feels like Xiaomi is aiming at a more mature and professional demographic with their Pad 7 Pro in terms of design and functionality, but have become uncompetitive for gaming and content consumption. While being one of the first tablets with Android 15, this doesn’t bring enough advantages for me to make the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro worthwhile by itself. The OnePlus Pad 2 provides remarkably better performance at a similar price range without sacrificing too much on any front, and any tablet with an OLED display and a more traditional aspect ratio will be better for watching content.

So should you buy the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro?

Well, if you’re someone who uses their tablet mostly for work or study but still want something that can handle demanding games, then the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro might be a great choice of tablet. But keep in mind that the Keyboard case and Pen will run you another 200$ dry, practically making up the cost of buying a last gen Samsung S series tablet – which have similarly great UI and promise continued support for far longer than any Xiaomi device. Even Apple’s iPad 10th gen looks like a better deal, coming 100$ cheaper for similar design, CPU performance and leaving the Xiaomi Pad 7 pro in the dust in gaming. Even the accessories cost a similar amount (3rd party), although pen performance is significantly better on the Xiaomi.

This is my core issue with Xiaomi’s newest flagship – disregarding the limited availability outside of China and various translation issues. This tablet doesn’t excel at any tests in particular and looks mediocre in various benchmarks. Although Xiaomi has made great leaps in UI and product design, I cannot recommend this tablet for everyone at its current price as there are simply better options for most use cases. However, If Xiaomi launches the Pad 7 Pro in western markets at its Chinese price of 330$, it would be a serious competitor in its price range and worthy of a reevaluation.