Xiaomi Pad 8 (Pro) Review: Destroying Samsung & OnePlus?

The Xiaomi Pad 8 and Pad 8 Pro are two of the most powerful tablets you can buy right now and I tested them for almost a month, working on them and playing tons of games. I compared them to the competition from OnePlus, Samsung and its own predecessors. And I found one massive downgrade that might be a dealbreaker for some.

Specs, Performance and Benchmarks

First, let’s start with their biggest strength, their performance.

The Pad 8 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset and the Pad 8 Pro has the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite. Even though it’s a year old now, it’s still one of the fastest Android chipsets you can get.

Both tablets start at 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, but you can get up to 16GB RAM and 512GB storage. That varies by region, though.

Everyday performance in social media apps and browsing the web is great on both tablets. Even during lots of multitasking, it stays cool and responsive. The only time you’ll notice a performance difference is in heavy gaming or synthetic benchmarks. So let’s take a look at those.

Geekbench 6 measures the CPU speeds. Here, we see that the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro is neck and neck with the OnePlus Pad 3 in CPU single- and multi-core. Even the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 is 10% slower in CPU single-core.

The non-pro Pad 8 performs more in the upper-midrange. It’s 33% slower than the Pad 8 pro in single and multi-core, and 20% slower than the iPad 11 in single-core too. Still, it’s miles faster than Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S10 FE. 55% faster in the CPU single-core test, to be exact.

We use 3DMark to compare GPU performance, which is important for gaming. In 3DMark’s Wildlife Extreme test, the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro is tied with the Galaxy Tab S11, and faster than every other Android tablet. The standard Pad 8 also does very well. It’s 45% faster than last year’s Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro, and 55% faster than the iPad 11. 

Gaming Performance

Gaming is one of the few scenarios where the Pad 8 Pro really pulls ahead thanks to the flagship chip. 

In Delta Force, the difference is clear. The Pad 8 is only capable of achieving 120FPS with the “Standard” graphics setting, but the Pad 8 Pro can run the game at 120FPS at HD settings. Since this is a shooter game, having high FPS while still being able to spot enemies from afar is a big advantage. 

I spent an hour playing intense games on the two tablets to test whether they slow down from thermal throttling. Even after playing for that long, the temperatures never exceeded 44° on the Pad 8. The 8 Pro barely gets warm in the most demanding games. 

Things change up a bit in Fortnite. We’ve noticed for a while now that Xiaomi devices are limited to 60FPS in Fortnite no matter how powerful they are, and that’s the case here too. So both tablets can run Fortnite at a smooth 60FPS at Epic settings, but we’re sure they could do better if not for the software issue. That’s a real shame though – the Galaxy Tab S11 can run Fortnite with 120FPS at max settings. 

Moving on to Roblox, the performance on both tablets are enough for some of the most demanding minigames like “Twisted”. After 20 intense minutes, both tablets continue running at 60FPS, which is the limit in Roblox.

Clearly, there aren’t many Android games that can really challenge either of the Xiaomi Pad 8s right now. But the Pad 8 Pro can run games at higher graphics settings. Regardless, both tablets are good for gaming.

Read: Top 12 Best Free Android Games: All Genres

Display: Not Bad, Not OLED

These Xiaomi Pads have sharp, bright and vibrant 11,2’’ LCD displays. The resolution is 3.2k and they top out at 800 nits of brightness. That’s more than enough to use in a brightly lit room and outside.

The peak refresh rate is 144Hz, so animations will look and feel smooth. Of course that’s great for gaming as well. The 3:2 aspect ratio is the only small downside if you’re planning on watching a lot of videos. Watching a standard movie will leave black bars on the top and bottom. 

And yes. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 will look better playing videos with its AMOLED display and 16:10 aspect ratio. That screen gets darker, has better contrast and has a higher brightness in HDR. But the Xiaomi’s displays are almost as good as LCD panels get. The viewing angles are stable, the contrast is good and HDR videos look good. 

Speakers: Massive Downgrade

Moving on to the speakers, we have some bad news. Our initial impression for the quad speaker setup was disappointing. Putting it next to the Xiaomi Pad 7, the older tablet actually sounds clearer and has good bass. It even gets a bit louder! 

It seems like Xiaomi has quietly downgraded their tablet’s speakers, and we can’t recommend them over Samsung or Lenovo tablets if that’s an important aspect for you. That’s a shame and that’s the big downgrade I was talking about at the beginning.

Design and Build

These tablets have a minimalistic and clean design. The body is all aluminium, with flat edges and rounded corners. The material feels excellent. They’re super thin at 5.75mm, and weigh just 485g.

You can get the Pad 8 and 8 Pro in a muted green, grey or light blue variant. All 3 colours look great in our opinion.

On the right sits a USB C 3.2 port, so you can transfer data with up to 5Gbps speeds, and even output a display signal to an external monitor or projector. 

There’s neither a Micro-SD card slot for storage expansion, nor a 3.5mm audio jack. Sadly, this is becoming a standard with most brands.

If you look closely, the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro’s power button actually contains a fingerprint scanner. It works fast and reliably, and the placement is perfect for quickly unlocking the tablet. It makes unlocking the tablet much faster than on the Pad 8.

Otherwise, you can use the basic face-unlock feature on either tablet. But this won’t give you the same level of security as the fingerprint unlock, and won’t work in sensitive apps.

Battery Life

The battery capacity of the Pad 8 and 8 Pro are both 9200mAh. The Pro charges at 67 Watts and the Pad 8 charges at a more humble 45.

To measure realistic battery life, we loop an HD YouTube video at max brightness. The Xiaomi Pad 8 lasts just 6 hours and 55 minutes in this test, a worse result than last year’s Pad 7. The Pad 8 Pro lasts 7,5 hours before running out.

Those results are fine, but the OnePlus Pad 3 lasts 9 hours and 40 minutes despite having a bigger and brighter screen. And any tablet with an OLED display will last longer for video streaming. 

Stylus: Xiaomi Focus Pen Pro

The new Xiaomi Focus Pen Pro brings some needed upgrades over the last generation. There are now 16.384 pressure levels, a new gyroscope and even a haptic engine and squeeze features. Yes, that sounds just like the Apple Pencil Pro. But that’s not a bad thing, the Apple Pencil Pro is one of the best tablet styluses after all. 

There’s virtually no difference between writing and drawing on the Pad 8 vs. the 8 Pro. They use the same stylus, come with the same preinstalled software and have the same issues.

The new stylus feels better to draw with. The weight and size feel just right, the pressure sensitivity works well in every app we tested, and there’s no lag at all, even when painting in multiple layers in the Sketchbook app. You can double tap the side to swap to your last used paintbrush or pen. We don’t find the new squeeze feature all-too useful, though. It just brings up shortcuts for a screenshot and 2 other apps.

We noticed something interesting. If you apply a bit of pressure when painting, you’ll see white streaks spread across the area where the stylus is making contact with the display. It’s the kind of effect you see when pressing your finger on a computer monitor. It’s not a big issue and likely has no side effects, but Samsung tablets don’t have this.

The software can use an upgrade. We find that Xiaomi notes and the Mi Canvas drawing app aren’t serious competition compared to what’s available on Samsung or Huawei devices. You’ll have to rely on 3rd party alternatives like Sketchbook for drawing, and Noteshelf 3 for notetaking.

Keyboard Cover 

There are 2 keyboard cover options for the Pad 8 and 8 Pro. 

First there’s the cheaper, lighter Folio keyboard, which lets you prop up the tablet at a fixed angle when typing. This keyboard is good if you just want something to write an occasional E-Mail with, but there’s no integrated trackpad. For that, you’ll have to pay more for the Focus Keyboard.

The Focus keyboard feels more premium but also heavier. The idea with this keyboard attachment is to turn the tablet into a portable workstation. It has an integrated trackpad so you can navigate the tablet easier in the workstation mode. It’s the same floating design from Apple’s Magic keyboard.

Even though the “floating” feature looks cool, the tablet’s entire weight rests at the back of the keyboard when typing. That makes it impossible to use on your lap without the tablet toppling over. You also can’t adjust the viewing angle beyond about 100 degrees, again because of the floating design.

So both keyboard accessories have weaknesses, and we find ourselves preferring the keyboards on Samsung’s S10 FE+ or the OnePlus Pad 3 if we actually want to get work done and have a nice, large trackpad for navigation. But those tablets are bigger in general.

Read: The 12 Best Tablets With a Keyboard

Software and Updates

The Pad 8 and 8 Pro come with the Android 16 based HyperOS 3 and at the time of recording this, we don’t know for how many years Xiaomi will release updates. 

Refreshingly, these tablets come with almost no bloatware or sponsored apps besides booking.com. It’s a refreshingly clean Android installation compared to cheaper Redmi tablets.

Like Samsung and Apple, Xiaomi’s HyperOS offers a desktop style interface called “workstation” for multitasking. Apps open in floating windows instead of fullscreen mode, and you can resize and have up to 4 windows open at the same time. However, we found ourselves using the standard “tablet” mode more often instead. The workstation mode suffers from issues like not being able to split the screen down the middle for 2 apps side by side, and lack of proper window snapping that you’d get on Windows or MacOS. 

Workstation would make more sense on an external display, but neither Pad 8s have the option to open a second desktop on a connected display. You can only mirror your tablet’s screen. Apple’s iPad Air and Samsung’s S series tablets are much better as a full desktop. 

Cameras: Photos, Videos and Selfies

The Pad 8 features a 13MP rear camera and 8MP front selfie camera, and the Pad 8 Pro steps it up to a 50MP rear camera and 32MP front camera. Those are some impressive specs on paper.

In practice, both tablets take surprisingly good quality videos and photos. With the rear camera, you definitely notice a bit more detail and sharpness from the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro thanks to the 50MP sensor, but even the 13MP sensor on the Pad 8 takes reasonably sharp shots. The same goes for videos; both tablets do a great job in 4k videos.

The front selfie camera on both tablets are also good. Actually, we barely notice a difference in sharpness between the Pad 8 and 8 Pro despite the resolution difference.

Conclusion: Which is The Tablet For You? 

We think the Xiaomi Pad 8 offers great performance, a nice display and premium build quality, especially once the price drops a bit. It’s good value if you’re looking for a gaming tablet or just something for Netflix or YouTube streaming at home. Unless you really need a fingerprint reader and better performance, there’s not much reason to spend more on the Pro.

The Pad 8 Pro is in a weird spot in comparison. It’s one of the fastest Android tablets, but we would only get it if you need an 11-inch tablet or if it’s a bit cheaper than the OnePlus Pad 3. The OnePlus offers similar gaming performance with a much bigger display and better keyboard option.

Whichever the case, you have to check out our list with the best Android tablets you can buy right now. We review pretty much every tablet and in that article, you’ll see what other brands like Samsung and Lenovo have to offer.