Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 Pro Tablet Review: A Promising Refresh but dragged down by MIUI

Paco Zheng — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 14:42:57 +0000

After three years of break from the tablet market, Xiaomi has finally returned with the launch of the Mi Pad 5 series. As usual, we strived hard to get the new Mi Pad tablet early, and we are one of the first ones to review the Mi Pad 5 Pro.

The Android tablet market had been plagued with issues such as lack of applications and appropriate use case scenarios. Without significant hardware upgrades and software optimizations, it was still impossible for Android tablets to take the center stage. And, until a few months ago, these tablets were not even close in comparison to Apple’s iPads.

So how does the Mi Pad 5 Pro fare in this market? Will it finally give rise to a new era of Android Tablets?

Let’s find out.

This is the Mi Pad 5 Pro, which aims to be both productive and entertaining. Indeed, Xiaomi has made great efforts to package this into a product that can be used for work.

Mi Pad 5 Pro Review: Design

But, to be honest, it looks too much like an iPad Pro. Whether it’s the design or the User interface of MIUI for Pad, everything looks way too familiar.

The Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 Pro comes with a metal frame and a CNC metal cutting process at the frame edges, which makes the overall look and feel, a bit more refined.

However, at the same time, the edges of the side frame are sharper than all the tablets that we reviewed in 2021, which also causes slight discomfort when holding it.

The rear design of the Mi Pad 5 series continues the design pattern of the Mi 11 series. For example, you’ll find the typical Xiaomi Camera module in the top-left corner and the Xiaomi logo below the cameras. The back cover is made of plastic material with a matte finish, which offers a good feeling when you are holding it. So the new Mi Pad in my hand has a pretty decent built quality.

The lack of a 3.5mm earphone jack may become one of the few drawbacks of the Mi Pad 5 Pro, especially as an entertainment device.

Now that we’ve introduced most details of the new Mi Pad’s design, let’s talk about its USB ports.

The USB-C port is another drawback of the new tablet. It’s only compatible with USB-2, which neither supports video output, nor high-speed data transfer. In addition, the compatibility and support for expanded accessories are also limited, which may reduce the possibilities of device expansion.

Mi Pad 5 Pro Review: Display

Almost all the popular features of a tablet would start with the display. The new Mi Pad’s display features 120Hz high refresh rate with a 2K resolution. It has Dolby Vision certification and supports HDR Content. In the actual test, the Mi Pad 5 Pro successfully recognized and played HDR videos in different apps. Although we have to admire Xiaomi’s efforts on software support for HDR content, the display’s maximum brightness of 485 nit is a bit disappointing. So it’s good for enjoying vivid colors on the Mi Pad Pro, but at the same time, the actual HDR effect would be affected by the brightness limits.

Apart from the 2k 120Hz display, the Mi Pad Pro is surprisingly equipped with 8 speakers with Dolby Atmos support.

Thanks to the premium display and stereo audio solution, the Mi Pad 5 Pro no doubt is one of the best devices for mobile entertainment.

Mi Pad 5 Pro Review: Hardware & Performance

The performance is actually the last thing you’ll need to worry about the tablet. It is powered by the Snapdragon 870 chipset, which is also the best chipset for an android tablet so far. From the results of different benchmarks, it nearly achieved the best results that we’ve ever got on any snapdragon 870 model.

Well in actual gaming test, thanks to Xiaomi’s optimization and the tablet’s better cooling capability, the 870 chipset runs at full capacity on the Mi Pad 5 Pro. And you can even play Genshin Impact under the highest graphics at the highest framerate. Not to mention, other games like PUBG Mobile run well. The tablet was able to run the game with very little stress at a stable framerate of up to 90fps.

Mi Pad 5 Pro Review: MIUI for Pad

For any tablet, the primary goal is to be more than just a large-screen smartphone.

In this regard, we’ve seen a few creative solutions on the HUAWEI MatePad and Lenovo Xiaoxin Pad Pro. Especially on the MatePad, the software optimization was quite a surprise. As for the Mi Pad 5 Pro, its software solution is actually very similar to what we saw on the MatePad 11.

Notably, all the official apps have been optimized for a large screen interface. There’s also the optimization of third-party applications, such as displaying a square interface in the horizontal view. And in some apps, you can open dual tasks within the app and either of them can be operated independently, which is the same as the feature called App-multiplier in MatePad’s Harmony OS.

Further, to improve work efficiency, the Mi Pad 5 Pro allows users to open 2 apps at once in its split-screen view. Although it looks quite familiar, the MatePad obviously offers more possibility with opening up to 4 windows at once. In addition, under split-screen view, it’s possible for the user to drag pictures or text from one app to the other. But it seems that the feature still got annoying limits and wasn’t available globally.

As far as productivity is concerned, the MIUI for Pad obviously has a lot of features, but more importantly, the official accessories such as the keyboard and stylus play a key role in deciding whether you can actually bring it out for work. On the keyboard side, it only supports contact connection but no Bluetooth wireless connection. So there’s only one way to use the keyboard, which is to put them together under a fixed angle and use the tablet like a laptop.

Unfortunately, Xiaomi’s accessories are very hard to get. The Stylus is out of stock for now. So here we are not able to show you more details about the accessories.

But don’t worry, we will bring you a hands-on with the accessories in a following comparison video.

The software experience of the new Mi Pad gave me a strong feeling that most of the ideas looks good on paper but haven’t been well optimized yet.

Even though Xiaomi has made great efforts to optimize MIUI for Pad, it still cannot guarantee a great user experience. The brand still needs to work closely with app developers to convert their apps to work well on tablets. So before you decide to buy a new Mi Pad or any other latest tablet, you have to check whether your most-used apps have been optimized for the Pad’s system.

Mi Pad 5 Pro Review: Battery Life & Charging

Another significant strength of the Mi Pad 5 Pro is its long battery life with 67W fast charging support. Compared to the Mi Pad 4, the 8600mAh battery has increased by 2600mAh capacity.

In our actual test, the battery performed well, no matter for office use or entertainment use. After video playback for one hour and using it for general office work for another hour, the power only dropped by 28%. After completing the test, there was still around 35% of power left.

As for charging, the 67W fast charging solution is also the fastest charging power in the tablet market. It just takes 73 minutes for the Mi Pad 5 Pro to charge from 0% to 100%.

Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 Pro Review: Verdict

A lot of people were waiting for the update of Mi Pad series, and thought that the new Mi Pad 5 would be a game-changer with great value for money and top performance. Indeed, the Mi Pad 5 is one of those tablets that you can almost buy blindly without a lot of concern.

However, like its smartphones, while Xiaomi is a brand that makes great efforts in the hardware department, it still needs to fix the software on its new releases. But the good news is that Xiaomi has almost always kept its promise of fixing such bugs with regular updates.

We are planning to bring a tablet comparison video very soon. Which tablets would you want to see in the comparison with the new Mi Pad?

Please let us know down below. We will try our best to bring your recommendations in the upcoming video.