Realme Pad Review: Impressive Design and Excellent Built Quality

Paco Zheng — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 12:34:01 +0000

In the past two months, we’ve managed to get our hands on most tablets that were released in 2021. Most of them have renewed our imagination as to what an Android tablet can do. However, many of them are targeted at the premium market. We also received quite a lot of questions from our audiences, mainly asking about options in the budget market. Indeed, many consumers only require basic performance and good audiovisual entertainment on a tablet, instead of focusing too much on excellent productivity at a much higher price.

Moreover, the market also showed us the truth that the best-selling products in these 2 years are those models priced under $300.

So today we have a wonderful option for you guys, the latest Realme Pad, which is a true budget tablet, meeting almost all the basic needs that we mentioned above. In fact, it’s also the most impressive budget tablet that we’ve ever seen in the past few years.

Realme Pad Review: Design & Screen

Let’s start with its design.

When we first got our hands on the tablet, we were immediately confused as to why this budget tablet features such a good design.

Take a look at this gold version that we have in our hands. The excellent build quality of the metal body feels even better than all the premium tablets that we reviewed in these few months. And thanks to the ultra-thin and light body, it’s even comfortable when holding it with one hand. Apart from the gold variant, the tablet also comes in a grey version.

The tablet sports a single camera on both, the front and rear. Both of them come with 8MP resolution and support up to 1080P video recording or video calling.

One of the greatest features of the tablet is the integrated SIM-Card slot on the frame, which not only supports dual-Sim-card standby for LTE Network but also allows users to have one of them for storage extension with a MicroSD card. These features are not present in most standard versions of premium tablets.

The Realme Pad sports a 10.4-inch display that offers a resolution of 2000×1200 pixels. But unlike the reports which said it would have an AMOLED display, the tablet actually features an LCD panel. Although the lack of a high refresh rate doesn’t make it as smooth as those premium models released in 2021, considering the budget pricing, it actually won’t be an issue, especially if you are going to use the tablet for basic purposes. Apart from that, this display looks pretty good, thanks to the comfortable colors and good detail when watching videos or movies.

But please note that it doesn’t support HDR colors, so basically it would display only in SDR mode. However, as a budget tablet, we still are of the opinion that the display is already good enough for basic visual use.

To deliver good audiovisual performance, the tablet also features a 3.5mm earphone jack and 4 speakers for Dolby Atmos with supports for DTS HD solution. For music, it also supports Hi-Res audio to present stunning music with a high sampling rate.

And you can also adjust the Dolby sound effects in the settings menu to adapt to different scenarios. During our limited experience, although it didn’t compare to the premium models, we have to say that the sound was much better than most budget tablets. Anyway, you can just check it here.

Realme Pad Review: Performance & Gaming

As for performance, the Realme Pad is fueled by the MTK Helio G80 chipset. To be honest, it won’t be a good option if you’re going to play heavy games on tablets. And the 4GB ram also doesn’t make it suitable for multitasking. But for light entertainment, you can still trust the tablet running on the Android 11 platform. There are no obvious issues with application support, however, there’s no significant optimization for Pad mode use either. In benchmarks, the results are slightly better than other models with G80 Chipset.

Anyway, let’s test its actual gaming. First, we ran PUBG Mobile on the Realme Pad. The game stably ran at 40fps under the balanced graphic setting.

And then we played the new Harry Porter game, which, as of now, is only available in China. Well, it seems that the tablet had no stress when playing the game. Even in Genshin Impact, the tablet also could achieve a relatively smooth frame rate under low graphics.

We think, overall, although it’s not made for high-performance gaming, the tablet is still able to handle most games under low graphics at least.

Realme Pad Review: Software

As for software, the Realme Pad didn’t have a lot of optimization for the tablet. But the Realme Pad is still one of the very few affordable tablets that run the latest Android 11 OS. And Realme also continues the excellent software stability from their phone products on the new tab. At least the system feels pretty smooth, although its 60Hz display is a bit of a drawback. And there’s no optimization for those phone apps that don’t support the horizontal view, so these apps are forced to display vertically.

Battery & Charging

As for battery and charging, the tablet has a 7000mAh battery with 18W charging efficiency. With the power-saving chipset, actually, the budget tablet has a pretty long battery life. In our battery life test, its result is even better than some premium tablets with larger batteries. And the full charge test took us around 2 hours, which is not so fast. But on tablets, longer battery life is more important, which guarantees the device can last for more than an entire day of use. Most users may only charge it once at night when going to bed. So basically, slow charging shouldn’t affect your daily use.

Realme Pad Review: Verdict

During the limited experience we had, the Realme Pad actually performs well as a budget tablet. Since we didn’t expect much on such a basic device, it actually became one of the useful devices at our office. For example, thanks to its lightweight and compact body, we enjoyed using it as a monitor to check video footage. And it also became an affordable device for our video meetings.

Moreover, it also reminds me of educational uses, such as online classes or online study. Some parents may still be looking for a reliable tablet with a bigger screen for their kids’ study, and if you are one of them, the Realme Pad could be the best affordable option for you.

The reason why we like this tablet is simple. Indeed, the market needs premium devices to fulfill the imagination of those users who can afford the price, while for those who don’t really need premium performance, options like the Realme Pad are still very important.