Xiaomi‘s Redmi brand is known for its bang-for-the-buck smartphones. In the last few years, they are bringing that same appeal to tablets and attracted students and professionals looking for a big-screen mobile device without breaking the bank. Today, we have the new addition to their line-up, the Redmi Pad Pro.
Priced under Php20,000 for both the WiFi-only and 5G models, this aims to provide a full tablet experience with its enormous screen and battery, four speakers, and an array of accessories to maximize productivity and creativity. Do these impressive spec translate to good real-world performance? We’ll find out in our Redmi Pad Pro review.
Redmi Pad Pro Specs
- Android 14, HyperOS
- 12.1-inch 2.5K IPS display, 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution, 249ppi
- 120Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision
- 600-nits brightness
- 2.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 octa-core processor
- Adreno 710 GPU
- 8GB RAM
- 128GB/256GB internal storage, expandable via microSD
- 8-megapixel ultra-wide front camera
- 8-megapixel rear camera
- Quad speakers, Headphone jack
- WiFi 6, dual-band
- Bluetooth 5.2
- USB-C
- Dimensions: 280 x 181.9 x 7.5mm
- Weight: 571g
- Colors: Dark Gray
- 10,000mAh non-removable battery, 33W fast charging
Design and Build Quality
Tablets don’t need to look good or stylish, especially if they are in the budget segment. All they have to be is durable, thin, and light so they are easy to carry and use. That’s exactly what the Redmi Pad Pro is.
It’s only 7.5mm thick, thinner than most smartphones, but thicker than most tablets I’ve seen in its price segment. I like it, though, as the flat frame provides a comfortable grip without the sharpness that other curved tablets have.
At 571g, the weight is decent, considering its large display and battery. As with most 12-inch tablets, your hands will easily gettired when using it, so it’s best to prop it at a table when you’re watching or working on something.
Build quality is also decent for the price. It has the old Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the front and a metallic unibody build available in Ocean Blue, Graphite Gray, and the unit that we have, Mint Green.
I’ll forgive you if you thought this was the gray color as I thought so, too. I’m not seeing hints of green on this one. I had to double-check the label on the back to make sure if the unit I have is actually the right one.
More on the build, the middle part felt a little hollow and bendy when I tried a couple of light bend tests, which isn’t surprising considering how wide the body is. It shouldn’t break easily as long as you take care of it.
While it lacks an official IP rating for dust and water resistance, it’s acceptable for a tablet at this price point.
Overall, the Redmi Pad Pro is a well-designed tablet. It’s not the flashiest nor the lightest tablet around, but for the price, it exceeds expectations by being comfortable to carry around and by having a clean metallic unibody construction.
Now, let’s take a tour of the hardware. We have a large 12.1-inch display on the front. In vertical orientation, you get the 8-megapixel ultra-wide selfie camera on top, sitting in the middle, making it great for video calls.
The bezels are not the thinnest, but they provide enough room for your fingers to sit in, so you can hold the tablet comfortably without accidental screen touches.
On top, we have two microphones to pick up your voice clearly. We also have the SIM tray here, with the SIM slot blocked out since this is the WiFi-only version. The good news is there’s a spot for a microSD card for storage expansion.
The volume controls are located on the far left, which is close to the lock/power button on the left side so you can take screenshots easily.
Joining the lock/power button on the left are two speaker grills and the Dolby Vision Atmos logo. The buttons feel robust and clicky, but I wish they were a bit larger as they are too small for my taste.
The right side has the other two speaker grills, a USB-C 2.0 port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack for those who still use it. The bottom part of the device is clean.
For the accessories, we first have the fanciest of the three: the Redmi Keyboard Cover. It has a leather-like soft polyurethane material that’s nice to the touch and durable. The downside is it easily attracts fingerprint smudges.
The tablet snaps in easily and will prop up at a 100-degree angle via the magnets at the bottom. The fixed angle is comfortable enough, but I do wish, as a tall person, that I can get it lower so it’s more convenient.
It has 64 chiclet keys and all of them are nice and clicky. They are comfortable to type on and have Fn shortcut keys for music controls, brightness, and volume. I know it’s too much to ask, but I do miss having backlit keys, especially when working at night.
The only lights we have are for the Caps Lock and next to the USB-C port on the right side, which acts as a charging indicator. We also have the switch here, which has a green and red paint as an indicator that it’s switched on or off.
In addition to the keyboard, it also has a detachable slot for the Smart Pen holder. I wish it’s stitched onto the case to prevent it from getting lost, but I do understand that not everyone will be getting the Pen, so it’s nice that the slot is removable.
One problem I noticed, though, is that the holder feels tight. While it holds the Pen securely, putting it in and removing it is a little tough.
Moving on, that same Pen holder is also present on the Redmi Pad Pro cover. The cover can be folded if you just want to see a portion of the screen (see the battery, check time) or fold it all the way back to act as a stand in landscape mode.
It does a good job of protecting the device and attaches to the screen magnetically. However, the magnet is a bit weak so there are times when the cover will flap open on its own.
Finally, we have the Redmi Smart Pen stylus. Like most styluses, it is white and feels lightweight at only 12.7g. It is also 156mm tall and has a USB-C port on top for charging, which sadly doesn’t have a cover for water protection. There’s 1 extra tip on the box in case you need it in the future.
Display and Audio
The Redmi Pad Pro has a 12.1-inch 2.5K IPS display, with a 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution, 30Hz/48Hz/50Hz/60Hz/90Hz/120Hz adaptive refresh rate, 240Hz touch sampling rate, 12-bit color, 1500:1 aspect ratio 4096 levels of brightness adjustment, DC dimming, and Dolby Vision. It also has TUV Rheinland certification for its low blue light, flicker free, and circadian friendly screen.
Display quality is good, but not stellar. Colors look fair and accurate, but if your primary device has an OLED (i.e your phone), you’d feel the lack of vibrancy and contrast. Still, on its own, it works fine.
Screen brightness is also ample and the interface feels smooth enough. Unfortunately, the midrange chip definitely can’t take full advantage of the 120Hz display. It works well for casual use cases like browsing on social media, but it won’t hit that when gaming.
Widevine L1 is supported, so you can stream Netflix in HD. Dolby Vision also works well on streaming platforms, but it sadly lacks HDR. Despite that, I’d say that the quality is still good enough for its price tag.
There’s also the Dolby Atmos support for the quad speakers. The audio quality is beefy and enough to match the large display. The treble is clear and the bass is rich. Stereo separation is audible and can get pretty loud if you’re watching movies with a couple of friends.
Hardware and Performance
The Redmi Pad Pro is powered by a 4nm 2.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragons 7s Gen 2, with a powerful Adreno 710 GPU, and two RAM and storage configurations: 8GB/128GB (the unit we’re reviewing) and 8GB/256GB. As mentioned earlier, there’s also a microSD card slot for storage expansion. Per Xiaomi, it offers 51% better CPU and 100% better GPU performance than the cheaper Redmi Pad.
Redmi Pad Pro Benchmark Scores
Benchmark scores were decent for the price. It also received a stability score of 99.2% from 3DMark’s 20-minute Wild Life Extreme Stress Test, hinting at good, sustained performance even under heavy load.
Performance in real-world tests was satisfactory. Sure, it’s not as fast as the Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro, but I wasn’t expecting it to be considering the massive price difference. Still, I was able to do real work on this, just like on the more expensive model.
And by work, I mean running two apps side-by-side while writing articles. One window for the document or PDF and the other for writing the actual text. Then, I swiftly moved to a photo editor to create the image, upload it to the document, and publish it. Paired with the dedicated keyboard case, I was able to swiftly finish work while at a coffee shop.
Obviously, other day-to-day tasks can be accomplished with ease, too. From watching movies and other video content on Disney+, YouTube, to browsing on Facebook and Instagram.
The Redmi Pad Pro can play games, but it’s definitely not for hardcore players. Genshin Impact, one of the most demanding games around, was playable under the default settings (Low). The graphics quality is unsurprisingly terrible, but if you badly need to play, you definitely can.
PUBG Mobile had no issues with HD graphics quality and High frame rate. But considering how large the display is, it would’ve been better if it ran on higher graphics settings. Call of Duty Mobile, being a very optimized game, had no issues under High/Max. Farlight84 was not the smoothest with the default HD/High settings, so you might want to drop the settings a bit in exchange for a smoother gameplay.
Mobile Legends had no issues running on the highest available settings, which is High for both frame rate and graphics. Asphalt Legends Unite was incredibly smooth under High Quality.
The bottom line is, the Redmi Pad Pro is decent at playing games, just don’t expect too much from it.
| Game | Graphics Settings |
| Call of Duty: Mobile | • Graphics Quality: High • Frame Rate: Max |
| Farlight84 | • Graphics Quality: HD • Frame Rate: High |
| PUBG Mobile | • Graphics Quality: HD • Frame Rate: High |
| Genshin Impact | • Graphics Quality: Low(Default) |
| Mobile Legends: Bang Bang | • Graphics Quality: High • Frame Rate: High • HD Mode: On |
| Asphalt Legends Unite | • Visual Quality: High Quality |
Software and User Interface
The Redmi Pad Pro runs on Android 14-based HyperOS interface. If you haven’t heard of it before, HyperOS is the evolution of MIUI that aims to unify Xiaomi’s wide array of products — from mobile devices to electric vehicles.
In terms of looks and few key features, HyperOS is basically the same as MIUI. As I’ve said before, it felt like Xiaomi took MIUI as a base and built upon it. I honestly think Xiaomi nailed HyperOS, unlike other interfaces that were made for phones and then stretched out to fit a tablet.
The home screen looks neat and clean, with flatter icons, and a convenient taskbar at the bottom. I also liked how all the buttons on the control center are on the far right, so they are easily accessible by your right thumb, the thumb that users usually use to access it in the first place.
Something that really annoyed me at first was the lack of a local search function, which you can easily summon on other devices by swiping up from the home screen. What makes it worse is that the app drawer is not enabled by default, so looking for apps can be annoying.
But once you enable the app drawer (Settings > Home Screen > With app drawer), you’re in for a treat as all your apps are organized conveniently. The lack of access to the settings from the control center really irritated us, but it’s more of a personal preference than an actual with the UI.
Now, onto the things I really like: the multitasking features that let you take advantage of the massive 12.1-inch display.
HyperOS supports Split Screen mode, which I found really useful when doing work, especially when writing articles. But if you want to open more, you can do so via the Floating Window mode. The size of two apps in a split screen is very easy and smooth to adjust. Plus, you can easily position and move the floating window anywhere you want. You can have two floating windows open for a total of four apps running at once if you’re really trying to do so many things simultaneously.
I also liked how the three-dot menu on top is always available on whatever app you open (besides games). This lets you easily switch to split screen mode, full screen, floating window, or close the app completely — it works exactly like on PC, which is great for multitasking.
You can also drag and drop the three-dot icon to position it on the left or right of the screen to enable split screen mode or position it in the middle to make it a floating window.
The Recent Apps window is also a great way to multitask as it also shows you apps already running in split screen mode, so you can easily switch back to it.
You can also long-press an app within the Recent Apps window to lock/unlock it (prevents it from closing in the background and exempts it from the Close All button). You can also tap the split screen mode, floating window, or click the fourth button to immediately go to the app’s App Info within the settings.
Since HyperOS was made to unify different Xiaomi products, there’s a section in the settings called Interconnectivity. It’s hard to miss and you’d know it’s important because it has its special logo. This feature lets screen share nearby phones, clipboards, and sync notifications, as long as devices share the same Xiaomi account.
Other connectivity features include Xiaomi Share, an alternative to Quickshare (which is also here), support for Wireless display, and Miracast wireless display.
Now, onto the accessories. First, there’s the Redmi Smart Pen, which you can configure and update in the settings. It connects to the device via Bluetooth. You can press the first button to start writing while the other is for writing.
It’s usable enough for navigating the interface and other apps, but it’s more useful using the built-in Mi Canvas app that lets you unleash your creativity using different pens and colors. Palm rejection is decent and responsive with its 240Hz touch sampling rate and can recognize 4,096 pressure levels. Xiaomi claims it lasts for up to 10 hours on a single charge.
The Redmi Keyboard also connects via Bluetooth. Unlike other keyboard cases, you have to make sure you disconnect or turn off the keyboard after you use it to prevent accidental presses. It would also help in preserving battery life.
Typing with the keyboard is actually nice. There are also a bunch of keyboard shortcuts you can configure in the settings.
One nice touch is the pop-up animations whenever you pair and connect/disconnect the accessories. You can also see their current battery life in the settings.
It doesn’t have a fingerprint scanner, but the face unlock works just fine in our tests. It can recognize my face and unlock the device even in pitch dark environments.
Another cool attention-to-detail I saw is the screen lock. The Patten/PIN/Password will pop out on which side you swipe up (left, middle, right), so the finger you used can easily reach it.
There’s a built-in app called Security that does more than a security scan. It optimizes the system with a press of a button by clearing the cache, applying the right security settings, and more.
Tap the Cleaner feature and the device will scan the system for cache and obsolete files, packages, residuals, and misused memory. It then shows you the total trash size and clears them with a simply button press.
One cool feature fit for a tablet is the built-in Document scanner in the camera app. The decent camera sensor lets you capture small texts legibily. Plus, there are three modes to choose from: Original, Black and White, and Enhanced version.
The BnW is useful if you want your scanned document to look like an actual document. The Enhanced one keeps the color but is a bit sharper.
Cameras
The Redmi Pad Pro has an 8-megapixel rear camera with LED flash and another 8-megapixel sensor in the front with an ultra-wide lens.
Image quality from the main camera is decent. It’s good enough for casual snaps, even in low light. The colors are vibrant enough and the contrast is okay. Dynamic range is below average, but I’ll cut them some slack as this is a budget tablet. Sharpness is acceptable for document scanning, as I’ve shown earlier.
Shots from the selfie camera are similar. Colors and contrast are acceptable, but the dynamic range could’ve been handled better. Low-light shots are nice, but it’s better if you have proper lighting. I just wish that shots were a bit sharper and more detailed.
What I really liked is the wide-angle lens, which is great for presentations where you’re standing and moving around. Barrel distortion is almost unnoticeable.
Overall, I have no complaints about the cameras on the Redmi Pad Pro. Don’t expect to take your next profile picture on this device, that’s what your smartphone camera is for. But for productivity tasks like document scanning and video calls, it’s more than enough.
Battery and Charging
The Redmi Pad Pro comes with a large 10,000mAh battery with 33W charging support. Unfortunately, the WiFi-only model that we have here only comes with a USB-C cable in the box. A free 33W charging adapter is one of the benefits of getting the 5G model.
It garnered so-so scores in our battery tests. In PCMark’s battery loop test, it lasted for 11 hours and 6 minutes. That’s a loop of synthetic workload before dropping to 20%. To give you an idea, the last few tablets I tested, the OPPO Pad Neo (8,000mAh) and Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro (10,000mAh) scored higher at 14 hours and 9 minutes and 13 hours and 8 minutes, respectively. HONOR Pad 9, on the other hand, scored the worse with only 7 hours and 8 minutes.
The Redmi Pad Pro scored worse in our 1080p YouTube video loop test. With the video playing in full screen and the brightness and volume set at 50%, it only lasted for 5 hours and 57 minutes. For a tablet with this kind of hardware, I was expecting at least 10 hours from this test.
Charging was relatively slow, too. Since it didn’t come with one, I used our 66W multi-port charger from UGREEN. The charging notification confirmed that it was charging at its best (33W), but unsurprisingly still took about 2 hours to fully charge the device.
- 15mins: 0-13%
- 30mins: 29%
- 1hr: 53%
- 1hr 30mins: 75%
- 2hrs: 96%
- 2hrs 7mins: FULL
Verdict
Is the Redmi Pad Pro actually as good as what the specs sheet suggests? The answer is a definite yes. It comes with reliable performance, has a spacious display for multitasking, paired with a feature-rich interface that’s actually made for tablets and not just a stretched UI from a smartphone.
It also has Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and four speakers for better entertainment experience, an elegant design, and an array of optional accessories that maximize your use of the tablet.
Still, it’s not perfect, as there are obvious compromises to be made to accommodate the low price tag. For one, the WiFi-only model doesn’t come with a wall adapter, and even if you already have a faster one, charging still feels very slow. Image quality and battery life could also be better.
Overall, if you’re in the market for an affordable tablet that can actually handle work and entertainment, the Redmi Pad Pro is one of your best options for the price.
Redmi Pad Pro pricing and availability in the Philippines
The Redmi Pad Pro WiFi-only with 8GB/128GB configuration has an SRP of Php14,999 while the 8GB/256GB variant costs Php15,999. Meanwhile, the 5G model comes with the same RAM and storage configuration for a price of Php17,999 and Php18,999, respectively.
You can then get the Keyboard case for Php3,599, the Cover case for Php1,199, and the Smart Pen for Php2,999. All these devices are available in physical Xiaomi stores nationwide and through Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop.
Pros
- Clean, elegant design
- Spacious display with Dolby Vision
- Beefy quad speakers with Dolby Atmos
- Reliable, stable performance for work and entertainment
- Feature-rich UI for a tablet
Cons
- WiFi-only model doesn’t have charger in the box
- Slow charging
- So-so image quality
- Battery life could be better