Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro review: this might be the iPad Air rival I’ve been waiting for

Introduction

With a few exceptions, Android tablets are more about multimedia than getting serious work done. Few of the best tablets have the productivity appeal of Apple’s iPad line-up, and the ones that do are mighty pricey. Xiaomi’s latest mid-range contender is looking to change that. The Pad 7 Pro has the specs and styling to challenge higher-grade rivals, plus a set of optional extras that can turn it into a true laptop alternative.

Starting from £449/€499, it undercuts the latest iPad Air by a considerable margin. And with the Google Pixel Tablet feeling more at home… well, in your home and the OnePlus Pad 2 growing that bit bigger, could this 11.2-incher be the Goldilocks tab for those not interested in paying top dollar for an oversized slate?

Design & features: all about the accessories

Hang on, haven’t I seen you somewhere before? With a metal unibody, flat sides and smoothed-off corners, the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro has the same general look and feel as most of its rivals. Only the firm’s signature square rear camera module sets it apart. But on the plus side, that means there are no major giveaways that this tablet costs less than half what an iPad Pro will set you back.

It’s only marginally thicker, at 6.18mm to the iPad Pro’s 5.3mm. You get similar pogo pins on the back for powering accessories, matching speaker grilles at the sides for the Dolby Atmos-approved audio setup, and the grey colour scheme of my review unit even looks like a good match for Apple’s. The green and blue versions have a little more character.

At 500g this is a fair bit heavier than an iPad Air or iPad Pro, and its screen bezels are ever-so-slightly chunkier, but still proved comfortable enough to use one-handed. I thought Xiaomi’s aluminium treatment wasn’t quite as effective at disguising fingerprint smudges, but it otherwise felt suitably high-end.

Machined metal power and volume keys complete the look, with the former also acting as a fingerprint sensor that was fast and accurate throughout my testing. There’s facial recognition on board as well, but not the kind that’ll let you authenticate banking apps. The selfie camera sits in the centre of the tablet’s longer edge, indicating landscape view will be your best bet for video calls.

Most tablets aren’t much cop on the photography front, but the Pad 7 Pro’s 50MP rear camera puts in a pretty good showing. It won’t replace your phone, but it can record 4K video at 60fps and shows a good amount of detail in well-lit scenes. It’ll do just fine for document scanning and the like.

Popping the Pad 7 Pro into Xiaomi’s Focus Keyboard accessory turns it into a mini laptop, with a full QWERTY keyboard and glass touchpad. The floating hinge design looks very similar to Apple’s Magic Keyboard, only without the USB-C port at the side. The faux leather finish and padded interior keep the tablet free from scratches, and cleans up

I love that the keyboard is backlit (even if you have to head into the Settings menus to adjust it, rather than use a button shortcut) and the 0–124° of stepless adjustment meant I never struggled to find a workable viewing angle – even on a tight economy airline seat.

Android still doesn’t feel perfectly at home with a keyboard attached, as some shortcuts don’t work as you expect, but the keys themselves have plenty of travel and a springy action that’s miles better than pecking away at a touchscreen for full-length documents.

I wasn’t able to test the Xiaomi Focus Pen stylus, so can’t it delivers the ‘millisecond-level low latency’ the firm promises. I do know magnets let you stash it on the side of the tablet, where it’s charged wirelessly.

Screen & sound: one sharp shiner

At 11.2in, the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro slots neatly into what I think is the tablet sweet spot: small enough to use one-handed, but still able to comfortably show two apps side-by-side. The 3:2 aspect ratio is closer to Apple’s way of thinking an the 16:9 favoured by many Android tablets, and means you can’t really avoid black bars on streaming content, but adds some welcome vertical space when in split screen.

Xiaomi has stuck with an IPS LCD panel, rather than jump to OLED tech, but hasn’t skimped on specs: you’re getting a wonderfully sharp 3200×2136 resolution, which puts most other mid-tier tablets to shame. Refresh rate tops out at a speedy 144Hz, and HDR10 support is onboard as well.

While colours aren’t quite as vivid as say, a Samsung Galaxy Tab S9, they still have a good amount of punch. Contrast and black levels can’t really compete with OLED either, so especially dark scenes appear more grey than black – but everywhere else the Pad 7 Pro puts in a performance worthy of its price. It also shines a lot brighter than most OLEDs, hitting a peak 800 nits to really make white highlights hit hard. That makes it handy for outdoor use, even with a glossy finish that makes light reflections rather noticeable.

A matte glass version, which has a paper-like texture for majorly reduced reflections, will head to certain markets; in the UK it’ll retail for £549, which is quite the premium over the version tested here.

Sound-wise, the Pad 7 Pro doesn’t disappoint. The four speakers easily get loud enough for one person viewing, and can fill a small room if there’s not a lot of background chatter. Distortion is kept under control at higher volumes, and bass response isn’t half bad for a tablet.

Software experience: split decision

Xiaomi has given its HyperOS Android skin some tablet-specific upgrades, including a floating dock for easier app swapping and split-screen working. It’s not all that different from the docks I’ve seen on rival tablets, letting you drag and drop to the edge of the screen for a side-by-side view, or tapping to open in a floating window.

Workstation mode then puts everything into these smaller windows, getting a little bit closer to a traditional laptop desktop. The four window maximum was plenty enough for me during work hours, though I did find the way one window always obscured the others a little fiddly. Samsung’s desktop mode is a little more effective.

If you’re not also rocking a Xiaomi smartphone, you’ll be missing out on a bunch of extra functionality. The Pad 7 Pro can access a shared clipboard, continue apps opened on another device, display notifications from your phone, and even mirror its homescreen. You can use two cameras at once for multi-angle live streaming, too.

It’s running on top of Android 15, with a handful of own-brand apps alongside Google’s own and a refreshing lack of third-party bloat. You get goodies like the Gemini voice assistant and Circle to Search, and Xiaomi hasn’t skimped on its own AI infusions either. The writing assistant can expand or polish your ramblings and summarise long articles; it can transcribe and summarise voice recordings; video calls in foreign languages can be translated in real-time; and the firm’s image editing tools have been carried over wholesale from its smartphone lineup. I wouldn’t call any of them flawless, but they work as convincingly as anything Google, Samsung or Apple offers.

Performance & battery life: a true contender

Mid-range tablets have gotten a lot more powerful recently, with OnePlus and Honor both opting for newer Snapdragon silicon. Xiaomi has followed suit here with a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, paired to either 8 or 12GB of RAM. That gives the Pad 7 Pro more than enough oomph for everyday use, especially if you’re largely sticking to one app at a time.

I could multitask perfectly well too, either side-by-side or using Xiaomi’s Workstation mode with multiple floating windows. It’s true that a OnePlus Pad 2 will come out on top in benchmark tests – but not by a colossal amount, and you have to pay a fair bit more. It’s about on par with Samsung’s now last-gen Galaxy Tab S98, which can be picked up for similar money, so there’s really nothing to grumble about here.

It’s good enough for 60fps gaming, even in fast-paced action titles like Fortnite. I’m not convinced many 3D titles will reach the 144Hz maximum refresh rate, but they won’t feel like slideshows or dip their details to cartoon-like levels either.

Half an hour of Diablo Immortal saw battery reserves dip by around 10%, which is a very respectable performance. The Pad 7 Pro’s 8850mAh cell isn’t the largest I’ve seen in an 11in slate, but it has plenty of staying power. I could last several days of regular use, and it barely dipped while in standby. That’s a stronger showing than the OnePlus Pad 2, and only outlasted by larger rivals with much higher capacities.

You don’t have to wait around too long to refuel, with 67W wired top-ups over USB-C.

Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro verdict

On its lonesome, the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro delivers plenty for the money. Performance is convincing, battery life is superb, and the display packs in more pixels than virtually anything else at this price point. Xiaomi’s tablet-specific tweaks to Android are well thought out, and the way it slots into the firm’s wider ecosystem is practically seamless.

Accessories are what makes a tablet more than just an oversized smartphone, and Xiaomi has duly delivered here. The Focus Keyboard in particular is a delight to type on and turns the Pad 7 Pro into a portable productivity powerhouse. That does bump the price, of course, and if you shop around you’ll find rivals often bundle their keyboards for similar money.

By itself, the lack of OLED tech might be a downer for streaming aficionados. Creators with specific software use cases might also find Android’s app selection more modest than Apple’s iPad OS, but they’ll need to pay considerably more than this in order to get them.

Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro technical specifications