Tablets traverse the no-man’s land between phones and laptops, aiming to provide a blend of entertainment, productivity and creativity while staying portable. That statement sums up slates as I think of them, and the promise of one device that can do it all continues to draw me towards these gadgets in a way that’s hard to put down in words. These sleek slabs of metal and glass play well with an assortment of different accessories that not only elevate the user experience but also add functionality. Quite a few brands have tried this approach of introducing accessories like keyboards and pens with their tablet offerings, especially in the mid-range and premium segments. On that note, I have the new Xiaomi Pad 7 with me, the latest contender in this very space. Coming as the successor to the Xiaomi Pad 6 (review) that launched back in 2023, the latest slate brings upgraded specs, tons of improvements and a tagline that says “Do it all”. Let’s see if it can live up to that.
Table of Contents
Design and display

The tablet sports premium metal construction and comes in Graphite Grey, Mirage Purple and Sage Green. I have the Mirage Purple for review and I must say it looks more silver than purple, though there are hints of the latter at certain angles. The device is quite svelte, being just 6.18mm thick. Tipping the scales at 500 grams, I wouldn’t call it featherweight, but it’s not heavy either… considering its screen size. Held in landscape mode, the front camera is placed in the middle of the long edge on top, and the bezels around the screen are quite slim.
The power key is placed near the top on the left edge, while the Type-C port is on the middle of the right edge. The tablet comes with quad speakers, with a couple placed on either side. Hi-res audio is supported, both for wired and wireless. You won’t find a 3.5mm headphone jack though, which is par for the course for mid-to-premium segment tablets these days. On the top edge, you’ll see the volume rocker towards the left and a small, almost invisible strip towards the right that acts as the dock for the Xiaomi Focus Pen. The pen attaches there magnetically and sips juice to charge its battery.
At the rear of the slate, the most prominent aspect is the black camera deco, with the squircle bump placed towards the right. It has the rear camera, a flash, and even an IR blaster which converts the tablet to a universal remote. The inclusion of an IR blaster is quite unexpected for a tablet, I must say. But it’s there, adds functionality, and I’m certainly not one to complain. I can’t say if its inclusion adds significantly to the cost of the tablet though, but if it does, I think I can live without this feature on my tablet.
On the left side of the back panel, you’ll see Xiaomi branding and three pogo pins that interface with the keyboard cover when it’s attached to the tablet. More on that in a bit.
Tablet | Xiaomi Pad 7 | OnePlus Pad Go | Redmi Pad Pro 5G |
Thickness | 6.5mm | 6.9mm | 7.52mm |
Weight | 500 grams | 532 grams | 568 grams |
Display | 11.2-inch LCD, 144Hz | 11.3-inch LCD, 90Hz | 12.1-inch LCD, 120Hz |
Peak brightness | 600 nits | 400 nits | 600 nits |
Moving on to the display, the 11.2-inch panel is of the LCD variety. The 3,200 x 2,136 resolution results in sharp visuals, while the 3:2 aspect ratio works well for working on documents and browsing the web. The 144Hz adaptive refresh rate makes usage quite smooth and responsive too. Featuring Gorilla Glass 3 protection, TUV Rheinland certifications for blue light, flicker and being Circadian friendly, and support for Dolby Vision, it’s a lovely display to have at your disposal for whatever you want to do on the tablet.
Interestingly, Xiaomi is offering a Pad 7 variant that comes with a nano texture display. This is on the top-end model and promises to eliminate 99 percent of interfering light, i.e. glare and reflections that impede tablet usage. It promises to reduce eye fatigue too, and cuts glare without impacting the vibrancy of the colours. While I don’t have this variant for review, I saw it in action during a demo session, and I must say the nano texture display is quite effective. Glare and reflections are real problems impacting tablet usage and the nano texture display handles the issue quite well. What’s more, the nano texture display is said to be better for writing and drawing on the tablet as well. The only niggle is that the existence of the nano texture version helps to highlight the glossy nature of the screen on the regular variants.
Software
The software experience offered by the Xiaomi Pad 7 has to be one of its strong points. Running HyperOS 2 atop Android 15, the UI is quite clean overall, with not much bloatware. In fact, the only third-party apps that come preinstalled are WPS Office and Netflix. Xiaomi has also added a few tablet-specific features. The workstation mode, for instance, helps take the UI closer to a regular laptop, allowing you to run multiple apps together as floating windows. Even outside of the workstation mode, you can use split screen and floating windows to multitask. A horizontal swipe on the screen enables split screen, and app pairs open together in split screen can be saved as shortcuts for easy access, allowing you to open them directly with one tap when needed.
Then there are the ecosystem features, found under interconnectivity. These allow you to make use of certain features if you have a Xiaomi phone signed into the same Xiaomi account as the tablet. These features include sharing the cupboard and notifications between the tablet and the phone, transferring data and continuing usage of certain apps between the two. An option called Home Screen+ allows you to view the home screen of your Xiaomi phone right on the tablet, and even interact with it to launch apps, view messages etc. I also like the fact that the tablet can be used as an extended display for your Windows or Mac laptop… a handy feature to have.
Xiaomi Focus Keyboard and Focus Pen
The new Focus Keyboard is an optional accessory and is priced at Rs 8,999. Combining that with your Xiaomi Pad 7 takes things close to a full-fledged laptop experience, as it adds not just a backlit keyboard but also a touchpad…. Not to mention protection for the display. What’s more, the touchpad even supports multi-finger gestures. That said, the touchpad is small and can be a bit fiddly to use since the gestures and taps don’t always achieve the desired results. The keyboard is compact too, with smaller keys as compared to a regular one. It can feel a bit cramped, coming from a regular keyboard. On the positive side, the keys offer ample travel, and once you get used to it, you can type reasonably fast. Xiaomi has provided quite a few customisation options for the keyboard as well — you can customise shortcuts for tasks like capturing screenshots, viewing recent apps, jumping to the Home Screen, bringing down the notification shade and the control centre, etc, add shortcuts for favourite apps, choose the pointer style, switch scroll direction, tweak pointer speed, etc. Worth mentioning that when attached to the keyboard, the tablet does become rather thick and heavy, taking away from the portability aspect. That’s something you should keep in mind if you’re considering this combo from a travel use perspective.
Next up is the Focus Pen. Priced at Rs 5,999, the white stylus attaches magnetically to the top of the tablet for juicing up and allows you to draw and write on the screen. The pen has a flat surface on one side that attaches to the tablet, and also sports three buttons – a screenshot button, a writing button, and a so-called spotlight button. Pressing and holding the writing button, and then touching the screen with the pen’s top opens the Mi Canvas app, while the screenshot button does exactly what it says it does. The spotlight button is multifunctional and works as a pointer, a highlighter and a remote shutter for the camera. Thanks to low 3ms latency and 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity, the Focus Pen works as a handy tool if you’re the creative type, or just want to annotate, doodle or jot down handwritten notes. The writing experience is quite smooth and seamless.
Performance and battery
From a performance perspective, things are quite smooth overall. Thanks to Qualcomm’s tried and tested 4nm Snapdragon 7 + Gen 3 SoC, mated to up to 12 gigs of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage, the slate offers a smooth, fluid experience for most tasks, without any signs of lag or stutter. While gaming might not be the primary use case, the tablet can be used for some gaming too, delivering stable and playable frame rates at medium to high settings.
Xiaomi Pad 7 | OnePlus Pad Go | Redmi Pad Pro 5G | |
AnTuTu | 1419954 | 398672 | 547792 |
Geekbench single-core | 1885 | 637 | 1032 |
Geekbench multi-core | 5107 | 1772 | 2982 |
The 8,850mAh battery is good for over a day of intensive use, though this would vary significantly based on usage. With intermittent usage involving a few hours of streaming, playing some games and productivity-focused tasks like typing and editing articles, the battery lasted up to 4 days in my case before I needed to juice it up. The 45W charging juices it up fully in about 1 hour 50 minutes, which is quite impressive. Furthermore, Xiaomi bundles a 45W charging brick with the tablet.
The 13MP rear and 8MP front cameras do their job as expected, without any red flags. Of course, a tablet can’t really be used for serious photography, so the rear camera’s job involves more document scanning than shooting holiday snaps. The quad speakers get quite loud and work well for video calls too.
Verdict
Drawing up the competitive landscape for a tablet is a tad bit tricky I feel. I say that because unlike smartphones, pure performance or raw specs can’t really be the primary deciding factors while buying a tablet… considering that the main use cases for a slate are streaming, reading, drawing and regular productivity-based tasks. Unless you’re a power user or your main use case of buying a tablet is gaming. And thanks to their beefy batteries, most tablets are able to deliver respectable battery life too. In my opinion, the most important factors to consider while choosing a tablet are aspects like screen quality, audio, the software experience, ecosystem features, and accessories (such as the keyboard and pen). Of course, based on your specific requirements, other factors like front camera quality (for video calls), and 4G/5G connectivity can be important factors to consider too. The Xiaomi Pad 7 doesn’t have a 4G/5G variant, and that seems like a miss to me.
The OnePlus Pad 2 is a strong contender, and a powerful one too, thanks to its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor. However, that’s priced significantly higher at Rs 37,999 onwards, and adding the keyboard and pen takes the cost even higher. Lower down the price ladder, you’d find options like the Honor Pad 9 (Rs 19,999, Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, free keyboard), and the previous generation Xiaomi Pad 6 (Rs 20,999, Snapdragon 870). If you want built-in cellular connectivity, the OnePlus Pad Go (Rs 19,999, MediaTek Helio G99) and the Redmi Pad Pro (Rs 26,999, Snapdragon 7s Gen 2) are also compelling options in their price segments. For multimedia usage, the Lenovo Tab Plus (Rs 17,999, Helio G99) is a decent choice, thanks to its capable speaker setup and built-in kickstand. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE (Rs 27,999, Exynos 1380) comes with an S Pen bundled and might be a worthy buy for creative folks. So as you can make out, options in the tablet segment are quite varied. It might not be perfect, but as far as I’m concerned, the Xiaomi Pad 7 offers a solid blend of performance and software features to come across as good value for money for its asking price, and an all-rounder for both work and play. Speaking of price, you can have the base variant for Rs 27,999 (8+128GB), while the higher model will set you back by Rs 30,999 (12+256GB). And if you’re going for the latter, you might as well spend another 2K and get the one with the nano-texture display.
Editor’s rating: 8 / 10
Pros:
- Good performance & battery life
- Lovely screen
- Useful software & ecosystem features
- Optional nano-texture display
Cons:
- Fiddly touchpad
- Tablet keyboard combo is bulky