Xiaomi Pad 7 review: My new favourite iPad alternative

The Xiaomi Pad 7 is the first tablet that I’m reviewing in 2025 and though I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, it may end up being one of my favourites. This is an 11in tablet that maintains the same cutthroat pricing as its predecessors, putting it in direct contention with Apple’s entry-level 10.9in iPad.

It’s not a flawless tablet by any means. Xiaomi’s proprietary software, in particular, continues to frustrate and bewilder me, but the Pad 7 excels in enough areas to stand out among the best in its price range. If you’re looking for an affordable tablet but prefer Android to iOS, the Xiaomi Pad 7 is my recommendation.

Xiaomi Pad 7 review: What do you get for the money?

The Xiaomi Pad 7 is launching at £369, which is the same price as both the Xiaomi Pad 6 and Xiaomi Pad 5 before it. That’s for the model with 128GB of storage but you can also get a 256GB variant for £399.

Around this price, the most obvious rival is the 10.9in iPad (2022), which can currently be picked up with 256GB of storage for £449. You also have our current favourite Android alternatives, the OnePlus Pad 2 and Honor Magic Pad 2, which at the time of writing will set you back £429 and £499, respectively.

Both storage variants of the Xiaomi Pad 7 are joined by 8GB of RAM, up from the Pad 6’s 6GB, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 chipset. The battery is an 8,850mAh cell that supports 45W wired charging.

The 11in display has a 3.2K resolution and a peak refresh rate of 144Hz. It also supports Dolby Vision HDR playback, while the quad-speakers support Dolby Atmos audio and offer a “200%” volume boost. I found using this feature caused the audio to be a little distorted in places but reducing the volume to around 80%, improved things and it sounded much crisper while still being loud enough for me.

The rounded square rear camera module tucked in the top-right corner is identical to that on the Xiaomi 15 but it only houses the LED flash and a single 13-megapixel (f/2.2) camera. Both it and the 8-megapixel (f/2.3) selfie camera are reasonable enough for video calls and the like but don’t expect to use them much beyond that.

The front-facing camera also supports a relatively efficient face unlock feature, which is handy because it’s your only option for biometrics. Despite there being a suspiciously fingertip-sized outline on the top edge, the tablet has no fingerprint sensor.

I didn’t receive any of the optional accessories to review, so I can’t speak to their quality or effectiveness, but it’s worth noting that you can pair the Xiaomi Pad 7 with the Focus Pen stylus and the Focus Keyboard Cover (prices TBC).

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Xiaomi Pad 7 review: What did we like about it?

There isn’t anything particularly special about the Xiaomi Pad 7’s design. The charcoal grey model I received for review doesn’t look much different, from a distance, to any other tablet. It just happens to do this same style very well. The flat edges and frosted rear are a single piece of aluminium alloy (also available in green or blue, if you fancy a splash of colour), which feels more luxurious and robust than plastic.

Despite that full metal build, it’s still relatively lightweight, at 500g. The 173 x 6.2 x 251mm (WDH) dimensions are on the skinnier side, too. There are fairly chunky bezels around the display, which kneecap the premium aesthetic somewhat, but the display makes up for that somewhat.

This 11in LCD panel has a razor-sharp 3,200 x 2,136 resolution and a dynamic refresh rate up to 144Hz; in short, everything looks fantastic on this screen. Brightness is decent, too, hitting 604cd/m2 in manual brightness mode and 752cd/m2 when I enabled auto brightness and shone a torch on the light sensor. Xiaomi claims the tablet peaks at 800 nits in HDR video playback but my testing saw it topping out at 601cd/m2, which still isn’t too bad.

As with the concurrently launched Xiaomi 15, the Xiaomi Pad 7 has six different colour profiles. Original Colour Pro was my default, as it adapts the colouring depending on your content, but you’ve also got Vivid and Saturated, which both target the DCI-P3 colour gamut, and then advanced options for P3, sRGB and Original Colour.

Original Colour Pro proved pretty accurate in my testing but I found that the best results came from the Advanced Original Colour setting. Here, I recorded an sRGB gamut coverage of 93.3% with a volume of 94.4% and an average Delta E colour variance score of just 0.85 – we’re looking for 1 or under here, so that’s a fantastic result.

The 2.8GHz Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 chipset is another area in which the Xiaomi Pad 7 punches above its weight. As you can see in the chart below, it scored roughly the same as the Honor Magic Pad 2 – no mean feat, considering the Honor tablet more than £100 more – and it outpaced the 10.9in iPad (2022) by around 10% in the multi-core test, too.

Xiaomi’s pre-launch software rarely plays ball with our GPU benchmarking application, so I’ll be updating this with official scores when I have them. Anecdotally at least, though, the Xiaomi Pad 7 does a decent job of gaming, running Genshin: Impact on medium graphical settings fluidly and without overheating.

The tablet’s battery life also impressed me; it lasted for 15hrs 11mins in our standard looping video test, which is roughly three hours better than the iPad (2022) and the OnePlus Pad 2. Only the Honor Magic Pad 2 lasted longer but this is still a great result for the Xiaomi Pad 7.

I’ll have more to say about the software in the next section but first, the positives. If you want to add the keyboard case and use the Pad 7 as a laptop replacement, pressing and holding on most apps gives you the option to open them as a floating window. You can have up to three of these open at once, or you can use the three dots at the top of the window to switch to split screen mode with two apps.

Software support is fine but nothing special, with Xiaomi pledging two years of OS updates and three of security patches.

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Xiaomi Pad 7 review: What could be improved?

Unfortunately, that’s where my praise for the software ends. HyperOS was supposed to be an overhaul on the previously used MIUI launcher but, in reality, it’s just as clunky and cluttered as ever. There’s still too much bloatware and the split notification bar is even more unintuitive in tablet format than it is on smartphones.

I’ve criticised HyperOS’ obtuse control centre before, on the likes of the Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 15, but it’s somehow even worse here. A button for the general settings, which is usually bafflingly mixed in with the rest of the quick tiles without any kind of label as standard, wasn’t even displayed in the control centre initially – I had to edit the layout and add it manually.

While I was mostly impressed with the display, there are a couple of minor issues that cropped up in my testing. On the Advanced Original Colour setting, where I found the greatest colour accuracy, I recorded a black level of 0.48cd/m2 and a contrast ratio of 1,238:1. Neither of these are drastically bad but they’re still not the best you can get around this price.

Contrast was a little soft on all the colour profiles but the Advanced P3 colour profile returned a much better black level of 0.075cd/m2, at least.

Finally, despite being better than the previous generation, charging speeds are still a little slow. Xiaomi states that the 45W wired charging can take the Pad 7 from empty to 100% battery in 103 minutes, which lines up perfectly with my testing (50% in 47mins, fully charged in around 1hr 40mins).

That’s not the worst I’ve ever seen but rivals get the job done faster. Both the OnePlus Pad 2 (67W) and the Honor Magic Pad 2 (66W) hit 100% in under an hour and a half in our testing.

Xiaomi Pad 7 review: Should you buy it?

The software is always my biggest bug-bear with Xiaomi products and the main reason that I so rarely rate any of them above four stars. To be clear though, it’s not unusable by any stretch. If you want a cheap Android tablet that rivals the entry-level iPad, it’s still worth getting the Xiaomi Pad 7. The software is frustrating in places but you’ll soon get used to it.

And everything else about the Xiaomi Pad 7 more than makes up for those teething problems. The performance is speedy enough to rival tablets that cost over £100 more, the display is sharp, bright and colour-accurate, battery life is some of the best around and the aluminium build is both sleek and sturdy. For this bargain price, you won’t find better than the Xiaomi Pad 7.