The tablet market is in decline (16% year over year). What was once a crowded, cut-throat race has turned into a few holdouts still releasing classic tablets, with Apple dominating a fifth of that pie. Looks like Xiaomi hasn’t given up yet. Amidst the strong headwinds from larger phones and convertible tablets, the Mi Pad 3 looks to stand out from the competition.
Turns out this shrinking tablet market could be the lucky break Xiaomi is looking for. With new conventional tablets being released at a snail’s pace, good tablets are harder and harder to find. The Mi Pad 2 was a very good tablet and still is, and for just $160 its quite a steal. The Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 is more of a refresh than an upgrade, being practically identical from the outside with a few changes on the inside.
There is now 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, but the switch from the Intel Atom processor to the 6 core MediaTek has our eyebrows knit in confusion (or anger, depending on how much you wanted a Windows Mi Pad 3). However, the biggest change here is the starting price.
Where the Mi Pad 2 started at $160 for the 16GB version, the Mi Pad 3 starts at 64GB and consequently a much higher $220. Because of that higher price point, this tablet is going to have to fight a lot harder to prove itself, and let’s see if it does.
Expensive
Processor | MediaTek MTK8176 Hexa Core |
Display | 7.9” 2048×1536 px IPS LCD |
RAM | 4GB |
Storage | 64GB eMMC |
Operating System | Android 6.0 with MIUI8 |
Cameras | 5MP, 2MP front |
Battery | 6,600mAh |
Physical Dimensions | 328g, 200.4 x 132.6 x 6.9 mm |
Big thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.
Premium, light, but no SD slot
The Mi Pad 3 has two rear firing speakers and they pump out some incredibly loud sound. The maximum volume is loud enough to be heard pretty much anywhere a normal person would go and there is no distortion at max volume either. Quality is quite decent, mids and highs are quite full and audio clarity is not bad at all. There is some bass present as well but its still nowhere near the best tablet or phone speakers. Still though, its more than adequate for listening to music or watching some TV. That being said, the speaker placement means that audio comes out one side of the tablet when in landscape mode which results in no speaker separation.
The Mi Pad 2 was able to eke out some good battery life from its 6190mAh battery and I’m expecting slightly better from the Mi Pad 3 with its 6600mAh battery. Battery life is as I expected, slightly more than the Mi Pad 2.
I was able to obtain around 8-9 hours of screen on time over a day, no games, but web browsing, movies, and some Youtube. That’s some good battery life right there, creeping closer to the iPad Mini, but still falling slightly short of the iPad’s 10 hour figure. However, standby battery consumption is not as low as it could be and I suspect this is due to bad software optimization. I was losing about 1% battery every 1.5-2 hours which means around 9% battery gone every night. I really hope this can be improved on in future software updates but as of now, fingers crossed.
The MTK8176 handles gaming less well. the PowerVR GX6250 graphics chip is two years old and was released as a midrange graphics chip, not even a high end one. I saw occasional stutter running the most graphically intensive games like Asphalt, NOVA, and Mortal Kombat as well, part of that is due to the incredibly high resolution, but you can’t lower resolution either so that’s not an option. Lowering graphical fidelity in games that support it makes intensive games run much better, and playing older or simpler games prove no issue to this chipset at all.
There’s not much to talk about regarding connectivity, I got some good WiFi speeds.
This is a great tablet plagued by software issues. the standby battery drain and app crash issues warrant some hesitation if you had your finger on the trigger, and I would say put the safety back on and wait until the software is fixed before pulling the trigger. However, I do see a huge problem coming from Apple’s direction. With the release of the new $329 iPad, I really don’t know how many people would want to spend close to the same amount for a Xiaomi device.
A great tablet plagued by software issues
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