He most interesting line on the Mi Pad’s spec sheet is the SoC description. This is one of the only shipping products in the world that uses Nvidia’s Tegra K1 SoC. Nvidia launched the Tegra K1 with much fanfare in early 2014 but it just never took off in the way that the company had hoped. Despite promising benchmark numbers and arguably superior graphics performance, phone and tablet manufacturers just did not launch a lot of Tegra-based products last year.
Design:
Xiaomi takes a lot of design cues from Apple’s bold and metallic iPad Mini and infuses an all plastic frame to it as an only mark of distinction for the Mi Pad. In the process however it ends up making a tablet that actually looks like an iPhone 5C on steroids.
Putting aside the uncanny resemblance to Apple’s offering for a split second, the Mi Pad looks and feels to be a well-build device for its price.
At 202x135.4 x8.5 mm and 360g, the Mi Pad is on the bulkier side so that single-handed operability is a challenge on the device. This is not very alarming though since being a 7.9-inch tablet you don’t expect to operate it with just the one hand.
The back(which is removable), although, made of glossy plastic is not very prone to smudge/fingerprint. However, it was a little too slippery for our liking.
The display is guarded by a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protective covering and won’t smudge easily, unless you have greasy fingers.
The right edge houses the traditional volume rocker and the power button, both made of brushed metal. They seem pretty firmly placed, are non-flimsy and offer good tactile feedback. The left edge houses a microSD card slot, much to our liking.
The lower end of the display is marked by three capacitive buttons that are backlit and offer good touchscreen response. There is also an LED notification light on board.
Camera:
The camera is pretty good by tablet standards. You won’t want to rely on it to preserve any important memories, but it’s good enough to serve in a pinch. We were also impressed that the battery lasted 13 hours, 11 minutes in our video loop test. This is a pretty good result and it should be enough to keep you entertained at least through a long flight.