I wanted to gift my wife a tablet for her to read her ebooks(pdf format), surgery books(pdf), and view videos(youtube, movies) and the usual browsing(social networking sites, ecommerce sites) etc. I scanned the market for quite a long time and had brought it down to either an Apple iPad Air / iPad mini as there were no reasonable choices in the Android market. My budget was within 20k, but for iPad Air, I was willing to go up a few thousands. That was when few of my tech savvy and gizmo guru friends suggested strongly the Xiaomi MI Pad. I was quite impressed with the feedback and the product that I booked one online(luckily during an offer through their app - The cost was INR 10999 only)
After the recieving the product I must say this:
PROs:
Looks fantastic and the feels quite light
Very handy to handle and at the same time the feel is not very cheap or plasticky, but has a premium feel to it
Startup is simple with very vibrant colors and an amazing display - maybe a notch or two better than the iPad Mini, not an expert though, but I felt it
The touch screen and UI is also very simple and nothing is complicated
Sound quality is good for personal viewing . Connecting to an external speaker also showed that the sound was great!
Videos were great - u can download a good player like MX Player and video viewing is a treat!
Battery is a literal monster! It stays charged for almost 2-3 or 4 days
WiFi receptivity is very good and strong
Watch out for these:
The memory card slot is tricky to find, but once you do, its easy to operate. Of course, you wont be opening and closing it frequently. Check out the instruction pamphlet and many videos on Youtube to find out how to open the memory card slot. Initially it is quite difficult to find.more chances that you could not find it. But look on the right hand side and look for a small tiny hole.
Though file transfer from your PC is simple.i found that when trying to transfer Matroska video files, the transfer window closes. It accepts other video files. The work around for this is to transfer video files through the MI PC Suite which is available for free download. MAKE SURE YOU DOWNLOAD the ENGLISH version. A simple google search should help you on this.
We later ordered a back cover and a nice pouch on the same ecommerce site(based on wife’s preference) . So far, my wife is extremely excited and very very happy with the Tab on all aspects. So I would definitely recommend it for those on a budget and/or Android lovers!:)