In terms of its overall size and dimensions, the Mi Pad has a lot in common with Apple’s iPad mini. There is no mistaking one for the other though, as the Mi Pad is all glossy plastic. Xiaomi says it has used magnesium alloy in the construction of the Mi Pad, but you wouldn’t know by looking at it. The shell isn’t removable and so the battery is sealed in. There’s a microSD card tray on the left side and the power and volume buttons are on the right. The 3.5mm headset socket is on top and the Micro-USB port is on the bottom. Despite Xiaomi’s promotional materials prominently showing the Mi Pad in a variety of colours ( the iPhone 5c vibes we got were no doubt coincidental) , it will only be available in white when it goes on sale in India. Maybe the other options will be available later. While the front face is black, the white rear shell wraps around and an outline is visible when looking at the Mi Pad head-on. The rear is glossy and extremely slick, unlike the Redmi 2’s matte texture, and we did feel the device slip from our hands more than once.
The 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.
Once again, Xiaomi has delivered a product that isn’t perfect, but offers absolutely terrific value for money. In doing so, the company has also once again displaced every competitor around it. One of the biggest problems with this tablet is that no 3G/LTE version is available, which for many people will be a dealbreaker. Even for a few thousand rupees more, a variant with cellular data would be very welcome in our market.