Xiaomi Redmi Pad SE

 Xiaomi Redmi Pad SE Review

A cheap, well-built tablet that's only really suited to simple tasks and media playback. The Xiaomi Redmi Pad SE offers a tidy full-sized tablet at affordable price tag, but the compromises to performance mean that its use is limited beyond media streaming and light web browsing.

Advantages

Smooth 90Hz refresh rate

Two years of OS upgrades

Premium aluminium build

Disadvantages

Snapdragon 680 isn’t the best

Very slow 10W charging

Fairly low resolution for an 11-inch display

Key Features

 Unusually smooth display. Not many tablets boast a screen refresh rate above 60Hz, but the Redmi Pad SE hits 90Hz. Having a lot of expansion potential and you can expand the Pad SE’s storage by up to 1TB using a microSD card. With a larger-than-average 8000mAh battery, the Redmi Pad SE can last days on a single charge.

Introduction

It is the best you could hope for from a tablet. This is a full-sized, entertainment-focused Android tablet experience with a premium design. With some eye-catching media-friendly features, it could be all the tablet that most people need. It's retail price that’s even less expensive than the Oppo Pad Air and the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8, has Xiaomi’s budget brand cut too deep in pursuit of cheap thrills?

Design

All-metal design

7.36 mm thin

Weighs 478g

The Xiaomi Redmi Pad SE is a nicely built full-sized tablet that might have raising your eyebrows in a surprise, when you see the price tag, at least if you weren’t aware of the Oppo Pad Air or the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 before it. It’s actually now quite normal to have a tablet at same price with a slim all-aluminium frame, and the Redmi Pad SE looks quite a lot like those two competitors. It doesn’t really have any distinctive design flourish to mark it apart, other than the subtle Redmi branding on the rear, but it certainly looks smart.

Image Credit

It comes in three colours, two of which (Lavender Purple and Mint Green) are quite interesting for a cheap tablet. Typically, I was sent the Graphite Gray model, which is much more professional looking. The front of the tablet looks even more generic, of course, with nothing but a uniform bezel running around an 11-inch display. Those bezels are relatively slim, with the Redmi Pad SE boasting an 84.4% screen-to-body ratio, which pips the Oppo by a single percentage point.

However, at 7.36 mm thick and weighing 478g, it’s not quite as slim and light as the Oppo Pad Air, which weighs in at 6.9 mm and 440g respectively. Even so, Redmi’s tablet is pleasant to hold – or rather, prop on your lap, as is more often the case with these larger tablets.

Screen

11-inch IPS LCD

1920 x 1200 resolution

90Hz refresh rate

The Xiaomi Redmi Pad SE packs an 11-inch IPS LCD, and it’s a solid performer. With a resolution of 1920 x 1200, it’s not as pixel-dense as the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8’s smaller screen, and even less so not the Oppo Pad Air’s 10.36-inch 2000 x 1200 panel. It’s plenty sharp enough for Full HD video streaming and web browsing though. With a top brightness of 400 nits, it gets about as bright as its similarly priced rivals. This is fine for indoor viewing, but you wouldn’t want to take it out in the garden on a sunny day. Don’t expect it to shine with HDR content, either.