If there’s one thing that Xiaomi’s Redmi brand is known for, it’s giving users decent smartphone hardware and performance at relatively affordable prices. Over the years though Redmi has gone beyond smartphones, and the brand now offers a wide range of different products including tablets, wearables, audio gear, and more.
With that in mind the Redmi Pad SE comes with a rather decent specs sheet alongside a wallet-friendly price, and it’s set to take on other budget Android tablets such as Samsung’s A-series devices, as well as entries from Nokia and Amazon’s Fire Tablet range. At a starting price of around €199 though, is it worth your hard-earned cash? Let’s take a look at some of its highlights.
Display Hardware
Arguably, one of the first things you should look at when buying tablets is the display quality. After all, they’re devices meant for content consumption, and you sure wouldn’t want to be stuck viewing your favourite shows and movies on a sub-par screen.
Fortunately, the Redmi Pad SE’s screen does enough to look good, at least for a lot of users who are after a tablet for moderate or casual usage. The tablet packs a rather large 11-inch LCD display, with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels. It also comes with a decent 90Hz refresh rate, a much-welcome feature given the abundance of budget tablets with lower 60Hz displays out on the market. There’s a peak brightness of 400 nits, which admittedly isn’t too impressive, although we go back to the tablet’s asking price.
Xiaomi adds that the tablet comes with an upgraded Reading Mode 3.0 with dedicated Classic and Paper modes, which it says is designed to give users a bit of comfort and lessened eyestrain when browsing content on the device.
Chipset and Performance
In terms of processing power, Xiaomi fortunately has decided to equip the tablet with a Qualcomm SoC in the form of the Snapdragon 680. While it isn’t a flagship chipset by any means, Qualcomm’s 600-series chips are some of the best you can get on affordable devices out there, thanks to a balance of reasonable performance as well as battery efficiency.
The tablet also come with different RAM options, although we should note that availability might vary depending on market regions. There’s a base model which comes with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage, which thankfully supports micro SD cards for added expansion. There’s also a choice of 6GB and 8GB of RAM, which come priced at €229 and €249, respectively. Storage remains at 128GB for all three RAM variants, although we would’ve loved to see more storage capacity options if given the chance.
Cameras and Battery
Perhaps one department where the Redmi Pad SE falls short is with camera hardware. While tablets aren’t exactly designed to be used primarily for mobile photography, they usually pack camera hardware nonetheless, especially for users intending to use the device for video calls and such. The Redmi Pad SE comes with an 8MP rear camera, with support for video recording of up to 1080p resolution at 30fps, as well as a 5MP front camera with video recording for 1080p video at 30fps – it’s not exactly a groundbreaking setup, but again we have to look at the price tag on this thing.
The tablet manages to shine when it comes to battery capacity however, as it comes with a large 8,000 mAh battery. Given the power efficient chipset, we’d imagine that the Redmi Pad SE can last for a day and even more, although this will of course depend on your usage patterns, and the kinds of apps that you’re running on your device.
Given the affordable price tag, the Redmi Pad SE is a tempting offer, and features such as the large display and battery are undoubtedly among its best features. Of course the somewhat limited camera hardware as well as the lack of more storage variants might be a downer for some, but overall it does check a lot of boxes in terms of essentials. Will you be getting it though? Let us know in the comments below!
