It certainly took a while, but Android tablets are back, people, and Xiaomi has one of its most serious contenders to date in the Xiaomi Pad 7.

The newly launched tablet is the company’s latest premium offering in the category. It replaces the Xiaomi Pad 6 that came out in 2023, and as you’d expect, it’s more of the same, but better.

Think of it as Xiaomi refining its tablet formula, not reinventing it. The Xiaomi Pad 7 arrives draped in a fresh unibody aluminum-alloy suit, boasting a display that’s sharper, a Qualcomm chip that’s loads more powerful, and a battery that’s both bigger and quicker to charge. Oh, and it’s running Xiaomi’s latest HyperOS 2 Android 15-based skin, because, well, it’s 2025.

A tall order for tablet supremacy?

Clad in a premium-feeling aluminum shell, the Xiaomi Pad 7 comes in Blue, Green, and Gray — a standard tablet fare. And at a mere 500 grams and 6.2mm thin, it’s genuinely portable; toss it in your bag and go.

Naturally, Xiaomi has also cooked up optional accessories — a keyboard, stylus, and folding cover — all sold separately. We’ll get to those add-ons later. But credit where it’s due: The brand did think about integration. Three pogo pins are tucked away on the Xiaomi Pad 7’s rear panel, alongside a 12-megapixel main camera, for that magnetic keyboard snap-on. And the stylus? It clings magnetically to the side of the tablet, charging wirelessly.

@xiaomiphilippines Upgrade to the NEW #XiaomiPad7Series ♬ original sound – Xiaomi Philippines

Official Xiaomi Pad 7 Series unboxing

While the Pad 6 clearly favored landscape, the Pad 7 is switching things up. This time around, you’re getting a taller 3:2 aspect ratio display. Xiaomi has ditched the widescreen 16:10 of the previous model, and it’s a choice. This makes the new model feel more at home with documents, spreadsheets, and endless browser tabs. For better or worse, productivity wins over pure Netflix binging and gaming sessions.

The 11.2-inch IPS screen is undeniably crisp, pushing a 3.2K resolution that looks incredibly sharp with the right content. The bezels are a uniform 7mm, slim enough without feeling flimsy, and the corners are gently curved. Nestled in that bezel is an 8-megapixel ultrawide front camera. Brightness hits a claimed 800 nits, which should be okay for battling the midday sun outdoors.

HDR and Dolby Vision are onboard for enhanced video as well, but let’s be real, this is still an IPS LCD panel. You’re not getting OLED-level blacks here. The company does offer software tweaks, though, with color profiles and adaptive color modes to try and compensate.

Audio gets a boost from a quad-speaker system, with two speakers per side. Cleverly, they re-orient for stereo sound no matter how you hold it. Dolby Atmos is present, both for native content and upmixing stereo to spatial audio. They get loud enough, especially with Xiaomi’s 200% Volume Boost feature, and sound better than average at lower volume levels, for tablet speakers.

However, the speaker placement is a bit of a head-scratcher in landscape. Hold the Xiaomi Pad 7 naturally from the sides, and your palms are likely muffling two of those four speakers. It’s almost like the brand designed this quad-speaker setup specifically for desk use, propped up with the keyboard or smart case.

One notable omission is the lack of a fingerprint scanner. That means you’re stuck with facial recognition or manual password entry.

Extras you might actually want

Time to talk accessories. As mentioned earlier, Xiaomi offers three first-party accessories to enhance your Xiaomi Pad 7 experience: a smart cover, a magnetic keyboard with a trackpad, and its own Focus Pen stylus. They all work, sure, but whether you need them depends entirely on what you want to accomplish on the device.

Let’s start with the keyboard. Pros: It’s got almost a full key layout, that magnetic snap is slick, and the built-in stand is rock-solid. Arrow keys and function shortcuts are nice touches, too. Con? The trackpad is tiny. That said, expect to be switching back and forth between trackpad swipes and touchscreen taps. Unsurprisingly for a keyboard this thin, key travel is also rather shallow.

Then there’s the Focus Pen. If you’re any kind of digital artist, this is obviously a must-have. We even doodled some sketches in the preinstalled Notes app. Now, Notes isn’t exactly Procreate, but it hints at the Pen’s potential. Fire up a proper Android painting app, and you’ll unlock a whole arsenal of brushes and creative possibilities.

The pen is pressure-sensitive, naturally. Line weight and brushstrokes respond to how hard you press. Xiaomi even threw in a physical Spotlight button that allows the pen to pull double duty as a virtual laser pointer, a highlighter, and even a camera shutter remote all in one. The Writing button, meanwhile, switches brush types on the fly. Specs-wise, we’re looking at 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity and a claimed 3ms latency.

Handling the heavy lifting

The Xiaomi Pad 7 boots into HyperOS 2, the company’s own Android 15 spin, out of the box. Xiaomi’s obviously pushing multitasking hard here, with a clear focus on split-screen views and keeping things visually clean and, dare we say, minimal.

Digging into the software, the taskbar sits at the screen’s bottom edge. Here, you’ll find a launchpad for your go-to apps, plus a handy row of recent ones. Opening apps in a split-screen view feels genuinely slick. Snapping two apps side by side takes barely a swipe and a tap. However, there’s a software quirk: You can’t run two instances of the same app, like you can on some other Android tablets. That means you can’t have two Chrome browser tabs running simultaneously. But if you’re cool with browser variety, Chrome and Brave can indeed play nice together in split-screen mode, should you have a burning need for two browsers at once.

Beyond side-by-side, you also get floating windows. These can float solo, or pile on top of your split-screen setup. You can have up to four apps juggling for screen time — two split, two floating. Get the combo right, and it kinda, sorta feels like you’re wrangling a Windows laptop, albeit in tablet form.

For the full-on “PC mode” vibes, Xiaomi baked in a Workstation mode. Flip a switch in the dropdown menu, and everything opens in floating windows. Desktop OS-style window stacking, right on your tablet. Pair the Pad 7 with Xiaomi’s keyboard and a Bluetooth mouse, and suddenly, things get productive. We even hammered out a chunk of this very review on our unit, Lakers podcasts blasting in the background. There’s no SIM card slot, though, so you’ll have to rely on a nearby Wi-Fi or hotspot if you need to get some serious work done.

Now, let’s peek under the hood. Inside, the Xiaomi Pad 7 is fueled by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 chip, backed by up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Specs aside, this translates to impressive real-world performance. Even juggling four apps at once, the Xiaomi Pad 7 doesn’t break a sweat. The company also packed in an Adreno 732 GPU, which offers grunt to spare. Demanding apps and Switch emulators are handled without issue.

We thoroughly evaluated the tablet’s gaming capabilities, pushing them to their limits. Firing up Citron, the Xiaomi Pad 7 tackled demanding games like Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate without a hiccup. Frame rates even touched 60fps at times, proving that the Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 isn’t just a mid-range chip; it punches above its weight, delivering performance that can hang with older flagship silicon like the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1. In other words, this tablet can game.

Powering the Xiaomi Pad 7 is a dual-cell 8,850mAh battery. That’s a decent battery capacity, and Xiaomi has bumped up the charging speed to 45 watts, a step up from the Pad 6. Even better, the included power brick matches the peak charging speed supported by the device. Plugged in, that brick gets the Xiaomi Pad 7 from zero to full in around 100 minutes. Considering the battery size, that’s a respectable charging time.

Now, let’s move on to battery endurance. Despite the efficient Snapdragon chip and that beefy battery, the Xiaomi Pad 7 clocked in at under 10 hours in our PCMark battery rundown test. Keep in mind, this is without a SIM card — our unit is Wi-Fi only. However, don’t write off the battery just yet.

Real-world use tells a slightly different story. We put our review unit through the wringer. Fifty minutes of Netflix streaming nibbled just 10% off the battery. Meanwhile, thirty minutes of Super Smash Bros. emulation resulted in a 12% drain. Those are solid numbers, suggesting the Xiaomi Pad 7 can actually go the distance on a single charge, despite what the synthetic benchmarks might suggest. In fact, in our active test, which involved heavy minutes of video streaming, gaming, benchmarks, and more, our unit lasted 13 hours and 29 minutes with 9% left in the tank.

Final thoughts

So where does the Xiaomi Pad 7 land in the crowded tablet arena? It’s undeniably a polished piece of tech, refining Xiaomi’s tablet formula with a sharper screen, beefier internals, and a productivity-focused aspect ratio. The optional accessories, while adding to the overall cost, do enhance the device’s versatility, nudging it closer to that coveted laptop-replacement territory.

In the Philippines, the Xiaomi Pad 7 starts at P19,999 ($350) for the base 8GB/128GB version. If you need more storage, the 256GB version (with 8GB RAM still) bumps up the price to P22,499 ($390).

Ultimately, the new offering carves out a solid niche as a capable and portable Android tablet, particularly for those prioritizing productivity and a premium build without really breaking the bank. It’s a better deal than its predecessor, that’s for sure.

Focus your flow with the all-new #XiaomiPad7Series! ✨ Get yours starting March 7 at any Xiaomi Authorized Stores nationwide and enjoy a FREE Focus Pen or Keyboard with your purchase. Freebies are valid for purchases until March 16 only, until supplies last. Get yours now! pic.twitter.com/HkGWt6J929

— Xiaomi Philippines (@Xiaomi_PH) March 7, 2025

Xiaomi Pad 7 (and Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro) local pricing details

Xiaomi Pad 7 specs

• 11-inch 3.2K IPS LCD, 144Hz refresh rate, HDR10, Dolby Vision support, 800 nits peak brightness
• 4nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 CPU
• 8GB/12GB LPDDR5X RAM
• 128GB/256GB UFS 3.1/4.0 storage
• 13-megapixel rear camera
• 8-megapixel front camera
• Quad speakers, Dolby Atmos support
• 8,850mAh battery
• 45-watt wired charging
• Xiaomi HyperOS 2.0 based on Android 15
• Color options: Grey, Blue, Green

---