The tablet market is in decline (16% year over year). What was once a crowded, cut-throat race has turned into a few holdouts still releasing classic tablets, with Apple dominating a fifth of that pie. Looks like Xiaomi hasn’t given up yet. Amidst the strong headwinds from larger phones and convertible tablets, the Mi Pad 3 looks to stand out from the competition.
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Review
Turns out this shrinking tablet market could be the lucky break Xiaomi is looking for. With new conventional tablets being released at a snail’s pace, good tablets are harder and harder to find. The Mi Pad 2 was a very good tablet and still is, and for just $160 its quite a steal. The Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 is more of a refresh than an upgrade, being practically identical from the outside with a few changes on the inside.
There is now 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, but the switch from the Intel Atom processor to the 6 core MediaTek has our eyebrows knit in confusion (or anger, depending on how much you wanted a Windows Mi Pad 3). However, the biggest change here is the starting price.
Where the Mi Pad 2 started at $160 for the 16GB version, the Mi Pad 3 starts at 64GB and consequently a much higher $220. Because of that higher price point, this tablet is going to have to fight a lot harder to prove itself, and let’s see if it does.
Expensive
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Specifications
Processor | MediaTek MTK8176 Hexa Core |
Display | 7.9” 2048×1536 px IPS LCD |
RAM | 4GB |
Storage | 64GB eMMC |
Operating System | Android 6.0 with MIUI8 |
Cameras | 5MP, 2MP front |
Battery | 6,600mAh |
Physical Dimensions | 328g, 200.4 x 132.6 x 6.9 mm |
Big thanks to Gearbest for providing this review unit.
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Hardware
Premium, light, but no SD slot
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Display
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Audio
The Mi Pad 3 has two rear firing speakers and they pump out some incredibly loud sound. The maximum volume is loud enough to be heard pretty much anywhere a normal person would go and there is no distortion at max volume either. Quality is quite decent, mids and highs are quite full and audio clarity is not bad at all. There is some bass present as well but its still nowhere near the best tablet or phone speakers. Still though, its more than adequate for listening to music or watching some TV. That being said, the speaker placement means that audio comes out one side of the tablet when in landscape mode which results in no speaker separation.
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Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Battery
The Mi Pad 2 was able to eke out some good battery life from its 6190mAh battery and I’m expecting slightly better from the Mi Pad 3 with its 6600mAh battery. Battery life is as I expected, slightly more than the Mi Pad 2.
I was able to obtain around 8-9 hours of screen on time over a day, no games, but web browsing, movies, and some Youtube. That’s some good battery life right there, creeping closer to the iPad Mini, but still falling slightly short of the iPad’s 10 hour figure. However, standby battery consumption is not as low as it could be and I suspect this is due to bad software optimization. I was losing about 1% battery every 1.5-2 hours which means around 9% battery gone every night. I really hope this can be improved on in future software updates but as of now, fingers crossed.
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Software
The MTK8176 handles gaming less well. the PowerVR GX6250 graphics chip is two years old and was released as a midrange graphics chip, not even a high end one. I saw occasional stutter running the most graphically intensive games like Asphalt, NOVA, and Mortal Kombat as well, part of that is due to the incredibly high resolution, but you can’t lower resolution either so that’s not an option. Lowering graphical fidelity in games that support it makes intensive games run much better, and playing older or simpler games prove no issue to this chipset at all.
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Connectivity
There’s not much to talk about regarding connectivity, I got some good WiFi speeds.
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Camera
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Camera Gallery
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Verdict
This is a great tablet plagued by software issues. the standby battery drain and app crash issues warrant some hesitation if you had your finger on the trigger, and I would say put the safety back on and wait until the software is fixed before pulling the trigger. However, I do see a huge problem coming from Apple’s direction. With the release of the new $329 iPad, I really don’t know how many people would want to spend close to the same amount for a Xiaomi device.
A great tablet plagued by software issues
was thinking of buying this but the use of Mediatek + the release of the new iPad has turned me away.
software issues with MIUI?! you must be joking!!@$
I’ve still got my mipad1, and its a love/hate relationship. The hate is mostly due to the poor software. If Xiaomi would ever get on board with releasing kernel sources from the beginning, then their devices would really last much longer. As of now, I’m toying with putting lineageos 13 or 14 on it to see if it works any better. Sadness.
Na this is worse than usual, definitely below par for the course in terms of MIUI stability
8/10 is for mi pad 3 hardware, for software it has problem then the grade for software is 0/10 because user frustration is not tolerable at all.
0/10 implies that the tablet doesn’t work at all, e.g. it doesn’t turn on. But here the tablet works, mostly, that’s why I gave it a 5-6/10
was thinking of buying this but the use of Mediatek + the release of the new iPad has turned me away.
I don’t see how this can be a 8/10 if there is almost zero progression looking back to the MiPad 2. For me having the same bezels and going back to a Mediatek CPU is a downgrade for a 2017 Tablet and should be graded like one. I would give this 2017 Tablet a 5/10 with this review for not actually improving on a 2015 Tablet other than a little RAM upgrade.
Lack of improvement does not warrant a lower score. There was no change in many aspects, so the scores for those aspects stayed consistently high. As you can see, I scored software/performance very low due to bugs, which is fair.
Honestly though. The mediatek SoC is quite an upgrade to Intel Atom which is/was a pretty terrible chip.
I think Xiaomi had little choice as both Microsoft and Google have given up on tablets. So the fault is less at Xiaomi’s door and more to those two companies ignoring an 180 million (per year) market.
Oh well, all the more for Apple to eat up.
The mediatek chip is better than that Cherry Trail atom, but not in all aspects. The CPU portion of hte MTK is much faster, power consumption is lower, but the GPU is a lot slower as well. The GPU portion of the antutu score is very low, requiring the CPU portion to pick up the slack and more to provide an Antutu score higher than the Cherry Trail.
But yes, the $329 iPad will gobble up everyone’s sales, not just Xiaomi, but I never thought I would see the day when Apple released a budget version of an expensive product
What is a better option to buy? I was close to but the mipad 2 but only 2gb ram seams a bite small
You could get the 4GB versoin of the Mipad 2. I think that is Windows only though
buy a proper tablet like the Nvidia K1, this mipad will be buggy garbage like all mipads and never get proper OS version updates.