Take for instance the switch from a smudge-magnet plastic rear panel to one made of metal, which makes the design more sturdy and surprisingly lighter in the process. The result is a tablet that’s easy to hold and one that fits in the most cramped of spaces, whether it’s a backpack or on the smallest of workspaces.
Gone is the selfie camera in smartphone-style portrait orientation, instead it’s now on the right bezel which makes a lot more sense if you’ve spent INR 4,999 on the highly recommended keyboard case and intend to take a lot of video calls in landscape orientation. Bear in mind, there’s no fingerprint scanner or headphone jack, nor is there a SIM card slot for on-the-go connectivity but you do get a faster USB-C port that supports 4 K/60 fps output on a connected monitor/TV.
The 11-inch, 2.8K-resolution IPS LCD screen on the Pad 6 is a visual treat, especially when you’re streaming Dolby Vision HDR content, and the room-filling four-speaker setup really boosts the experience. This isn’t an AMOLED display, but it gets plenty fluid at a maximum refresh rate of 144 Hz.
You aren’t left wanting for responsiveness or performance, either while gaming or using it for productivity apps, with the Snapdragon 870 chipset and 6 GB/8 GB of LPDDR5 memory. Battery life is commendable, at around two days of heavy use. Xiaomi does well to tweak its MIUI 14 interface on top of Android 13 to better suit the tablet form factor, with side-by-side multitasking and floating apps, plus a new feature, currently in beta, which allows you to mirror the display of a connected Xiaomi phone onto the tablet. The second-generation stylus (INR 5,999) is handy for sketching apps and scribbling down notes.
Xiaomi has impressively priced the Pad 6 at INR 26,999 for the base 6 GB/128 GB variant and INR 28,999 for the 8 GB/256 GB model, which undercuts the OnePlus Pad significantly and emerges as an easy recommendation for mid-range Android tablets.
Rating: 9/10
Price: Rs. 26,999 onwards