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
On the exterior the Mi Pad 3 looks virtually unchanged from the Mi Pad 2, the same unibody metal chassis we find on the 2 is present on the 3. That’s not a bad thing though, as the metal chassis definitely felt good in the hand. It clocks in at 328g, a few grams heavier than the Mi Pad 2 but insignificantly so. The 4:3 aspect ratio on the Mi Pad 3 does render the tablet quite a bit wider, enough to make it challenging to grip it with one hand. There are three capacitive buttons below the screen, on the right are the power and volume buttons, and on the bottom you find the USB-C port. There are dual speakers on the back.
Downsides? I’ll give you three. First, this tablet doesn’t stand out in terms of looks and feel. There are a million other tablets with the same great metal build quality and as such, metal build is no longer a differentiator but is now integral to a “high end tablet”. Second, I was really hoping for reduced bezels around the screen, but since the same chassis was used, no luck there. And lastly, the same metal chassis also means the repeated omission of a MicroSD card slot, a big mistake in my opinion.
Premium, light, but no SD slot
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Display
The display seems unchanged from the original Mi Pad 2 as well. we have the same 2048×1536 resolution on a 7.9” screen and the screen looks very good. Everything is crisp and sharp, web browsing, reading news and reading emails is a great experience. The screen has nice colour saturation, great viewing angles and adequate brightness (up to 400nits). The screen is a little yellow out of the box but you can adjust colour temperature and saturation from inside MIUI itself until you are satisfied with it. This screen is definitely gorgeous, but there are better displays out there now. There is also Gorilla Glass so you don’t have to worry about scratching the screen either.
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.
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.
Gizchina News of the week
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Software
We have MIUI8 installed over top of Android 7.0 Nougat which is definitely welcome. General use is very fluid and animations are buttery smooth. That being said, MIUI animations are more ponderous compared to stock Android (meaning there are more frames in each animation) which would result in some people thinking that this tablet is slower than a Nexus when in reality it’s just as fast, the animations just take longer to complete. We have the usual plethora of functions included in MIUI8 that have been covered to death in previous Xiaomi reviews and such, but the long and short of it is, you get a ton of functions.
Moving on to what I think we are all the most interested in, the performance of this Hexacore MTK chipset. Its going to be a little unfair compared to the Android version of the Mi Pad 2 since the version I had contained only 2GB of RAM, but I’ll try to control for that as much as possible. To summarize, the MTK8176 is faster than the Mi Pad 2, but only in the CPU portion. Opening and closing apps is very fast, as fast as flagship Mediatek phones, but realistically still slightly but noticeably slower than top end Snapdragon flagships. Couple the MTK8176 with 4GB of RAM and you have a rather potent multitasking machine with the Mi Pad 3 as well, the tablet crushes app switching without breaking a sweat.
I did notice a couple of apps here and there don’t seem to play well with the tablet, a couple of games, a couple of apps, this is something Xiaomi will have to fix.
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
I don’t usually talk about cameras in tablets as they are atrocious for the most part and you have a better camera in your pocket. However, the 13MP rear camera can actually take some decent photos, besting some lower end phones as well which is quite a feat. There is sufficient detail and colour saturation is quite good. It doesn’t do well in low light but that’s to be expected.
That being said, this is horrible news for wedding photographers everywhere. Intrusive amateur photographers are bad enough, and now you have to non tech savvy holding up tablets taking photos. That being said, while I hate it when people use tablets to take photos at weddings, it would bring a tear to my eye to see a sea of Mi Pad 3s being used at a wedding.
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
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Video Review
Xiaomi Mi Pad 3 Gallery
was thinking of buying this but the use of Mediatek + the release of the new iPad has turned me away.
Don’t blame you, $329 for an iPad is pretty hard to pass up
software issues with MIUI?! you must be joking!!@$
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 a fair grade for mi pad 3. it does not deserves higher.
Well if it didn’t have software issues it would definitely be higher
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.
Don’t blame you, $329 for an iPad is pretty hard to pass up
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 $329 iPad will gobble up everyone’s sales, not just Xiaomi, but I never thought I would see the day when Apple released a budget version of an expensive product
What is a better option to buy? I was close to but the mipad 2 but only 2gb ram seams a bite small
You could get the 4GB versoin of the Mipad 2. I think that is Windows only though
Can you provide a link, i only find 2gb versions (both for Android and win)
Funnily enough I can’t find it either
buy a proper tablet like the Nvidia K1, this mipad will be buggy garbage like all mipads and never get proper OS version updates.
software issues with MIUI?! you must be joking!!@$
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 a fair grade for mi pad 3. it does not deserves higher.
Well if it didn’t have software issues it would definitely be higher
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
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
Can you provide a link, i only find 2gb versions (both for Android and win)
Funnily enough I can’t find it either
buy a proper tablet like the Nvidia K1, this mipad will be buggy garbage like all mipads and never get proper OS version updates.
lol another xiaomi beta product. Literally everything they release is has beta software, how people continue to buy I have no idea, its same stroy every time.
It’s because every Xiaomi customer knows the software will only get better.
mums original mipad never got fixed, multiple issues to this day and never saw a full android version update, still stuck on 4.4. My mi4i one of the worst phones i’ve ever owned, never got fixed, so many issues i lost count including major ones like overheating, had to sell at an extremely discounted rate cos no one wanted it. Mi note, still small bugs. MIUI is basically always in beta, don’t care how cheap their hardware is, their software is consistently subpar from my expereince which is why I never buy their stuff anymore. Even small stuff. Try pinch to zoom in the gallery of an iphone or samsung phone then compare that to the horrendous input lag on any xiaomi device.
the Mi4i was a terrible all around phone for Xiaomi, it is the exception, not the rule. With MIUI, Android version isn’t nearly as important as it would be on a phone running stock Android or a very lightly modified UI. Xiaomi changes so much of the Android code that it’s more important to have the latest version of MIUI. I have multiple older Xiaomi phones like the Mi2s, Mi3 and Mi4 which are continuing to get MIUI updates. The Mi Pad 1 is no different, it currently is running MIUI 8. How many other tablets from 2014 are still receiving updates?
Lollipop was release in 2014, Marshmallow in 2015, loads of devices released in 2014 got both these updates. The device is now crippled cos certain apps and features are not supported in 4.4 have encountered this issue a few times. It is running miui 7 not 8 and never gets updates anymore. MIUI for tablets is total garbage this is well known. Would take a near stock OS with proper support and full OS updates and bug fixes over MIUI’s weekly ‘updates’ that mostly do nothing and sometimes add more bugs.
MiUI 8 is available for Mipad 1, it’s on the miui forums.
A stock OS with proper support. The only one that has that is Google. And even then it’s not always smooth sailing. A lot of Nexus owners had issues running the newer Android on their devices. Lollipop was a disaster on Nexus 7, 4 and 5. Other companies that use stock you will get a new Android version and never hear from them again. I would rather have a working UI that is constantly improving.
In the official downloads section im only seeing V7. MIUI was a tiny improvement over 7, both were bad though anyway. My nexus devices always worked great, nexus 5 and 7. My oneplus devices both work great and are infinitely smoother than any miui device i’ve ever owned. My Oneplus one is amazing on lineage OS too plus none of the complimentary scroll and input lag you get with all miui versions. Especially noticeable when running more heavy apps.
You can use Lineage with Xiaomi devices too. OnePlus themselves haven’t been great at updating there software.
Oneplus one and oneplus x wasnt really their fault cos cyanogen folded and qualcomm abandoned support for the snapdragon 801 soon after. The Oneplus 2 has seen a a fair few updates and will get nougat which is currently in testing, it was launched in 2015. OP3/3T both on 7.1.1 and mine working flawless. Can’t find a single bug. Pretty decent update record if you ask me esp considering how young the company is and how limited their reosurces are in comparison to players like xiaomi. Shame MIUI is so bad, their hardware is good, if they ran something close to stock and focussed on performance and less frequent but proper OS updates, they would be much more appealing. As it is they cant properly update the stupid amount of devices they have released and almost everything they make is medicore cos they are arent focused enough to make a class leading device in any category.
Most people who buy Xiaomi devices, and there are 70+ million of them each year, by them for MIUI. You may not like it but millions of people do.
Yeah count me in as one of those people who have grown to dislike MIUI.
However, I just don’t think it is likely that there will be custom ROMs for this tablet at all since it uses an MTK processor (and not even a widely used one at that). I don’t think there are any custom roms for the Redmi Note 4 which used the Helio X20, and that is a popular mediatek processor. But if there are, I’m switching immediately.
EDIT: And you have a mi mix? either you’re a rich person or you’re now super poor 😀
Haha I don’t have it anymore, It was on loan to me for a month. I do a lot of work in China and India in the phone industry. I get free phones from suppliers who work with Xiaomi, Micromax, Lenovo, Gionee and Coolpad. Those are the main 4 that I have access too. Sometimes they just give me phones for free, other times I can “borrow” them for a set period of time. The Mix is a good concept phone but I would never pay that much to actually own one. I call it a party trick phone, something I pull out to wow people.
My actual daily phones are currently the Honor 8 (work) and Redmi Note 4 (personal).
Wow what a different opinion on the Mi Mix that I respect. The reason why I hold a different opinion on the Mix and other upcoming bezelless devices is because I have always wanted a 5″ device in the footprint of a 5.5″ device (not just in width but length), and the only way to achieve that is by eliminating bezels.
I do love having a bigger phone in a smaller footprint don’t get me wrong. I love larger devices in general for the extra screen real estate. My problems with the Mix was more about the placement of the front camera and sensors and the build quality and rear camera. It felt like I was using a concept phone and not a finished product.
lol another xiaomi beta product. Literally everything they release is has beta software, how people continue to buy I have no idea, its same stroy every time.
It’s because every Xiaomi customer knows if there are software problems it will be fixed. The Mi Mix I used last month had no issues with the software.
mums original mipad never got fixed, multiple issues to this day and never saw a full android version update, still stuck on 4.4. My mi4i one of the worst phones i’ve ever owned, never got fixed, so many issues i lost count including major ones like overheating, had to sell at an extremely discounted rate cos no one wanted it. Mi note, still small bugs. MIUI is basically always in beta, don’t care how cheap their hardware is, their software is consistently subpar from my expereince which is why I never buy their stuff anymore. Even small stuff. Try pinch to zoom in the gallery of an iphone or samsung phone then compare that to the horrendous input lag on any xiaomi device.
the Mi4i was a terrible all around phone for Xiaomi, it is the exception, not the rule. With MIUI, Android version isn’t nearly as important as it would be on a phone running stock Android or a very lightly modified UI. Xiaomi changes so much of the Android code that it’s more important to have the latest version of MIUI. I have multiple older Xiaomi phones like the Mi2s, Mi3 and Mi4 which are continuing to get MIUI updates. The Mi Pad 1 is no different, it currently is running MIUI 8. How many other tablets from 2014 are still receiving updates?
Lollipop was release in 2014, Marshmallow in 2015, loads of devices released in 2014 got both these updates. The device is now crippled cos certain apps and features are not supported in 4.4 have encountered this issue a few times. It is running miui 7 not 8 and never gets updates anymore. MIUI for tablets is total garbage this is well known. Would take a near stock OS with proper support and full OS updates and bug fixes over MIUI’s weekly ‘updates’ that mostly do nothing and sometimes add more bugs any day of the week.
MiUI 8 is available for Mipad 1, it’s on the miui forums.
A stock OS with proper support. The only one that has that is Google. And even then it’s not always smooth sailing. A lot of Nexus owners had issues running the newer Android on their devices. Lollipop was a disaster on Nexus 7, 4 and 5. Other companies that use stock you will get a new Android version and never hear from them again. I would rather have a working UI that is constantly improving.
In the official downloads section im only seeing V7. MIUI was a tiny improvement over 7, both were bad though anyway. My nexus devices always worked great, nexus 5 and 7. My oneplus devices both work great and are infinitely smoother than any miui device i’ve ever owned. My Oneplus one is amazing on lineage OS too plus none of the complimentary scroll and input lag you get with all miui versions. Especially noticeable when running more heavy apps. Not sure why id want xiaomis half cooked buggy updates when i can get all updates and new features in a proper OS update like they were intended.
You can use Lineage with Xiaomi devices too. OnePlus themselves haven’t been great at updating there software.
Oneplus one and oneplus x wasnt really their fault cos cyanogen folded and qualcomm abandoned support for the snapdragon 801 soon after. The Oneplus 2 has seen a a fair few updates and will get nougat which is currently in testing, it was launched in 2015. OP3/3T both on 7.1.1 and mine working flawless. Can’t find a single bug. Pretty decent update record if you ask me esp considering how young the company is and how limited their reosurces are in comparison to players like xiaomi. Shame MIUI is so bad, their hardware is good, if they ran something close to stock and focussed on performance and less frequent but proper OS updates, they would be much more appealing. As it is they cant properly update the stupid amount of devices they have released and almost everything they make is medicore cos they are arent focused enough to make a class leading device in any category.
Most people who buy Xiaomi devices, and there are 70+ million of them each year, by them for MIUI. You may not like it but millions of people do.
Yeah count me in as one of those people who have grown to dislike MIUI.
However, I just don’t think it is likely that there will be custom ROMs for this tablet at all since it uses an MTK processor (and not even a widely used one at that). I don’t think there are any custom roms for the Redmi Note 4 which used the Helio X20, and that is a popular mediatek processor. But if there are, I’m switching immediately.
EDIT: And you have a mi mix? either you’re a rich person or you’re now super poor 😀
Haha I don’t have it anymore, It was on loan to me for a month. I do a lot of work in China and India in the phone industry. I get free phones from suppliers who work with Xiaomi, Micromax, Lenovo, Gionee and Coolpad. Those are the main 4 that I have access too. Sometimes they just give me phones for free, other times I can “borrow” them for a set period of time. The Mix is a good concept phone but I would never pay that much to actually own one. I call it a party trick phone, something I pull out to wow people.
My actual daily phones are currently the Honor 8 (work) and Redmi Note 4 (personal).
Wow what a different opinion on the Mi Mix that I respect. The reason why I hold a different opinion on the Mix and other upcoming bezelless devices is because I have always wanted a 5″ device in the footprint of a 5.5″ device (not just in width but length), and the only way to achieve that is by eliminating bezels.
I do love having a bigger phone in a smaller footprint don’t get me wrong. I love larger devices in general for the extra screen real estate. My problems with the Mix was more about the placement of the front camera and sensors and the build quality and rear camera. It felt like I was using a concept phone and not a finished product.
One of the things I hated most about the Mi Pad 2 was the Intel chip. It was terrible in just about every regard. If I wanted a Windows device, I would get a Windows device. I buy Xiaomi products for MIUI.
One of the things I hated most about the Mi Pad 2 was the Intel chip. It was terrible in just about every regard. If I wanted a Windows device, I would get a Windows device. I buy Xiaomi products for MIUI.
I’m looking for an Android tablet. Has there been any updates from xiaomi that addresses the software issues?
I’m looking for an Android tablet. Has there been any updates from xiaomi that addresses the software issues?