BEST TABLETS

The OnePlus Pad is the company’s first attempt at making its own tablet, and with that in mind it surprisingly gets a lot of things right. The tablet has a unibody metal design which is a bit heavy but is quite sturdy and feels very premium. The quality of the optional accessories is also top-notch.

Its raw performance, whether used for gaming or regular software usage, is quite good. UI interactions feel fluid and the optional keyboard and trackpad are well optimised to make the hardware experience even better.

Camera performance as expected isn’t the best but is better suited for snapping documents than capturing video. The selfie camera comes with a Limelight feature which keeps the user centred at all times during video calls.

Battery life is impressive as the tablet easily lasts two days on a single charge. It can also be used for work provided it’s limited to light work. Equally good is the charging speed which is pretty much unmatched in and above its segment.

The Redmi Pad is Xiaomi India’s new budget Android tablet offering. The new Redmi tablet aims to strike the right balance by offering a large screen for multimedia consumption along with a performance unit that is no slouch. The Redmi Pad sports an all-metal design with flat sides. The tablet is also fairly thin at 7.05mm and weighs about 465 grams.

There is a 10.61-inch IPS LCD with a 2K (2000x1200 pixels) resolution. Compared to the competition, the Redmi Pad has a slight edge with its 90Hz refresh rate display. The budget Android tablet packs a MediaTek Helio G99 SoC, which makes it gaming friendly. it also packs an 8000mAh battery with support for 18W fast charging out of the box.

The Xiaomi Redmi Pad features an 8-megapixel rear camera and an 8-megapixel front camera. It runs on the Android 12-based MIUI 13 for Pad out of the box. The software is fairly clean and offers a bunch of features that make use of the large screen. Xiaomi has promised to provide two major Android updates and three years of software support for the Redmi Pad.

The iPad mini (2021) Wi-Fi + Cellular has an 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display that is larger than the 7.9-inch screen available on the earlier iPad mini. The new model is also powered by the latest A15 Bionic chip that is rated to deliver up to 80 percent faster performance than the previous generation. The new iPad mini comes with a 12-megapixel Ultra Wide selfie camera with a 122-degree field of view. It also includes support for Center Stage from the iPad Pro. At the back, there is a 12-megapixel camera sensor that is paired with a True Tone flash and supports Smart HDR as well as 4K video recording. The iPad mini (2021) Wi-Fi + Cellular supports Wi-Fi 6 and 5G connectivity.

The Xiaomi Mi Pad 5 is a quality mid-range tablet with a focus on performance. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 SoC which offers good gaming performance and comes with a 120Hz display which makes the software experience feel quite fluid. The large display also supports Dolby Vision for a better viewing experience, while the quad-speaker system offers loud and clear audio which comes in use when consuming content and gaming.

The tablet does not come with any bundled accessories. However, the optional Pad Keyboard accessory does make the tablet more productive. The Smart Pen is another accessory which seems good enough for the creative crowd.

Battery life is also quite good as the tablet lasts over two days on a single charge. Charging the tablet is also relatively fast when using the bundled charger.

The iPad 10th generation is a successor to the iPad 9th generation model, which was launched in 2021. It comes with a new design and gets many new upgrades. Apple has also significantly increased the price in India.

The new iPad starts at Rs. 44,900 for the Wi-Fi variant. It comes with a 10.9-inch Liquid Retina Display. The bezels are slightly narrower too. Apple has moved the 12-megapixel front camera to the right bezel. There is an 8-megapixel rear camera as well.

Under the hood, the iPad (2022) comes with an A14 Bionic SoC. This chip, although two years old, still offers good performance. It also packs a 28.6WHr battery, which is claimed to offer 10 hours of video playback. The Lightning port is now replaced by a USB Type-C (USB 2.0) port.

The iPad runs iPadOS 16 out of the box. It comes with many new features but does not support Stage Manager, which is currently only available for iPad models using Apple’s M-series SoCs.

The Realme Pad X is the company’s most premium Android tablet currently in India. The Realme Pad X comes with multiple storage and connectivity options in India, including support for 5G network.

The USP of the Realme Pad X is its big display. The tablet offers a 10.95-inch WUXGA+ resolution with a standard 60Hz refresh rate. It also offers fairly narrow bezels around the screen. To complement the multimedia experience, the Realme Pad X has a quad-speaker setup.

The Android tablet features a Snapdragon 695 SoC, which is quite popular among phones under Rs. 20,000. The 6nm SoC is paired with up to 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. It also packs a beefy 8340mAh battery with 33W fast charging support.

The Realme Pad X is 7.1mm slim and weighs about 507g. It comes with a USB Type-C port but misses out on a 3.5mm headphone jack and a fingerprint scanner. The tablet runs on the Android 12-based Realme UI 3.0 out of the box.

The Realme Pad is the brand’s first attempt at an Android-powered tablet. It offers capable hardware in a slim package at budget prices. All of this works fine provided you aren’t looking at it as a productivity device.

The tablet has a quality display which is sharp and is bright enough to handle direct sunlight. Keeping media consumption in mind, it offers Widevine L1 certification, which allows for full-HD video streaming quality. Adding to that experience is the quad-speaker audio setup that delivers sound that’s loud and clear enough enough to fill a room.

Software performance is quite smooth, but with just 3GB or 4GB of RAM, this tablet would be best used for running basic apps and not graphically intense games. Battery life is quite good, and the Realme Pad can last about a day and a half with about an hour of gaming and several hours of video playback.

The Oppo Pad Air is the brand's first tablet entry in the Indian market. Oppo takes a budget approach with this one and focuses on quality instead of performance, making it into a tablet that is built for media consumption more than anything else.

Build quality with the metal unibody design feels quite solid and the designer plastic strip around the back gives it a nice touch. The 10.63-inch display isn’t the brightest we have seen, but gets the job done indoors.

Oppo has used a Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 SoC which is also found in some budget smartphones and it offers good enough performance while driving the large display when it comes to software, but just gets the job done when it comes to heavy 3D games.

Battery life is quite solid and charging speeds are average. Camera performance is below average and the same applies to video recording.