Xiaomi just announced the Redmi Pad 2, and it’s shaping up to be a contender for the title of the best budget tablet you can buy, beating the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 .
The new tablet is fronted by an 11-inch LCD with a sharp 2.5K (2560 x 1600) resolution and a 90Hz refresh rate. It’ll get up to 600 nits of brightness outdoors, which isn’t bad at all for a cheap tablet. It closely rivals the Galaxy Tab A9+ and, to some extent, the latest regular iPad .
Following some impressively good value Android tablets from the Chinese company, the Redmi Pad 2 arrives this month, starting at just £169 .
Impressive specs for a budget tablet
The Redmi Pad 2 is powered by a MediaTek Helio G100-Ultra processor, backed by a slightly disconcerting spread of RAM options: 4- or 8GB here in the UK. There could be quite a difference in the day-to-day experience between these two extremes, so we’ll have to keep an eye on that one.
There’s also a choice of either 128- or 256GB of internal storage, while you get a fairly sizeable 9000mAh battery regardless of model. Many of these details were leaked recently , including the inclusion of Dolby Atmos-powered speakers.
Chris Martin / Foundry
Do we even care about cameras in a cheap tablet? Probably not, except for video calls. Still, in the name of covering all the details, you’ll be getting an 8Mp f/2.0 rear camera and a 5Mp f/2.2 front camera with the Redmi Pad 2.
There are also three optional accessories, including the Redmi Smart Pen stylus (with 4096 levels of pressure and a 240Hz touch sampling rate), the Redmi Pad 2 Cover case, and the Redmi Pad 2 Screen Protector.
Chris Martin / Foundry
This screen is housed in an all-metal unibody design that’s 7.36mm thick, with a weight of 510g.
It comes in Graphite Grey, Mint Green and a new Lavender Purple colourway, as you see photographed here.
How much?
As always, much of the appeal with such a Xiaomi device may well come down to your view of its custom UI. In this case, that means Xiaomi HyperOS 2 , which boasts such Xiaomi smartphone-mirroring connectivity features as Call sync, Network sync, and Shared clipboard.
In terms of pricing, the Redmi Pad 2 starts from just £169 for the model with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Even at this early point, we’d probably recommend upgrading to the 8GB/256GB model, which still only costs £219.
You can add 4G LTE connectivity for £219 and £259 respectively, which is a rare option for cheap tablets.
The Redmi Pad 2 goes on sale on 13 June in the UK and across Europe, and if you pre-order from the Mi store, you can pay a £1 deposit and save £40 on the full price, plus a free cover, Redmi Buds 6, and 22.5W Power Adapter totaling a value of £75.
Chris Martin / Foundry
All in all, it sounds like a great deal, given how much we rated the Xiaomi Redmi Pad SE back in 2023 – and in many ways, it’s like a scaled-down and cheaper Xiaomi Pad 7 .
If it can negotiate some of our slight concerns about the RAM allotment and Xiaomi’s UI, this could turn out to be the best budget tablet of the year.
We’ll have a full review on Tech Advisor very soon.
Xiaomi Redmi Pad SE
Author: Jon Mundy, Contributor, Tech Advisor
Jon is a freelance journalist who got his start covering mobile games at the dawn of the App Store. He has since covered everything from smart home tech and laptops to food and culture, but always seems to return to his fascination with smartphones.
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