Poco Pad 5G review: Budget-friendly 5G tablet for everyday use

The Poco Pad 5G isn’t an entirely new tablet, as it’s essentially the Redmi Pad Pro under the Poco branding. However, this isn’t necessarily a drawback in my book, as the Poco Pad offers the same specifications and is around ₹1,000 cheaper than its Redmi counterpart.

Unboxing and design:

Inside the Poco Pad 5G’s yellow and black box, you will find the device itself, a SIM ejector tool, some paperwork, a 33W USB adapter and a Type C cable. The tablet doesn’t come with a pre-installed screen protector (plastic or otherwise), and I’d strongly recommend getting one before you start using it on a daily basis.

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On the design front, the Poco Pad 5G has two coin-shaped cutouts on the back, one for the 8MP camera sensor and the other for the flash. It comes with a dual-tone back, with the glossy side made of aluminium and the matte side covering the cameras made of plastic. The matte side of the Poco Pad is an absolute fingerprint magnet and the marks left by fingerprints and smudges are hard to remove.

Weighing in at around 570g and measuring 7.52mm thick, the new Poco Pad isn’t the lightest or slimmest Android tablet around, but Poco seems to have done some work on overall weight management to ensure the tablet doesn’t feel too heavy to hold.

Display and battery:

Poco Pad 5G features a 12.1-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, a variable refresh rate of 120Hz and a peak brightness of 600 nits. It also supports Dolby Vision and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

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I was a little sceptical about the Poco Pad’s IPS screen, but it soon won me over with excellent details, viewing angles and colour accuracy. Of course, the contrast isn’t as good as an AMOLED screen, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make at this price point. Coupled with the quad speaker setup that comes with Dolby Atmos support, the tablet offers a very enjoyable viewing experience for binge-watchers like me.

I was also very impressed with the Poco Pad’s 10,000mAh battery, which easily lasted me into the second day with a usage pattern consisting of 5-6 hours of watching OTT shows or YouTube videos, running benchmark tests and a bit of web browsing. What wasn’t so impressive was the 33W charger that came with the tablet, which took around 2 hours to fully charge it from 0-100%. This is the one area where Poco has clearly cut corners, and I would have honestly liked to have seen over 50W of fast charging given the massive size of the battery.

Software and camera:

Poco Pad 5G runs on HyperOS based on Android 14, and the company has promised 2 years of OS updates and 3 years of security patches.

I didn’t have high expectations of the software on the Poco Pad, given that budget Poco and Xiaomi devices are usually packed with bloatware and ads. However, to my surprise, the Poco Pad offers a very clean and feature-rich software experience that is well suited to tablets. With the exception of Netflix and Fitbit, there are no apps pre-installed with the tablet, and there were no ads to be found during my testing period.

HyperOS also comes with a lot of features, especially for tablet use. For example, you can now easily put an app in a floating window or split screen by dragging it from the smart sidebar to the centre or right of the screen respectively. There is also a new three-finger gesture to easily put an app in split screen mode, and you can also close an individual app while in split screen.

There is also a new ‘Conference Tools’ option that pops up when you join a meeting, which can help you stay in the centre of the screen during a video call, or even fill the screen with light if needed.

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Performance:

Poco Pad 5G is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset, paired with an Adreno 710 GPU. It comes with up to 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM and up to 256GB of UFS 2.2 storage, with the option to add up to 1.5TB of storage via the microSD card slot.

Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 isn’t the most powerful chipset on the market, but it can still handle everyday tasks such as browsing the web, taking notes and streaming OTT content with ease. Although it can handle the occasional gaming session, it’s certainly not made for gaming enthusiasts.

In terms of benchmarks, the Poco Pad 5G scored 5,03,477 on Antutu. On Geekbench 6, it received a single-core score of 979 and a multi-core score of 2,749.

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Verdict:

Poco Pad 5G is priced at ₹23,999 for the 8GB+128GB storage variant and ₹25,999 for the 8GB+256GB version. At this price, there aren’t many tablets that offer 5G connectivity, meaning that the Poco Pad will be a no-brainer for people who prioritise having a SIM card slot in their tablet.

The Poco Pad has a lot of other things going for it too, including an impressive 12.1-inch display, quad speaker setup, great battery life and a clean and feature-rich software experience tailored for tablets. However, the addition of a Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 processor means that this isn’t a tablet for gamers or heavy users.

So who is it for? Poco Pad 5G is a great option for someone looking to buy a tablet on a budget for watching movies, surfing the web, attending online meetings, reading e-books, playing casual games and completing everyday tasks.

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Published: 02 Sep 2024, 03:16 AM IST