Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 review: Up-and-comer
Up-and-comer
Gallery
The Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 comes with a custom Gallery app. It defaults to a view of your camera roll with two shortcuts at the top that change the view to either album view of your Local images or album view of your Cloud images. You can't change this view, nor can you customize the default folders.
Gallery
The available features when viewing a single image are pretty standard - set image as wallpaper/contact image, share it, delete it, enter edit mode or just get more info.
The integrated editor offers various effects, frames, tools (crop, mirror, straighten, rotate, fisheye, doodle) plus light adjustments that let you bring out the shadows or the highlights.
Video player
Xiaomi's video player has very basic interface but rich video decoder support. It managed to play everything we threw at it down to the AC3 audio codec, which is troublesome on so many other devices.
You can also access all your movies through the video section in the gallery.
Video player
The video player, just like the music player, offers access to a paid video streaming services for movies and TV shows.
The app itself lacks support for subtitles or pop up play.
Music player
The MIUI music player is a custom app with a well-laid out, easy to navigate interface. It has a huge visualization screen doubling as a Now Playing windows. Below you get four non-customizable tabs - All Songs, Artists, Playlists and Online.
Music player
The Online tab is where you pay for the Baidu Music service, which allows you to listen to their huge online track collection. Here you can also find various internet radio stations you can listen for free.
The player has cool 3D effects, transitions and transparent elements, especially on the expandable Now Playing section. Interestingly there are no equalizer presets and you can't set your own, essentially leaving you to the built-in settings alone.
We ran our traditional loudspeaker test on the Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 and it proved to be a very good performer. The speakers are very loud and produce deep stereo sound, we only wish the speakers weren't placed on the back and so close to each other.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overall score | |
| 65.7 | 62.1 | 72.3 | Below Average | |
| 66.9 | 75.7 | 66.6 | Good | |
| 68.6 | 65.9 | 75.8 | Good | |
| 68.7 | 66.5 | 75.8 | Good | |
| 75.7 | 66.6 | 76.8 | Very Good | |
| 75.7 | 69.6 | 82.7 | Very Good |
Audio quality is good, but not quite perfect
The Xiaomi Mi Pad turned out to be a talented performer in the first half of our test - the one with an active external amplifier. The tablet had good volume levels as befitting to its device class and excellent results in most readings. The frequency response is the solitary exception, but it still rates as good.
Unfortunately plugging in a pair of headphones brought the quality of the Mi Pad audio output down quite significantly. Both intermodulation and harmonic distortion appeared and stereo crosstalk rose notably. Volume levels also dropped and even though it's minor, it's unusual for a slate.
Check out the table and see for yourself.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.04, -0.42 | -92.0 | 90.1 | 0.0055 | 0.069 | -88.4 | |
| +0.02, -0.43 | -91.6 | 89.8 | 0.375 | 0.335 | -46.3 | |
| +0.05, -0.02 | -95.7 | 92.3 | 0.0044 | 0.0096 | -96.0 | |
| +0.01, -0.05 | -95.7 | 92.1 | 0.012 | 0.014 | -44.4 | |
| +0.02, -0.07 | -93.3 | 93.3 | 0.0019 | 0.011 | -89.2 | |
| +0.04, -0.06 | -93.1 | 93.1 | 0.0074 | 0.037 | -70.2 | |
| +0.14, -0.11 | -93.8 | 92.9 | 0.0021 | 0.0082 | -93.8 | |
| +0.29, -0.11 | -90.7 | 92.7 | 0.0074 | 0.208 | -53.6 | |
| +0.00, -0.23 | -92.2 | 92.3 | 0.036 | 0.020 | -92.3 | |
| +0.83, -0.12 | -92.4 | 92.3 | 0.010 | 0.208 | -49.3 | |
| +0.04, -0.39 | -93.8 | 93.7 | 0.0011 | 0.0067 | -82.9 | |
| +0.11, -0.00 | -93.6 | 93.6 | 0.0023 | 0.030 | -62.2 |
