Xiaomi Pad 7 hands-on review

Design

The Xiaomi Pad 7 has a very similar design to the Pad 6 but with a slightly different shape owing to the updated aspect ratio.

The front of the tablet is a sea of glass covering the new 3:2 aspect ratio display. The display has a uniform bezel of around 7mm thickness with curved corners. Placed within the bezel is the 8MP ultra-wide front facing camera.

Along the right edge is the volume rocket along with a reserved section for attaching the stylus. The stylus snaps on magnetically and charges wirelessly.

The Xiaomi Pad 7 has a quad speaker system with two speakers on either side. The speakers automatically orient themselves so you get proper stereo sound regardless of how you hold the tablet. The Xiaomi Pad 7 also offers Dolby Atmos support for native Atmos content as well as upmixing stereo audio into spatial audio. The speakers can get quite loud and sound pretty decent overall.

Notably missing anywhere on the exterior is a fingerprint scanner. This means you are once again relegated to the insecure face unlock, which is also not supported by apps such as password managers or payment apps. Prepare to enter your password a lot in these apps.

Also missing is a headphone jack. There is zero reason why a device of this size cannot make space for a headphone jack anywhere on the body other than forcing users to purchase wireless earbuds.

Turning to the back of the tablet we see the three pogo pin connectors in the top left for the keyboard accessory. On the right is the camera island, which sticks out a bit too much considering there's just one camera in there and not an especially great one. This is likely done for the Pro model, which has the same design but a bigger 50MP sensor with an additional depth sensor.

The Xiaomi Pad 7 is very well built with a sturdy feel in hand despite being a large, thin sheet of glass and aluminum. A notable feature of the design is a complete lack of any antenna lines on the metal exterior. Then again, with a complete lack of cellular connectivity, this probably not that difficult to achieve.