Redmi Pad SE review

Display

The Redmi Pad SE sports an 11-inch IPS LCD panel with a standard 1200 x 1920px resolution and supports 90Hz refresh rate. Unfortunately, Xiaomi has decided to leave out the ambient light sensor, so the automatic brightness adjustment uses the selfie camera.

This method draws more power, is less accurate (the screen was always too dim for the environment) and is slow to react. We really don't think an ambient light sensor would have been a big expense, even for a budget tablet like the Redmi Pad SE.

Fortunately, though, the LCD panel is pretty decent. Subjectively speaking, colors look nice, contrast is good and it's bright enough for most types of environments. In our usual set of tests, the panel peaked at 402 nits, but there's no boost in brightness, so it may not provide adequate sunlight legibility on a sunny day. Contrast is high - 1:1595, so the black looks pretty deep.

The color accuracy in the default color mode is quite respectable. The average dE2000 was just 3.3. And the whites look quite natural too.

HRR control

We were quite surprised to find out that the display has more than just two modes - 90Hz, 60Hz and 48Hz. The latter is part of an automatic behavior. The panel would lower the refresh rate down to 48Hz when idle (you are not touching the display) and will boost back up to 90Hz when scrolling or navigating around. Even if you set a custom refresh rate like 60Hz, it will serve as a cap. The system will still lower the refresh rate down to 48Hz.

Battery life

The Redmi Pad SE runs on a big 8,000 mAh battery and as expected, the efficient Snapdragon 680 does a pretty good job at preserving battery life. The results we got from the individual tests are pretty good and make up for a solid Active Use Score. In fact, the tablet seems to outperform the more expensive Xiaomi Pad 6 in pretty much all tests.

As you might already know, we recently retired our original Endurance rating battery test and have now moved on to our new GSMArena Battery test 2.0 and the so-called Active Use Score. In the case of a Wi-Fi only tablet, the call runtime is tested over Whatsapp.

If you don't plan on making any VoIP calls on the device, you will get a lower Active Use Score. You can use the slider below to see how that use case pans out.

Charging speed

The Redmi Pad SE ships with a 10W charger in the box and as you would expect, an 8,000 mAh charges extremely slow. It takes almost 4 hours to a full charge and you get only 15% of the charge back in the first 30 minutes of the charging cycle. However, the tablet itself supports up to 18W fast charging as long as you pair it with a compatible Quick Charge 3.0 charger.

We tested the device with a compatible Xiaomi charger and got significantly better results and reduced the full charging cycle down to 2 hours and 45 minutes. You can get the same result with a non-Xiaomi charger as well, make sure you get a prompt showing that a "Quick Charge" is active. Unfortunately, this still isn't enough to charge the tablet within a reasonable time frame. The Xiaomi Pad SE remains one of the slowest-charging tablets around.

Speakers

Despite being a budget tablet, the Redmi Pad SE boasts an array of 4 speakers - two on each side when holding the device horizontally. The stereo speakers are perhaps one of the centerpiece features, which are Dolby Atmos-tuned as well.

In our loudness test, the Redmi Pad SE scored excellently with an impressive -23.2 LUFS. That's quite loud and it's one of the loudest devices in our database.

The listening experience is also on a high level. The speakers produce deep bass, clear vocals and punchy highs without much distortion, even at maximum volume. You can enjoy music or movies with great quality.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.