The Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro might just be the Android tablet of the year – if you prefer your screens smaller

Xiaomi's latest tablet is a statement piece. This 11.2in device is stylish, compact, and slimline, and packs plenty of punch under the hood to raise your productivity levels – or at least that's how it's being pitched.

This is a crowded market, however, with brilliant devices of all sizes, including the OnePlus Pad 3, Samsung Galaxy Tab S11, and Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 making up the competition. While the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro is on the smaller side, this £600 productivity-centric device – complete with a keyboard attachment and digital pen – might entice users seeking a deviceto use primarily while on the move – where weight and size are crucial factors.

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But it also promises high-end performance thanks to a Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chipset and up to 12GB RAM, alongside up-to 512GB storage. That isn't even to mention a whopping 50MP rear camera to partner the 32GB front-facing lens. Considering the full package and an attractive price, could it be one of the tablets of the year?

Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro: Design

The Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro's body is simple, elegant, and premium. The 11-inch form factor is a little smaller than plenty of options on the market, but we think it's hit something of a sweet spot between the giga-sized, laptop-lite-type tablets and the awkward phablets we see in the smartphone market.

The Pad 8 Pro's sophisticated design features rounded corners and squared-off sides, but it suffers a bit aesthetically from the awkwardly protruding camera lenses on the rear. Overall, however, it's a compact design that also marginally improves on its predecessor. It shaves fractions off the Pad 7 Pro's thickness (6.2mm vs 5.7mm) while boasting the same great 85.4% screen-to-body ratio. Size-wise, it's comparable to the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 – with very little difference between the two devices. It's also roughly the same weight.

Our tablet came in the pine green version, which is a subtle but charming coating and comparable to the gorgeous Huawei MatePad 11.5 S. But you can also pick up the device in blue and gray. While it complements the darker color of the Pro Focus Keyboard, it does clash with the white Xioami Focus Pen Pro.

Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro: Display, keyboard, and stylus

There's so much to love about the 11.2-inch tablet screen, with plenty of vibrancy and sharpness making it fantastic for an LCD display. Sure, you aren't getting the benefits of an OLED panel, but you can't complain for the price.

A staggering 3.2K (3,200 x 1,236 pixel) resolution on this panel – equating to a huge 345 pixel-per-inch ratio – gives it a certain level of crispness you simply won't find anywhere else. The closest comes in the form of the One Plus Pad 3 (315 pixels per inch). Compounding this is a fantastic 144Hz refresh rate that combines with its resolution to make scrolling through documents, web pages, and spreadsheets an absolute delight. You can, however, also set this at 60Hz or 120Hz to preserve battery life.

The display's brightness, meanwhile, is typical of a high-end tablet. We registered 530cd/m2 using a display calibrator, although the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro can reach 800cd/m2 peak brightness with adaptive HDR activated. Its colors, too, are solid overall – with a 96% coverage of the sRGB gamut about in line with the decent results in the broader tablet market. This comes alongside a 70.2% coverage of the Adobe RGB gamut and 77% coverage of the DCI P3 gamut – both fine results, again, for photo and video-based work respectively. Meanwhile, compared with many devices out there, a 0.72cd/m2 black level and 740:1 contrast ratio are a little on the underwhelming side, but not out of line with what you expect from LCD technology.

The Pro Focus Keybaord that comes with the device is a sturdy and reliable attachment that magnetically clips onto the back of the tablet with total ease. Our review unit shipped with a non-Western version, which made typing a little tricky, given that the keys were labeled incorrectly, but that shouldn't be much of a problem with the retail unit. The travel distance of each keystroke is a little shallow, but that's not much to be expected, and typing is generally seamless. The touchpad, albeit small in size, is also useful and features mechanical interactions. You do feel to some extent that you're typing on a conventional clamshell laptop – which is everything you would need.

The new Focus Pen Pro, meanwhile, adopts a button-free design and plenty of new gestures to take advantage of. This could take some getting used to, especially if you prefer a physical click, but you can understand the thinking behind the design. New in the device is a hover preview and side-rotating brush support in creative work, as well as pressure-sensitive shortcut key support and double-tap gestures for tool switching. While, admittedly, this poses a bit of a learning curve, if and when you eventually master the gestures and navigate throughout your workflows using the pen, it does feel good.

Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro: Specs and performance

The Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro features the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset – the same that features in the OnePlus Pad 3 – which includes the Oryon CPU (with two 4.32GHz cores and six 3.53GHz cores) and Adreno 830 GPU. This tablet also comes with either 8GB LPDDR5X or 12GB LPDDR5T RAM, alongside 128GB, 256GB and 512GB storage options.

Xiaomi says this device offers flagship performance that's comparable to a conventional laptop, while characterizing it as a mobile workstation, and our testing shows this much is certainly true, for a mid-range machine at least.

In performance benchmarking with Geekbench 6, we registered 2,941 in single-core testing and 8,787 in multi-core testing. While these are very strong scores in isolation, they fall marginally short of the OnePlus Pad 3's results of 3,130 and 9,083 (which features the same hardware) as well as the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11's results of 2,768 and 8,950 (which features the Mediatek Dimensity 9400+ CPU and ARM Mali-G925 Immortalis MP12 GPU).

It's also worth highlighting a solid 17,689 OpenCL graphics performance result thanks to the same GPU that features in many Qualcomm-powered laptops, albeit you get a little less juice in this tablet. For example, the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 scored 19,286.

The biggest boon, however, is the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro's battery life. The machine lasted a monstrous 28hrs and 12mins in our looped video playback test. This absolutely wipes the rest of the field – with one of the closest coming in the form of the 17hrs and 21mins lifespan of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra.

Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro: Features

The Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro's connectivity standards are as good as you would expect from a flagship product and include Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 compatibility, ensuring you are future-proofed from incremental upgrades over time. Physical connectivity comes solely in the form of a USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port, supporting up to 5Gbps data transfer rates, power, as well as connectivity to an external display. There's sadly no 3.5mm headphone jack, however, or an SD card slot for expandable storage – meaning you should choose your device's maximum storage capacity wisely.

The device itself is powered by HyperOS 3, Xiaomi's custom Android-based operating system that's remarkably similar to Apple's iOS. Users will enjoy the familiarity – albeit with some subtle UX tweaks. Xiaomi suggests the upgraded OS includes better visuals, widget customization, and updated lock screens. You can also activate cross-device unlocking, which allows you to unlock your phone using a password or directly on Xiaomi Pad. Other hardware-based security features include a fingerprint scanner as well as a front-facing camera that can support facial recognition.

The device maker also stresses the AI-powered features in this device, including AI speech recognition, writing, illustration, interpreting, a creativity assistant, and even an AI calculator that recognizes hand-written notes and equations. Beyond that, you'll benefit from useful additions like 5:5 vertical split-screen view, allowing you to maximize your display by featuring two windows side-by-side, as well as a horizontal 1:9 split ratio. There's also a newly upgraded Workstation Mode that expands the number of apps that can be retained in the dock, so you can access more tools quicker. The cross-device features, including cross-device camera and broader interconnectivity, are also great if you have bought into the broader Xiaomi ecosystem.

Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro: Is it worth it?

This tablet makes for a fantastic productivity-centric travel companion – embodying the 'mobile workstation' moniker that Xiaomi has ascribed it with, for the most part at least. While it won't lack the firepower of high-end laptops, it competes well with mid-range machines while also being priced very reasonably. Its performance is just about on par with other options on the market (give or take), as well as having a color-accurate, smooth, and utterly crisp 3.2K LCD display. But the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro's mammoth battery life is its biggest selling point – meaning it can last you a good couple of days at least without failing on you. If you combine this with a useful detachable keyboard and pen, and up-to-date connectivity and security features, you have the ideal machine to work with on the move. It's also got an incredible set of camera lenses, if you ever need to snap some photos.

Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro specifications