If you are in the market to purchase a tablet, you could be wondering whether to buy the OnePlus Pad 2 or Redmi Pad Pro 5G. It depends on usage. For gamers, a powerful chipset will help but for most people, the Redmi offering does the trick.

Redmi Pad Pro 5G, as the name suggests, is a tablet that can help you watch your favourite content on the go or play most games. Of course, you can also tackle a lot of your office work on the tablet. What’s new, you ask? So far, we have been seeing a lot of wi-fi tablets from the brand but having 5G on the go makes this particular tablet super convenient. The ‘pro’ tablet has some accessories to make life easy — a folio keyboard and a stylus — but you need to buy these separately.

The tablet is quite slim even with the folio keyboard attached

The tablet has a dual-tone look and unibody design, which is all polycarbonate, and it doesn’t attract fingerprints or smudges. The device weighs only 581g — decent for a 12-inch, 5G tablet. I wouldn’t get into the camera on the rear because it’s as good (or mediocre) as on any tablet in the price range, besides, who uses a tablet to take pictures? Cameras become important when there is, say, a Lidar sensor on the tablet.

Where the tablet shines — and brightly — is in the quad-speaker setup as well as the display. There are two speakers on the left and two on the right. Redmi has retained the 3.5mm jack, which can be helpful if you are a gamer and want to use a wired headphone. Look carefully and you will also notice the Dolby Vision Atmos logo. The speakers are loud enough to fill a small room and there is excellent audio fidelity, especially when you are playing action games or watching action films.

The tablet comes with a biggish 12.1-inch LCD display with 2.5K resolution of 2560x1600 pixels. The 120Hz AdaptiveSync refresh rate makes everything feel smooth and the 16:10 aspect ratio is just right for all kinds of media. Record your screen, take a screenshot or cast the video to a bigger display. You may wonder if having an OLED display would have helped. I don’t mind using LCD at a given price point. Further, it’s a good quality panel.

The bezels on this machine are slim and there is just enough space to hold the tablet without placing the thumb on the screen.

The accessories

Users need to buy the folio keyboard and stylus separately

A few words on the accessories. The keyboard is well-designed and is quite sturdy when kept on a flat surface. It connects to the tablet via Bluetooth. There is a USB-C port on the side to charge and a physical toggle switch. The keyboard is quite big, so the keys are well-spaced and there is excellent travel. I would love to see the same keyboard with pogo pins, which will make it draw power from the tablet.

The stylus is handy for taking notes or drawing simple sketches and you can take screenshots. But there is an issue: It doesn’t magnetically attach to the tablet. Many will use the tablet without a keyboard but will prefer having the stylus; for them, it is not a convenient situation.

Sweet performance

The tablet comes with Android 14 and HyperOS, which makes the interface highly optimised. The app stack appears at the bottom and it’s easy to work on two apps simultaneously; there is also the option to adjust the size of each window. Plus, you can have a couple of floating windows.

Redmi has gone with the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 processor, which can handle multiple apps. It’s not a flagship chipset but a very effective mid-range option. Most people will use the tablet for watching videos, browsing and some multitasking… all this can be handled by the chipset. Gamers will also not be disappointed though I am not suggesting you play high-end titles.

Should you buy it?

The keys are large and come with good key travel but the keyboard lacks pogo pins and has to be charged

The tablet packs a 10000 mAh battery, which makes the tablet easily usable for two days. The charging speed is 33W but I can live with that. Since you will be charging the tablet overnight, fast-charging wouldn’t have helped a great deal.

There is very little to complain about this sweetly-priced tablet. Yes, the accessories could have been better but as a tablet, it’s a good travel companion because of its performance and battery life.

At a glance

Device: Redmi Pad Pro 5G

Price: Upwards of Rs 24,999

High notes

Excellent battery life

Good performance from chipset and speakers

Bright display

Muffled note

Stylus (needs to be bought separately) cannot be magnetically attached to the tablet