Introduction

It is only natural that the first ever Poco tablet would be based on something that is popular, powerful and yet affordable. Yes, we are talking about the most recent Redmi Pad Pro, which was chosen as a base for this Poco Pad!

The Poco Pad is identical to the Redmi Pad Pro, which we recently reviewed.

The Poco Pad comes with 256GB storage and 8GB of RAM. It also ships with a charger, unlike the Redmi.

The Poco Pad is available in signature dark gray and dark blue colors, both featuring aluminum unibodies with Poco branding on the rear side. There are even Poco versions of the cover, keyboard and pencil, which are offered for the Redmi Pad Pro!

The Poco Pad sports a large 12.1" LCD screen with 2560 x 1600 pixels, 12-bit color depth, 120Hz refresh rate and Dolby Vision support. There are also four Dolby Atmos speakers.

The tablet runs on the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset and is powered by a 10,000 mAh battery that supports 33W fast charging.

Finally, the Poco Pad has one 8MP camera at the back and another 8MP imager at the front. It boots Xiaomi's Hyper OS.

Xiaomi Poco Pad specs at a glance:

• Body: 280.0x181.9x7.5mm, 571g; Glass front (Gorilla Glass 3), aluminum frame, aluminum back; Stylus support (magnetic).
• Display: 12.10" IPS LCD, 68B colors, 120Hz, Dolby Vision, 600 nits (HBM), 1600x2560px resolution, 16:10 aspect ratio, 249ppi.
• Chipset: Qualcomm SM7435-AB Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 (4 nm): Octa-core (4x2.40 GHz Cortex-A78 & 4x1.95 GHz Cortex-A55); Adreno 710.
• Memory: 256GB 8GB RAM; UFS 2.2; microSDXC (dedicated slot).
• OS/Software: Android 14, HyperOS.
• Rear camera: 8 MP, f/2.0, (wide), 1/4.0", 1.12µm.
• Front camera: 8 MP, f/2.3, (wide), 1/4.0", 1.12µm.
• Video capture: Rear camera: 1080p@30fps; Front camera: 1080p@30fps.
• Battery: 10000mAh; 33W wired, PD3.0, QC3+.
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6; BT 5.2, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive; 3.5mm jack.
• Misc: Accelerometer, gyro, proximity (accessories only), compass; stereo speakers (4 speakers).

The tablet doesn't offer a fingerprint reader, and that is the only omission we can spot on its specs sheet.

Unboxing the Poco Pad

The Poco Pad ships in a black box with the typical yellow Poco branding. It contains a USB-A-to-C cable and a 33W power adapter, which is great as the Redmi Pad Pro's retail bundle omits the charger.

Design, build quality, handling

The Poco Pad is a copy-paste job of the Redmi Pad Pro but with a different paintjob. And that is great, because it means a premium build and a clean design. One with a Gorilla Glass 3 front panel and aluminum unibody with matte finish.

Redmi Pad Pro (left) • Poco Pad (right)

We liked the Redmi Pad Pro and we do like the Poco Pad too. It has a darker gray hue but it is still this thin and flat metal slab with almost perfect shape. Almost - because of the two jutting out of the back camera rings, which seem completely unnecessary.

The Poco Pad is not a waterproof tablet, just like the Redmi Pad Pro isn't.

Its front is home to the 12.1" LCD screen of high resolution, high refresh rate and Dolby Vision support. It can also display over 68B colors! And there are no notches, thankfully.

The screen bezel is thin and even across all sides. There is a tiny 8MP camera at one of the sides intended for video calls, and, well, selfies.

The back is all clean except for huge rings that house the 8MP and the LED flash.

The shorter sides of the Poco Pad feature two by two Dolby Atmos speakers, which sound really nice.

The Poco Pad may not support cellular connectivity, but it offers a microSD card expansion.

The Poco Pad has a matte finish and flat sides, which makes it grippy and easy to handle and operate. We found it comfortable and nice to the touch and overall, we have no complaints.

Accessories

Xiaomi has launched the Poco Pad Cover, Poco Keyboard Cover and Poco Smart Pen accessories, which are the same as the ones for the Redmi Pad Pro but painted in a different color and with a Poco logo. In fact, we tried mixing those between the two pads and they worked trouble-free on either tablet.

The Poco Cover is a basic rugged cover that can prop the tablet up in landscape mode.

It contains a detachable Smart Pen holder - if you get the stylus, you can secure it at the side of the cover as there are no magnetic spots on the tablet itself.

The Poco Pad Keyboard case is your next option priced at €100. It is your typical keyboard cover that doubles as a stand. There is no touchpad.

The Keyboard Cover has an integrated battery and charges via USB-C port. It connects to the tablet over Bluetooth. It has 64 or 65 keys with super nice tactile feedback.

The Keyboard Cover also contains two detachable smart pen holders in case you opt for the Pen - just like the simple cover we already explored.

The Keyboard has no backlighting in case you were wondering.

Finally, you can purchase the Poco Smart Pen for €70. It has two buttons and charges via USB-C port placed around its top. The Pen is ideal for writing and drawing; it supports 4,096 pressure levels and 240Hz touch sampling rate enhanced by Xiaomi's prediction algorithm.

You can write immediately on the turned-off screen and take instant screenshots.

Display

The Poco Pad impresses with a large 12.1-inch IPS LCD screen with 2560 x 1600 pixels (249ppi), 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch sampling, 12-bit color depth and Dolby Vision support.

A sheet of Gorilla Glass 3 is used on the screen to keep scratches away.

The official specifications list 500nits as typical and 600nis as maximum brightness. And the numbers are in the ballpark - we measured 488nits of maximum manual and 564 nits of maximum automatic brightness.

The minimum brightness at point white was 2.1 nits.

Refresh rate

The Poco Pad display supports up to 120Hz refresh rate. There are four modes for controlling the refresh rate - Default (read Auto), 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz. The two middle options set a ceiling for the height of the refresh rate, while the Default and 120Hz modes act exactly the same, allowing the panel to go all the way to its maximum speed, but still scale down when not needed.

The display supports 30Hz, 48Hz, 50Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz steps. However, oddly, when the screen is idling, it usually uses the maximum refresh rate allowed by the system. But across various apps we saw 30Hz (video playback), 48Hz (streaming), 50Hz (streaming), 60Hz (videos and apps), 90Hz (some system apps and games), and 120Hz in benchmarks and system UI.

HDR and streaming

The Poco Pad supports Dolby Vision streaming and offers such an option in compatible apps like Netflix. There is no HDR10 support, and hence, there is no HDR10 streaming on YouTube.

Battery life

The Poco Pad is powered by a 10,000mAh battery, the same capacity as the Redmi Pad Pro's. Quite expectedly, the Poco Pad scored a similar Active Use Score in our testing - 9:15h. It did excellent when it comes to calls and video streaming, and quite alright in the web and gaming tests.

Charging speed

The Poco Pad supports 33W fast wired charging, and it ships with such a power adapter in the box.

We have completed our charging test, of course. The supplied 33W adapter recharged 14% of the battery in 15 mins, 27% in 30 mins, while a full charge took 2 hours.

Speakers - loudness and quality

The Poco Pad has four speakers with Dolby Atmos support. They are placed two by two on the short sides.

The tablet scored a Very Good mark on our loudness test. The audio is balanced and with deep sound, enough bass and good vocals.

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.

Android 14 with HyperOS launcher

The Poco Pro ships with HyperOS 1.0.1 with Android 14 at its core. The new OS has made its way to many of Xiaomi's older and more recent devices.

Visually, the system isn't much different from MIUI, except for the flatter design with more rounded edges. You can't go back to the classic notification shade style, so you are stuck with the Control Centre, whether you like it or not. Still, the system feels as fluent and snappy as ever.

The new HyperOS introduces many under-the-hood optimizations, resulting in lower latency and faster switching between tasks.

The interface has been modernized with new color palettes, wallpapers, fonts, and subtle curves around UI elements.

HyperOS offers deeper integration with connected devices to your home network and devices signed into your personal Xiaomi account. This isn't new for MIUI users, of course, but HyperOS plays even nicer with other Mi Share-capable devices.

You can now multitask and cast your screen to other devices (tablets and PCs), not just send files. It's not a complete desktop-like experience, though. Samsung still has the upper hand in this regard.

The task manager has been optimized for the big screen, and it shows a lot of app cards at once. A tap and hold on a card reveals options for Split Screen and Floating Window.

You can have up to two floating windows at once, and they can be active over two apps that are working in split screen, which means the Poco Pad can display up to 4 apps at the same time.

There is a dedicated Features for Tablets menu in settings. Here you can learn some neat multi-tasking gestures for the floating windows and split screen. Conference Tools is the second option, which is a limited sidebar available when watching videos.

The 'Stylus and keyboard' menu lets you adjust some settings if you've bought one or more of these optional accessories. There are quite a few options for the keyboard, including handy shortcuts. The Smart Pen is quite useful for notes and drawings on the go, as well as custom screenshots.

Performance and benchmarks

The Poco Pad runs on the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 chipset by Qualcomm. It is a chipset built on the 4nm process technology and one that is a slightly faster version of the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1. This platform is not as powerful as the 7+ Gen 2 or even the original 7 Gen 1.

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 features an octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A78 @2.4GHz and 4x Cortex-A55 @1.95GHz. There is no Cortex-X prime core here, and the designs are a bit older, dating back to 2020.

The Snapdragon 7s Gen 2 uses Adreno 710 GPU, which premiered on the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 SoC. It is listed to support FHD+ resolution at 144 Hz.

The Poco Pad supports Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6.

The tablet is available in a single configuration with 8GB LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB UFS 2.2 storage.

And here go its benchmark scores:

Just like the Redmi Pad Pro, the Poco Pad offers great performance for the mid-range class. It scores very well across all tests and is close to the Xiaomi Pad 6 and its Snapdragon 870.

The Poco Pad offers great stability - our two throttling tests returned superb retention of performance under prolonged stress - 80% for CPU and 99% for GPU!

CPU test • GPU test

The Poco Pad offers excellent performance for its asking price, and it can handle everything well, including games.

Camera

The Poco Pad has two 8MP imagers - one at the back that is complemented with an LED flash, and one at the front for video call purposes. The rear one supports autofocus, while the front one does not.

The camera app has been optimized for tablet use, of course, and the Pad Pro has Night Mode support.

The 8MP photos from the rear camera are alright. The resolved detail enough, the noise is low, the dynamic range - wide. The colors are a bit muted.

Rear camera

The 1080p videos from the rear camera are average in everything - detail, contrast, color presentation.

The photos and videos from the front camera are good - they have good amount of resolved detail, very well rendered faces, good colors and wide dynamic range. This camera will do well for video calls and selfies.

Front camera

And here is a snapshot from a selfie video.

Front camera - video snapshot

Our verdict

The Poco Pad has been launched in a couple of markets so far - the Philippines, Turkey, Japan, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia to name a few. It costs $330, comes with 256GB storage and the 33W charger ships inside the box. These are enough reasons to choose it over the Redmi Pad Pro, which sells at the same price but in 128GB and without a bundled powered adapter. Unless, of course, you need a tablet with cellular connectivity/GPS as only the Redmi Pad Pro offers that.

We do hope Xiaomi decides on expanding the Poco Pad availability, because it is an incredibly good tablet for a price that is hard to turn down. It has a large LCD screen with high resolution, high refresh rate, 68B colors and Dolby Vision support. The four Dolby Atmos speakers are a superb addition, too.

Redmi Pad Pro (left) • Poco Pad (right)

Even better, the Poco Pad is a powerful tablet with an advanced operating system and launcher, which will come in handy to those who need performance and/or power user features. It can be used for work, for entertainment, for gaming, or as a laptop replacement if you opt for its Keyboard and/or Smart Pen.

Sure, a trackpad would have made this accessory's high price more easily palatable. You can connect a regular Bluetooth keyboard with the same productivity benefits for a fraction of the price.

And the cameras are not the tablet's forte, but let's face it - it's a tablet so noone expects great camera quality, right?

Those minor things aside, the Poco Pad is one of the best tablets you can buy for around $350/€350 (as long as you can find a retailer near you that stocks it).

Pros

• Beautiful and comfortable aluminum unibody.
• Excellent display, Dolby Vision.
• Loud Dolby Atmos speaker quartet.
• Great performance and stability for this class.
• Clean and powerful OS.
• Memory card slot and audio jack.

Cons

• Not very fast to charge.
• The camera quality is mediocre.
• The Keyboard cover is expensive and lacks a trackpad.
• No version with cellular data/GPS available.