Artist Review: Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro with matte glass

Not a sponsored review

The Xiaomi Pad 7 and Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro are both released in October 2024. They were released with only the China ROM initially but finally in March 2025, the Global ROM with official Google Play Store is available.

I was actually waiting for the Global ROM to make this review that many have requested. And the local set also has local warranty.

Xiaomi tablets have always provided good value for money and the latest Pad 7 series is no exception. These are the two best tablets from Xiaomi currently, and these are also among the best compared to other tablets at its price category. These are also nice updates to their earlier tablets, namely the Pad 5 (2021), Pad 6 (2023) and Pad 6S (2024).

Prices at the time of review are

• Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro
• 8GB RAM + 256GB storage: SGD 629
• 12GB RAM + 512GB storage: SGD 699
• 12GB RAM + 512GB storage + matte glass: SGD 729
• Xiaomi Pad 7
• 8GB RAM + 128GB storage: SGD 449
• 8GB RAM + 256GB storage: SGD 499

The confusing part about buying this tablet from Shopee SG is there are two sellers, namely Xiaomi Official (ships from Singapore) and Xiaomi Global Official Store (ships from China). I had purchased the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro from Xiaomi Official and the Xiaomi Focus Pen from Xiaomi Global Official Store.

Differences between the Pro and non-Pro models

The Pad 7 Pro has better cameras, better processor, faster charging speed, Wifi 7 vs 6E and the matte glass option.

Between the Pro and non-Pro models, I would recommend the non-Pro model simply because of the lower price. If you want the extra features, you have that option as well, at a higher price.

I have bought the Xiaomi Pad 7 pro for the matte glass display which is a huge selling point to me. The matte glass is just much better at preventing glare and also provides a nicer surface to draw on with the pen.

If there's no matte glass option with Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro, I would have purchased the non-Pro version to save money. I doubt I can see any processor performance differences with normal usage.

Bottom line

The Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro is a beautiful tablet with excellent build quality. The LCD display is bright, sharp and vibrant. Not having an OLED not an issue. Audio has good clarity and surround. Performance is fast. Battery life is long. Xiaomi HyperOS is stable and thankfully there's no bloatware.

Hardware is great.

The main downsides would be the the lack of software features. I could not get 100% of my data from my old tablet transferred over. Xiaomi file manager does not have direct integration with cloud storage services. When using desktop mode and connected to external display, you can't choose audio output location and there's no resolution option. And I'm not sure if the backup options can backup 100% of the data (not specific to Xiaomi tablets).

Xiaomi Focus Pen performance is inconsistent because of issues with tilt sensitivity. The pen is very sensitive with low initial activation force but there's diagonal line wobble which can affect accuracy. For note taking, the pen works well. The three side buttons are not customisable by drawing apps.

Another thing that affects drawing experience is the matte glass surface is very smooth, maybe too smooth, so controlling the pen while drawing is not easy. It's alright for writing but for drawing you may want to draw more slowly so the extra smoothness can be an issue.

Specifications

Things included

• Tablet
• USB-C to USB-A charging cable
• 67W charger with USB-A port
• Warranty booklet
• User manual

Design

The Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro is a beautiful tablet. Build quality is solid with the unibody aluminium alloy.

Weight of 500 g is good for an 11.2-inch tablet.

The design looks quite similar to the 11-inch iPad Pro thanks to the rounded corners, flat sizes, thin bezels and 3:2 aspect ratio. The iPad Pro is noticeably lighter at 444g though, and thinner at 5.3mm vs 6.2mm.

The back looks different from the iPad Pro as the camera module looks different. You get at 50MP f/1.8 rear camera.

The matte metal back is quite susceptible to fingerprints. Colour options are gray blue, green.

Power button comes with a fingerprint scanner. Note the big camera bump behind.

The 32MP f/2.2 front camera is in landscape orientation and can be used for face unlock (not the secure type).

Display

There are many wonderful looking homescreen styles to choose from

The display is a 11.2-inch LCD with variable 144Hz refresh rate. Resolution is 3200 x 2136 px (345 ppi) so visuals look really sharp. Aspect ratio is 3:2 which I prefer over 16:10 because it makes the very usable portrait orientation too, especially for displaying web pages.

Colour support is DCI-P3. Brightness is to 800 nits. This display is bright, vibrant and sharp. A good LCD can still look great so not having OLED is not a downside to me. And this is a great looking LCD. Only downside (if it's a downside) is there's slight IPS glow from wide viewing angles, but overall colour consistency is good.

I highly recommend getting the model with matte glass because matte surface looks so good.

There are many who say that a glossy display can produce more vibrant colours. True, but...

A matte display can remove all reflections, and works even better than a good anti-reflective display. The matte surface is not gonna make colours look dull. Reading experience on matte glass is way better, such as reading text or comics.

Matte glass will also diffuse reflections without creating the glaring white haze you get with matte screen protectors. The anti-glare is amazing. It can diffuse strong reflections without creating too much glare, and you can still see contents on the display easily.

The matte glass option is just an extra SGD 30 so to me it's a no-brainer to upgrade to that. Nowadays, more tablets are being released with matte glass displays and I welcome that trend. Samsung definitely needs to offer a matte glass option.

Downside to this matte glass is there's slight colour noise or the shimmering effect. If you're looking out for that, then you can see it, but I don't find that to be distracting. It's not obvious compared to matte screen protectors. Sharpness is not affected.

Performance

The tablet comes with Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 which is a powerful processor. Overall performance is smooth and fast. Apps are able to launch fast. You can also game with high graphics settings without issues.

There's 12GB RAM so there are no issues with multi-tasking. Apps are able to remain in memory for extended period without having to reload apps.

OS and software

This tablet comes with Xiaomi HyperOS 2 and is stable. There are good features for multi-tasking, and if you want more features, you can always install your own launcher.

Xiaomi file manager does not integrate with Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox. But you can still export files directly to those cloud storage services from whatever apps you use.

When setting up the tablet for the first time, file transfer from another tablet is only through wireless without cable option. After transfer, I discovered my Infinite Painter artworks (from within Android Data folder) are not transferred over. That's to say that file transfer from another tablet is not 100% and you should always check to make sure everything is transferred or you have to copy over the missing files yourself.

Workstation mode (or desktop mode) is not that useful. Apps can open in floating windows but it's not useful because desktop mode works better on larger displays. There's no way to use split screen when in Workstation mode. When connected to an external display, there's only mirror mode, and there's no way to expand the desktop to use all the external display resolution (e.g. 3:2 aspect ratio will not fill 16:9 monitors).

Google Play Store is available with the Global ROM, and mention of Google Play Store is also printed on the side of the packaging box.

There are many wonderful and capable drawing apps from the Google Play Store. You can see some options from this list, but the more popular ones are Clip Studio Paint, Krita, Infinite Painter, Sketchbook, Concepts, Medibang, IbisPaint X.

The Xiaomi Focus Pen is sold separately for SGD 89. It's a well made pen with good build quality. The matte textured surface is comfortable to hold.

Design of the pen is almost cylindrical except for the flat side that attaches magnetically to the tablet for charging and pairing. I'm not sure what's the battery life of the pen but you don't really have to worry about battery life when you can just attach the pen by the tablet for charging.

The pen supports tilt, 8192 levels of pressure sensitivity and palm rejection.

The pen has three side buttons which are shortcuts for the OS. Unfortunately, these buttons cannot be customised with shortcuts from drawing apps.

The standalone button is called the Spotlight button and here's what it does:

• Press and hold and you'll get a red pointer on the display. This is useful when tablet is connected to an external display for presentation
• Press once and you can draw on the display to mark out areas you want people to look at
• When using the camera app, this can work as a shutter button

The middle button is a screenshot button. Press once to get into screenshot mode, and you can draw a selection to create a screenshot, or make a full screenshot.

The first button (closest to pen tip) is the writing button. Press once on the home screen to open the Mi Notes app. Press once when you're using some other app to open a small notepad by the side.

Drawing tests

The following line tests were created with Medibang Paint.

1. Initial activation force is very low. Thin lines can be drawn easily even with a thick brush selected. There's wobble and jitter when drawing slow diagonal lines.

2. Lines are able to taper smoothly and sharply.

3. Line transition from thin to thick and back to thin is smooth. This is also a diagonal line and there's diagonal line wobble and jitter.

4. Consistent line width can be drawn easily by maintaining consistent pressure.

5. Dots can be drawn easily.

6. Lines can join without leaving gaps or lines overshooting regardless of the angle of the pen.

Issues with tilt sensitivity

The pen supports tilt sensitivity but tilt does not work consistently and performance varies depending on the app used.

Tilt does not work consistently with Infinite Painter regardless of how the tilt sensitivity is adjusted. Shown above is how the lines look with the Dry Inker brush when drawn with Samsung S Pen vs the Xiaomi Focus Pen. With the Xiaomi pen, tilt either does not work, or lines would look strange when drawing thin lines with brushes that also support tilt.

Concepts would activate tilt when pen is at 45 degrees, which unfortunately is the angle that I hold the pen, so tilt would activate often even when I don't want tilt.

Tilt does not work with Krita and cursor does not follow the direction of the pen.

Tilt works well with Sketchbook and Clip Studio Paint.

If you rely on tilt brushes and do not use Sketchbook or Clip Studio Paint, then you have a potential deal breaker since tilt doesn't work well with other drawing apps.

Drawing performance

The texture of the matte glass is smoother than typical matte screen protectors. I find the pen to be very smooth on the glass, perhaps too smooth, so it can be quite difficult to control the pen on such a smooth surface. This may be even smoother than the matte glass displays from many of the pen displays that I have tested.

How much texture there is on a matte glass surface is always a compromise. Smoother matte surfaces won't affect display quality. Rougher matte surfaces have better tactile experience but may introduce more grain and colour noise to affect display quality.

I actually tried install a slip-on silicone cover over the pen tip but the pen would start drawing when the pen tip is near the display but not touching the display.

Display is laminated so there's almost no gap between the line and pen tip while drawing. The pen tip is firm and has no movement.

These were drawn with Infinite Painter. As long as you draw fast enough, lines would be smooth. Diagonal lines would have some wobble or jitter if you draw very slowly.

Another issue with Infinite Painter is if you choose a brush that has support for tilt sensitivity, drawing lines with that brush would not work well. There won't be any tilt issues when drawing with a brush that does not support tilt.

This was drawn with Concepts. The main issue tilt effect would activate accidentally because for some reason tilt may activate with the pen at 45 degrees. So I had to undo several times when that happened.

11.2-inch is big enough for comfortable drawing. I could rest my palm on the display while drawing and palm rejection works well. Apps with many UI elements such as Krita and Clip Studio Paint (Studio mode) are not ideal since they work better with bigger displays.

Note taking performance is good.

There's normal amount of latency when drawing. Meaning when looking out for latency, you can see latency. Which app you use also affects the amount of latency. For example, Infinite Painter and Concepts have lower latency than Medibang.

I'm not exactly sure how Xiaomi handles its backup but if you're relying on this tablet to create art, make sure you know where your artworks are saved, and know how to backup your artworks. For example, Infinite Painter actually saves its artworks into the Android Data directory which is not accessible by the file manager, so you have to use the ZArchiver app or a computer connect to the tablet to backup Infinite Painter artworks. If you save artworks to the cloud, then you don't have to worry too much about backups.

This was drawn with Medibang Paint Pro. I was using a thick brush and I was able to draw very thin lines just by glancing the pen tip on the display. Pressure sensitivity of this pen is really good, probably even better than the Apple Pencil and Samsung S Pen.

The pen supports hover but the pen tip has to be very near the display for the cursor to appear.

Battery life

Battery capacity is 8,850 mAh.

Battery life is around 7 hours with display at maximum brightness. Normal usage can get you 10 - 14 hours of battery life.

Conclusion

The hardware of the Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro is fantastic. I'm very happy there's now a matte glass option for purchase and it's quite an inexpensive upgrade too. If you love reading comics and text, definitely get the matte glass option. If you want the glossy display, I feel like there's no need to buy the Pro model because even the non-Pro model is really good and is cheaper.

Pen performance can certainly be improved. The pen has amazing pressure sensitivity but tilt sensitivity works inconsistently. And there's the issue with slow diagonal line wobble and jitter which can affect accuracy. So the pen is good for quick sketches and writing, maybe more challenging when it comes to creating professional illustrations.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Excellent build quality
+ Bright (800 nits), sharp, vibrant display
+ 144Hz refresh rate
+ Laminated display
+ Matte glass option is inexpensive
+ Fast performance from Snapdragon 8s Gen 3
+ Audio quality is amazing
+ USB-C port can output video
+ Portrait apps are automatically rotated in landscape orientation
+ No bloatware
+ Xiaomi HyperOS is stable but does not have many features
+ Good battery life (10 - 14 hours)
- Workstation mode is not useful
- Matte glass surface maybe be too smooth
- No audio output selection when connected to external display
- Slow diagonal lines have wobble or jitter
- No SD card slot
- No cellular model
- Xiaomi file manager has no integration with Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox
- Data transfer from another tablet is not 100%
- No sure if backup options will backup 100% of the tablet
- Hover height is too close to display

Availability

The Xiaomi Pad 7 Pro and the Xiaomi Focus Pen are available from Shopee SG and Lazada SG.

Xiaomi Official (ships from Singapore): tablet

Shopee SG Xiaomi Global Official Store (ships from China): tablet | pen

Lazada SG