Sunday, June 28, 2015

Xiaomi Mi Pad: am loving it

Apple got it right long back. Now Xiaomi got it right. I can't help but love using Xiaomi Mi Pad. One reason is its display. Unlike most other Android tabs, its 7.9 inch screen has 4:3 aspect ratio; just like an iPad mini. Common tabs (even the costlier ones), with 16:10 or 16:9 aspect ratio, are good for watching movies and playing games in landscape mode. But the screen dimension of Mi pad is better for reading ebooks, pdf, taking notes, editing and reading MS Office documents. The retina display provides crisp fonts and sharp images. With 360 gm weight, Mi pad is easy to carry and hold in one hand, for long. With light weight, sturdy built and excellent display, it feels like carrying and working with a notebook. Just hold it in portrait mode, in one hand and use it.

Another key feature of Mi Pad is its long battery life. I am using it almost for one month now. I carry it all day and use it for web surfing, reading, taking notes and for minor editing of documents. Throughout the day it remains connected with my cloud storage through Wifi. On an average I get 16 hr of battery till it reaches ~20%.

Nowadays am using my desktop only for extensive typing, editing and drawing. Rest, my Mi pad can do.





P.S:
A. Lots have been written about the smooth interface of MIUI and  almost lag free multitasking in Mi pad. I concur those.

B. Xiaomi has not launched official accessories for Mi Pad in India. Am using MOFI flip cover for Mi Pad. It's nice.




2 comments:

B said...

Hi! Nice review. I was wondering if you've had any major issues with some of the popular apps from google play store not installing on the Mi Pad? Also could you suggest any particular apps you use for reading and notetaking? I'm particularly interested about reading pdf books and journals.

Biplab said...

I have not faced any problem with Apps from Google Play. But note that I have not checked any games. I believe most of the complains with Mi Pad are associated with game apps.

I have found a few apps Google Play does not allow to install in Mi Pad. It says those are incompatible. One of them is the Blogger app from Google. But this is not Mi Pad specific and users of many other recent devices reported this problem. At the end of the day, I have installed the App using different source and face no problem in use.

For note taking I use Evernote. I use Mendeley in my desktop to manage all the papers in PDF format. Recently, Mendeley apps for Android has been launched. But I use a combination of Adobe PDF reader, Reffery, Dropbox and Dropsync to access and read my Mendeley library in my Mi Pad. I have written on it earlier here in an older blog post.

I purchase ebooks from flipkart and its ebook reader is cool.

Hope these help.