This tablet is the Xiaomi Mi Pad 4, released in 2018. It’s essentially a large smartphone that can be comfortably held in one hand, making it great for viewing information and videos. Given its price point, it offers excellent value for money.
Moreover, there are many custom ROMs available, enhancing the system’s playability. Some versions can make phone calls (only the LTE version can be flashed), and some can even overclock to an 85Hz refresh rate. If you don’t have high demands for a tablet, it’s a great option for media playback, reading novels, or as an e-reader.
Its suitable size and weight make it easy to carry around. Compared to the 11-inch Xiaomi Mi Pad 6, I prefer the Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 for its excellent hand feel and size, which can be held comfortably with one hand. There are plenty of flashing resources and overclocking options available. Additionally, it has a headphone jack, supports TF cards and SIM cards, and can handle light gaming. While local gaming is manageable, using it with a streaming controller is quite enjoyable, even though the decoding delay is around 12ms, the experience is still acceptable.
The screen is an 8-inch 16:10 fully laminated LCD with a resolution of 1920×1200, 283 ppi, a contrast ratio of 1200:1, and a maximum brightness of 450 nits. The viewing angle is 178°, making it quite good for watching videos and movies. Unfortunately, it has a single speaker, which is decent but certainly not comparable to modern devices with four or eight speakers. Additionally, Bilibili supports 4K video (though it’s generally unwatchable).
The performance core is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor, which feels somewhat weak by today’s standards. However, the full-powered 660 is still quite sufficient for non-gaming tasks, and its performance is not significantly worse than the 680. As a small tablet, it’s adequate for reading text and comics. This series offers high playability and is a good choice for entry-level tinkering.
Photography is not the primary function of a tablet, but the Mi Pad 4 does come with a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front camera. The camera is adequate for scanning documents, and while I don’t know the exact model of the camera, using Google Camera has surprisingly improved its performance. It’s sufficient for everyday tasks like taking pictures of notes or menus.
The 6000mAh battery offers decent battery life, but since this is a second-hand device from 2018, the battery health has significantly degraded. The 10W charging is quite slow by today’s standards, taking over 3 hours to fully charge from a low battery. The RAM is relatively small, and having too many background applications can cause lag (though using it with a memory management module can help).
As for the price, those with minor flaws are generally priced just over 100 yuan, while models with larger storage are around 120 yuan. For a price of around 100 yuan, you can get a device in good condition with decent battery life (or a new battery) that is still comfortable for watching TV and videos, though it may not be suitable for everyone.