Those looking for an Android tablet might want to hold off on any purchase for now, as a new offering from Chinese giant Xiaomi is imminently on the way.
Here’s what we know about the highly anticipated Xiaomi Pad 6, which is now confirmed to launch this month.
When will the Xiaomi Pad 6 be released?
Xiaomi has finally confirmed that the Pad 6 will launch on April 18at the same event where it will unveil the Xiaomi 13 Ultra phone and the Xiaomi Band 8 wearable.
The wait was long. The Pad 5 was first announced in China in August 2021, going on sale in the rest of the world later in early 2022. That means it’s been over a year since the Pad 5, and so to some respects, the Pad 6 already feels behind.
As with most Xiaomi products, we wouldn’t expect to see it available in the US, and if the previous generation is any guide, there may be a China-only Pro model, with only the regular Pad 6 having it. made abroad.
How much will the Xiaomi Pad 6 cost?
There’s no confirmation on an official price for the Pad 6 yet, so we’ll have to look at how much the previous generation costs to give us an idea. Here are the prices of the Xiaomi Pad 5:
- Xiaomi Pad 5 6GB / 128GB – £369 / $349 / ₹26,999
- Xiaomi Pad 5 6GB / 256GB – $399 / ₹28,999
As you can see, those prices are already pretty competitive against the 10.2-inch iPad it directly competes against. For this reason, we expect them to stay pretty much the same when the Xiaomi Pad 6 arrives.
What specs and features will we see in the Xiaomi Pad 6?
We’re only starting to see the first leaks about the Pad 6 series, which should include the Xiaomi Pad 6 and Pad 6 Pro – although we did see one of the two models in the official image at the top of this page, which displays a range of colors and keyboard and stylus support.
The best information we have comes from XiaomiUI, which found code alluding to these two tablets, codenamed “pipa” and “liuqin” respectively.
According to the dive code, the standard Xiaomi Pad 6 will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870, the natural evolution from the 860 of its predecessor.
The Pad 6 Pro will be more powerful, using the flagship Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip. The code also details more specs here, including an 1880×2880 120Hz AMOLED display, quad stereo speakers and a dual-camera setup. rear which will apparently consist of a main camera and a depth sensor. A zoom in on the official image reveals that this main lens should be 50Mp.
We’ve since heard more from the generally reliable leaker Weibo digital chat station. He agrees that both tablets will use the Snapdragon 870 and 8+ Gen 1 respectively, adding that the Pro will go up to 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
He disagrees slightly on the screens though, predicting that both tablets will use similar 11-inch screens with 1800×2880 resolution – similar to the one above, but not exactly the same – adding that while the Pad 6 will use a refresh rate of 120Hz, the Pro will be faster at 144Hz.
Interestingly, he also adds that both tablets will come with fingerprint scanners – which weren’t on last year’s models – and have the same 67W wired charging.
With no other clear indicators of what the new model will feature, here’s what we’d like to see with the Xiaomi Pad 6.
Better connectivity options
In our review of the Xiaomi Pad 5, one of the few hardware improvements we thought needed was in connectivity. First off, there’s no LTE version available, which can be a problem if you find yourself out of Wi-Fi range. So we’re hoping for at least a 4G model on the Pad 6 if the 5G capabilities are still too expensive to achieve these low prices. Wi-Fi 6 would also be nice, although it’s not exactly pressing since most people still don’t have compatible routers at home.
More memory
While Xiaomi offers two storage variants on the Pad 5 – 128GB and 256GB – both come with 6GB of RAM. Granted, that’s not too bad, but we’d be much happier to see 8GB in the Pad 6, especially if the anticipated tablet-optimized Android 12L OS arrives this year.
Pro Models Worldwide
Of course, Xiaomi could solve all the problems we described above by simply releasing the Pro models which only arrived in China in the form of the Pad 5 Pro. These came with 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and offered an 8GB/256GB configuration which would have been perfect. So the answer already exists, just put it on some ships and deliver it to those shores.
Hopefully the Xiaomi Pad 6 will make that a reality. If you can’t wait that long, check out our roundup of the best Android tablets to see if there’s anything else you like.
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