You are currently viewing Realme Pad X Best Review: Should You Buy This Tablet Instead of the Xiaomi Pad 5, or the iPad Air?
Realme Pad X Best Review: Should You Buy This Tablet Instead of the Xiaomi Pad 5, or the iPad Air?

Realme Pad X Best Review: Should You Buy This Tablet Instead of the Xiaomi Pad 5, or the iPad Air?

Buying an Androidpowered tablet in India is quite difficult with most brands these days only offering models that are either underpowered or too expensive. Google hasn’t focussed much on tablets when it comes to developing Android, which makes things difficult for manufacturers who want to deliver a quality experience (with apps) at the right price. So, every Android tablet (budget or premium) largely has the same problems – poorly optimized UI and apps, and lots of wasted screen space. In comparison, Apple’s iPads have the benefit of iPad OS and better support from third-party app developers.

Also, Read Xiaomi Pad 5 Review – Best Detailed Information [2022 Updated].

So, what if a smartphone brand wanted to launch a tablet that offered more value for money than anything else available in the budget segment? Well, that’s Realme, with the new Realme Pad X. After a week of use, I can conclude that despite the limitations of Android tablets in general, it is worth its price for those looking for a budget tablet primarily for media consumption.

Realme Pad X was launched in India earlier this year as the company’s first tablet to offer 5G connectivity. It has an 11-inch display and features a quad-speaker setup. The tablet is powered by a Snapdragon 695 SoC and packs an 8,340mAh battery. You also get support for accessories such as the Realme Smart Keyboard and the Realme Pencil. The tablet is available in Wi-Fi and cellular configurations, and the latter competes with the Xiaomi Pad 5, which has a more powerful processor and a Dolby Vision-certified display.

Realme Pad X specs:

Realme Pad X Specification
Realme Pad X Specification

10.95-inch 1200×2000 IPS LCD display | Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G chip, 4GB/6GB RAM, up to 128GB storage | 13MP rear + 8MP front camera | 8340mAh battery with 33W fast charging.

With Apple offering no competition in the affordable tablet segment, Android tablet makers like Xiaomi, Realme, Oppo, and Motorola offer several options across different price segments. If you’re in the market for a tablet with an 11-inch display, then you can pick the Realme Pad X which starts at Rs. 19,999, or the Xiaomi Pad 5, which is currently priced at Rs. 26,999, or you can even buy the iPad Air (2022) model that is priced at Rs. 44,900.

Unlike the Xiaomi Pad 5, which is powered by a Snapdragon 870 SoC, the Realme Pad X comes with the Snapdragon 695 SoC under the hood. The former offers better performance, though both tablets pale in comparison to the iPad Air (2022), which, of course, also costs a great deal more.

The Realme Pad X features a plastic frame and a plastic rear panel and is available in two color options: Glacier Blue and Glowing Grey.

Realme Pad X: What’s good?

Design and build

The Realme Pad X comes with the solid build quality and this is noticeable the moment you pull it out of the box. The back is plastic, but it does not feel flimsy as such. There are no wobbly or mushy buttons. The tablet feels pretty premium in hand given the price. This is great to see because the build quality is usually one of the first areas to get the axe on affordable tech. The color and build here also reminded me of the smaller Realme Pad Mini that I tried out a few months ago.

Display

Realme Pad X Display
Realme Pad X Display

The Pad X comes with a great display for the price. This is a large 10.95-inch tablet with a resolution of 1200 x 2000 pixels. The tablet also makes the most of this on-screen real estate with several new software features across Realme UI that let you seamlessly multitask using split screens that you can resize and floating windows that you can drag around.

Although the rear shell is made of plastic, it does not look like it. I mistook it for glass while unboxing the Realme Pad X but once I held it, it was quickly evident that it wasn’t. That being said, the tablet does not feel cheap. Realme seems to have used some good quality plastics for the tablet and the glittery finish on the back panel makes it look quite premium. The company calls it the ‘Glowing Light Design’. There is also a Glacier Blue color, which should do a slightly better job of hiding fingerprints and smudges.

On the front, the Realme Pad X has a huge 10.95-inch IPS LCD with a WUXGA+ resolution (1200×2000 pixels). While the screen is of the LCD variety, it offers quite a good viewing experience. There is barely any visible color shift when viewed off-angle, and with 450 nits of peak brightness, the display is easily legible under most lighting conditions.

When outdoors though, I preferred keeping the display brightness at max for a better viewing experience. The symmetrical bezels around the display are fairly thin for an Android tablet at this price. I also liked how the company has placed the front camera on the right bezel (landscape mode), something which is now also seen in the iPad 10th generation (Review). This helps keep the user in the center of the frame when using the tablet horizontally on video calls.

The screen is also adequately bright for indoor use, but it remains an LCD screen, so while you do get good depth and color reproduction here, don’t expect AMOLED-level contrast ratios. Watching YouTube or a movie on the Pad X was still enjoyable and apart from the display, this is also thanks to the sound

Sound –

Realme Pad X Sound
Realme Pad X Sound

The Realme Pad X comes with a quadspeaker setup (four speakers) and they can get loud, without adding any distortion. The sound is also pretty good for a tablet’s built-in speakers and doesn’t feel tinny or lack bass. This should somewhat make up for the lack of a 3.5mm port here, something that should, in my opinion, be present on all tablets.

Performance

The Realme Pad X is pretty good at general, day-to-day performance. Thanks to the Snapdragon 695 chip onboard, you get comparable performance to a mid-budget smartphone here (Rs 15k to Rs 20k),  with the perks of a large display. The Realme Pad X can also game to an extent and if you want, you can play titles like the recently banned BGMI here–which ran at Smooth+Ultra graphics.

However, you will need to keep the price in mind here and maintain realistic expectations when running resource-intensive apps on the Pad X or playing heavy games. While this is a productivity-driven device, it isn’t exactly one targeted particularly at power users. Another plus point is proper 5G support with 13 bands, which will ensure you can get high-speed data connectivity on this machine when 5G rolls out. There’s also microSD card support, in case you run out of onboard storage.

Camera

The Realme Pad X has two camera sensors. The rear camera uses a 13-megapixel sensor which is good enough for scanning documents. There is no LED flash here. If you wish to use the tablet to capture photos, expect decent colors and dynamic range but average details. The rear camera can shoot up to 1080p 60fps videos.

There is a single 13MP rear and 8MP front camera on the Realme Pad X and both of them get the job done. You can make video calls and join conferences without any quality issues and the rear camera is good enough to scan documents, enjoy some AR (augmented reality) apps and take pictures of your pet doing goofy things. It can also record video at up to 1080p+60fps.

A new Limelight feature also exists here as Realme’s take on Apple’s popular CenterStage feature. This allows the camera to pan and zoom in/zoom out to incorporate more people in the viewfinder when someone joins you during a video conference

Battery Life –

Realme Pad X Battery
Realme Pad X Battery

The Realme Pad X has fairly good battery life and the tablet can last between a full day and two-three days, depending on how often you use it and what you use it for. The tablet has average charging speeds, with the large battery juicing up to 50 percent in about 50-55 minutes.

Accessories

The Realme Pad X gets support for two exclusive accessories, a Smart Keyboard worth Rs 4,999 and a Realme Pencil worth Rs 5,499.  The keyboard comes with its USB type-C port and a tiny on/off switch. Once paired with the tablet, it works seamlessly and has no issues.

The tablet will also be able to intelligently detect when the external keyboard is attached and project/removes the on-screen keyboard accordingly.

The Realme Smart Keyboard also has good key travel and those familiar with Windows keyboard shortcuts will be able to use them here while typing or doing any other work.

The Realme Pencil comes with no dedicated button like some higher-end tablets and so, doesn’t offer any spectacular features. It is a simple stylus that lets you draw precisely, doodle, and take handwritten notes. The Pencil is great if you have drawing use cases but I didn’t find myself using it that much while using the tablet otherwise.

The good bit is that it can simply be magnetically tethered to the top of the Realme Pad X and it will charge without requiring a separate port or cable. Pretty cool for a tablet at this price point.

Realme Pad X accessories

Realme sent me a few accessories to test out with the Realme Pad X. Here are some quick impressions of each.

Keyboard case

The Realme Keyboard Case is fine. Typing on the keyboard is relatively comfortable and the keys have good travel and overall feel. It’s nothing special — the case is just a Bluetooth keyboard with its battery and charging port, and a switch that’s pretty poorly built and difficult to control. But it does the job and makes typing on the tablet easy.

Realme Pencil

The Realme Pencil is fine, but only for those who might want to use it for art-related purposes or take handwritten notes. It doesn’t stand up as a way to control the tablet in general and doesn’t have any built-in buttons or controls. It connects magnetically to the side of the tablet, like the Apple Pencil, but recommend avoiding it unless you want it for a specific purpose.

Software

The Realme Pad X comes with Android 12based Realme UI 3.0 and you surprisingly get a few preinstalled apps here. We’ve already mentioned the handy multitasking tools to split-screen and implement floating windows and those were pretty good to use and supported most apps without problems.

Realme also has a new screen-cast feature that not only lets users cast the display of their Realme phone on one side of the tablet. You can then access this virtual projection of the phone to directly use the phone itself. In this mode, you can also use drag and drop to quickly transfer files to the mobile device from the tablet. This is quite a neat feature. The downside, however, is that this works only with select high-end Realme smartphones like the GT series. Since I didn’t have one of these phones lying around at the moment, I couldn’t test the feature myself.

In terms of software, the Realme Pad X runs on the Android 12-based Realme UI 3.0 out of the box. The software experience is quite clean with no bloatware apps preinstalled. The software also comes with some useful features such as support for split-screen, sidebar, and floating windows. Split-screen can be enabled by swiping down using two fingers from the top of the display. The sidebar, on the other hand, lists a few apps that support floating windows, which means you can place these apps anywhere on the screen while your primary app is running alongside.

Realme UI 3.0 also allows users to customize app icons, themes, wallpapers, etc. There is no word on longterm Android updates but we can hope that the tablet at least gets the Android 13 update.

Realme Pad X: What’s not good?

For its asking price, the Realme Pad X doesn’t get a lot wrong, and while it does have some software optimizations it needs to work on smoother animations and transitions, especially while multitasking. This is a well-balanced tablet otherwise. If I were to nitpick, I would say that an AMOLED display here would have made this an even sweeter deal.

One improvement I wished for while using the tablet was multiple stand levels on the Realme Smart Keyboard case. You can only attach the tablet and keyboard at a particular angle at the moment and can’t tilt the screen upwards or downwards to your liking as you would be able to on a laptop. Two or three stand levels here would have been neat.


Verdict: Is the Realme Pad X for you?

If you’re looking for a well-performing tablet under Rs 20,000 that ticks most check boxes if not all, the Realme Pad X is a solid recommendation. It is a more powerful tablet than other devices in the segment and while it can’t quite compete toe-to-toe in terms of sheer performance with higher-end tablets like the new Xiaomi Pad 5, it is priced much lower and also gets an edge with 5G support. The Realme Pad X is currently the tablet to beat under Rs 20,000.

Pros –

  • Good build quality.
  • Big display.
  • Excellent battery life.
  • Capable performance unit.
  • Clean, feature-rich software.

Cons –

  • 5G variants are expensive.
  • Disappointing camera performance.
  • No headphone jack.

Realme Pad X is an excellent offering from Realme in the sub-Rs. 25,000 segment of Android tablets. It comes with a great display coupled with even more fantastic speakers. And it has the performance for everything you want to do with a tablet. Although most people don’t need the 5G support in a tablet, it is lovely.

Realme Pad X is easily the best tablet that Realme has ever produced, and it is a polished product with great build quality and stable software. It can be the perfect device if you are looking for media consumption and even gaming.

Realme should have given a 6/128GB option for the Wi-Fi-only variant, as the Wi-Fi-only variant comes in only a 4/64GB combo. 64GB isn’t enough and even the base variant of the 5G variant of Realme Pad X comes with 4/6GB. For the price of Rs. 25,999, at least 128GB of internal storage should have been given by the company. It feels like a crime to provide a measly 64GB for the price of Rs. 26,000.

The 6/128GB version costs Rs. 27,999 and at that price, this device is even costlier than the 6/128GB variant of the Xiaomi Pad 5. Even though Xiaomi’s tablet doesn’t come with cellular connectivity, for the similar pricing, Xiaomi Pad 5 would be a better buy. But the Wi-Fi-only variant offers so much for the price, making this the best Android tablet to get for Rs. 20,000.

Also, Read OnePlus Bullets Wireless Z2 Review: Good One at Under Rs 2,000.


FREQUENT ASK QUESTION

1. Is Realme pad a good tablet?

The Realme Pad X comes with the solid build quality and this is noticeable the moment you pull it out of the box.

2. Does Realme Pad X support call?

When you get an incoming call, the Buds will automatically switch to answer the call. 1. The performance data of the Snapdragon 695 5G Processor is from Qualcomm’s website. The AnTuTu Benchmark Score of realme Pad and real Pad X is based on data from realme labs.

3. Are Realme pads worth it?

This Pad is an insane value for money and the best tablet money can buy under $250. It has the best display, Widevine L1 support, and the best processor in its segment, and the built quality in metal seems nice. Currently running on Android 11.

This Post Has One Comment

Leave a Reply