Redmi Pad SE 8.7 Review

Tablets are becoming a lot of people’s go-to device whether it be for productivity or for entertainment. Being able to have a bigger display than what you are used to on a smartphone helps with spotting things better.

Of course, having a bigger screen means that there is a chance that the device may be heavy to carry. Well, Redmi has just released their latest entry in the tablet market with the Redmi Pad SE 8.7. It gives a bigger screen than the smartphone that you use and it isn’t too heavy.

So, how does it fare with everyday use? We did the research for you in this review.

Design and Construction

The Redmi Pad SE 8.7 has a polycarbonate (PC) body with glass fiber reinforcement. I don’t recommend having a tablet without any protection around it, especially this one. I’m worried that, if it doesn’t have a case, it may be prone to cracks and the like. 

Our review unit comes in Grey, but there are Green and Blue color variants available.

The design is very minimalistic. In a landscape view, you can spot the Redmi logo at the top left corner with the watermarks on the bottom left. The circular camera island is at the top right side where you can see the lens and the LED flash.

In the same horizontal orientation, you have two speakers with one on the right and left sides of the Pad SE 8.7. You can see an IR blaster on the right side too. The left side, meanwhile, has a 3.5mm audio port, the singular microphone, and the USB-C port for charging and data transfers. The top side has the volume and power buttons. 

I want to note that nowadays, most tablets have their front cameras on the side where the volume and power buttons are. With the Redmi Pad SE 8.7, however, it is at the left side (in a landscape orientation) so that is something to note, but we will get to that later.

Display, Biometrics and Multimedia

With the Redmi Pad SE 8.7, as the name suggests, you get an 8.7-inch LCD panel with up to 90Hz refresh rate and a 5:3 aspect ratio. It is TÜV Rheinland Low Blue Light certified and TÜV Rheinland Flicker Free certified too so you can be sure that your eyes won’t hurt too much when using this tablet for long periods of time.

I’ve been using this tablet to mainly catch up with my eBooks and, with its size, it felt really comfortable to hold with one hand while swiping the digital pages with the other. There is also a Reading Mode setting that switches to warmer tones, reducing the amount of blue light and eye strain. This can also be scheduled should users prefer a time for the tablet to switch modes.

Besides that, the display doesn’t disappoint when it comes to viewing media like photos and videos. The colors are almost comparable to real life with skin tones being accurate and colors, especially greens, are vibrant.

In the audio department, though it is Dolby Atmos supported, you do only get dual speakers. They are a bit loud, sure, but when you are in a crowded environment, chances are that other sounds may drown out the sound. That’s why I appreciate the 3.5mm audio jack so you can connect that to listen to whatever you are watching or jamming to.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering the Redmi Pad SE 8.7 is a MediaTek Helio G85 chipset with an Adreno 710 GPU. This processor came out back in April 2020 — a four year-old chip. It has two Cortex-A75 clocked at 2.0GHz and six Cortex-A55 with a max speed of 1.8GHz.

There are two storage configurations that you can get with the Redmi Pad SE 8.7: 4GB of RAM with either 64GB of storage or 128GB. You can expand the storage with a microSD card of up to 2TB. 

I tried to play both Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact on this tablet, but even at its lowest settings, you can expect some form of lag. You can get your dailies done here, sure, but at the cost of graphic quality. The Pad SE 8.7 will heat up almost after an hour of gameplay with those games, but it will get the job done nonetheless.

As for Pokémon Unite, my choice of Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), I was able to run the game in High graphics quality while having the Frame Rate on High too. I experienced a tiny bit of lag, but it did not disturb my game enough to make me lose my matches. So, for MOBAs, it should be able to run the game provided that it isn’t a graphic-intensive title.

For benchmarks, here’s what we got:

• Antutu – 272,454
• Antutu Storage Test – 15,408
  • S.Read – 3,192
  • Speed: 321.0MB/s
  • S.Write – 1,667
  • Speed: 145.3MB/s
  • R.Access – 8,629
  • R.Speed: 96.0MB/s
  • W.Speed: 138.0MB/s
  • AI Read – 1,920MB/s
  • Speed: 48.0MB/s

• 3D Mark: Wild Life – 691
• • Average frame rate – 4.14 FPS

Geekbench 6 CPU

• Single: 412
• Multi: 1,443
• GPU OpenCL: 542
• GPU Vulcan: 1,016

• PCMark Work 3.0 Performance – 7,734

Camera

For cameras, there is an 8MP for the rear camera while the selfie cam shoots using a 5MP. I would not hold my breath when it comes to the quality of a tablet camera, in my opinion, and this is no different. Colors are oversaturated while the details of the subject are not evident when zoomed in. Even with Night Mode used, the shots still come out a bit blurry even if it is focused on the subject.

As for the front shooter? It’s pretty decent for video calls if that’s what you’re looking for in a tablet, but I am not a fan of the selfie camera here.

Here are our sample photos of the Redmi Pad SE 8.7!

Front camera sample:

Rear camera sample:

OS, UI, Apps

The Redmi Pad SE 8.7 uses Xiaomi HyperOS 1.0.4 based on Android 14. It looks like your everyday Android tablet UI with not that much bloatware which is pretty nice and clean.

And, if you’re looking to multitask with the tablet, the only thing it supports is Parallel windows which allows you to display two apps side-by-side when the tablet is in a horizontal orientation. There are no floating windows here on this tablet if you are looking for that. I also noticed that there is no stylus support here which makes sense since the Pad SE 8.7 does not come with one.

Connectivity and Battery Life

A 6,650mAh battery powers the Redmi Pad SE 8.7. It took about two hours to charge the tablet from 20% to 100% even with its 18W fast charging support. Another thing to note is that it did not come with a charging brick compared to other Redmi devices so take note of that. I was able to read some books, watched videos and played some casual games on the Pad SE 8.7 which lasted me the whole day and up until the next day’s noon. 

Our PCMark Work 3.0 Battery Life test yielded a result of 21 hours and 8 minutes while our proprietary video loop test where we replay a 1080p video at 50% brightness, 0% volume, and in airplane mode got a total of 8 hours and 11 minutes.

Pricing and Conclusion

The Redmi Pad SE 8.7 is a good choice for those who are looking for a tablet to go through social media and read their eBooks or documents. It has a great display panel especially for its compact size, making it easy for you to travel around with the Pad SE 8.7. Of course, if you are looking for a gaming tablet, though, this may not be the one for you.

The Redmi Pad SE 8.7 is priced at 5,999 pesos for the 64GB variant, while the 128GB version goes for PHP 6,999. You can find this in Xiaomi’s official Shopee page.

If you are also after the slim leather case, it has a price tag of PHP 599 in Shopee. 

What we like:

• Decent display
• Loud audio quality
• Good battery life

What we don’t like:

• Below average chipset
• Not so good cameras

Redmi Pad SE 8.7 specs:
8.7-inch HD+ LCD
1340 x 800 pixels, 90Hz refresh rate
600 nits (outdoor mode) peak brightness
MediaTek Helio G85 chipset
12nm, 8-cores, up to 2.0GHz
4GB LPDDR4x RAM
64GB, 128GB eMMC 5.1 storage
Expandable up to 2TB via microSD (dedicated slot)
8MP f/2.0 rear camera
5MP f/2.2 front camera
Dual SIM
4G LTE
WiFi 5, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 5.3
GPS/AGPS, Beidou, Glonass, Galileo
USB Type-C (USB 2.0)
3.5mm audio jack
Dual speakers, Dolby Atmos
Xiaomi HyperOS (Android 14)
6650mAh battery
Up to 18W charging (wired)
211.58 x 125.48 x 8.8 mm (dimensions)
375 grams (weight)
Grey, Green, Blue (colors)