Android tablets are not as plenty nowadays compared to years before but the demand for them is still there. And that’s the demand that realme
wants to satisfy with the launch of its first tablet, the realme Pad. It’s a simple budget Android tablet that aims to offer an all-around experience and is now available locally with a starting price of PHP 10,990. We’ve been using it for some time now, so let’s see if it is definitely value for money. Here’s our full review of the realme Pad.
Design and Construction
The realme Pad offers a premium design at an affordable price. It is made from aluminum alloy, it’s thin, and feels comfortable in the hands thanks to its rounded corners and flat edges. The unit we have is in the Gray color with a matte finish that keeps fingerprints and smudges away and it is also available in Gold colorway if you’re interested.
Weighing 440g, it does feel heavy carrying the Pad, but it’s more lightweight compared to other tablets.
Upfront we get a 10.4-inch display with thick bezels on all sides. In horizontal orientation, you’ll find the front camera on the top bezel.
Holding the Pad in portrait orientation, on the right side are the volume rocker, two microphones, and a microSD card slot. There’s nothing found on the left.
Then up top, we get the power/lock button together with two speakers.
At the bottom are the USB Type-C port, two more loudspeakers, and the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Overall, realme did a good job here, the design is simple yet elegant and despite having thick bezels on all sides, it actually makes holding the tablet easier, without triggering any inadvertent screen touches. Placement of the headphone jack is quite weird but not a hindrance once you plug-in your earphones.
Display and Multimedia
realme Pad sports a 10.4-inch IPS LCD screen with a resolution of 1200 x 2000px, and a pixel density of 224ppi. There’s no glass protection mentioned and there’s no tempered glass pre-installed.
Despite having an IPS panel, the display looks sharp, has decent viewing angles and brightness is good even when using it under direct sunlight. However, the Pad is quite reflective which some of you might get annoyed with, especially when watching your favorite series. Also, there’s no HDR support here.
In the display settings, you can switch between the usual Light Mode and Dark Mode. There are also several modes like reading mode and night light, which are perfect options if you love reading e-books. As for the refresh rate, you have the standard 60Hz.
Audio-wise, it’s quad-speaker gets loud enough to fill a small room and it’s worth mentioning that it includes Dolby Atmos that makes the sound crisp and clear.
Cameras
The realme Pad has 8MP rear and front cameras. The camera interface is quite simple, with nothing much to play around with. It does have an expert mode that lets you adjust some settings like the ISO shutter speed, white balance, autofocus, and exposure.
For quality, don’t expect too much. With the rear camera, we get good contrast, colors, and a good dynamic range under good lighting conditions. Details are not that sharp but still usable, especially for social media postings. When it comes to low-light shots, images are noisy, so it’s better not to use it in low light settings.
The selfie camera was surprisingly good though, quality is decent and natural skin tone is retained. There’s also an ultrawide angle which is useful for video calls.
For videos, you can shoot up to 1080p at 30fps, both for the front and rear camera. Videos can be shaky as there is no electronic stabilization here. We enjoyed using the front camera for video calls as it is clear and and again you can opt to widen the angle under the camera settings.
OS, UI, and Apps
Running the software department is Android 11 skinned with realme UI. It looks similar to stock android and we appreciate the lack of bloatware here, however some of you might get disappointed as realme also lessens its custom features. There’s no themes, you can’t change icons or fonts, no always-on display and no sidebar option as what we see on realme smartphones.
There’s an app drawer and 3-button navigation on default, but you change it to gesture navigation if you like to.
For security, there is no fingerprint scanner, so face recognition is the only way to quickly unlock the device and it worked reliably.
The unit we have has 32GB of internal storage, and out of that we get 23GB of usable space right out of the box. There’s also a 4GB+64GB variant and 6GB+128GB variant available, and all of them are LTE supported except for this one. All realme Pad is expandable up to 1TB via microSD card.
Performance and Benchmarks
When it comes to performance, with a MediaTek Helio G80 processor paired with a Mali-G52 GPU, 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage, the realme Pad handles things very well, such as Zoom calls, browsing the web, watching YouTube videos and binge watching movies or Netflix.
Multitasking is excellent too, however, it’s not that great when it comes to gaming. Genshin Impact and Pokemon Unite had a few hiccups with texture quality. The game worked the smoothest with the graphics set to their lowest settings. That said, it’s great for using social media apps, browsing websites, and streaming video from Netflix or YouTube.
Through our standard benchmark apps, here are the results we got:
- Antutu v9.1.7 – 211,371
- GeekBench 5 – 349 (Single-Core), 1,308 (Multi-Core), 1,119 (OpenCL)
- PC Mark – 8,235 (Work 3.0)
- 3D Mark – 173 (Wild Life), 1,363 (OpenGL 3.1), 1,403 (Vulkan)
- Androbench – 294.29 MB/s (Read), 135.17 MB/s (Write)
Connectivity and Battery Life
Connectivity-wise, the realme Pad has the basic ones, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, Wi-Fi and USB Type-C.
Checking out the battery, the realme Pad has a 7,100mAh battery with 18W fast charging. This tablet can easily last 2-3 days with normal usage, and 1 day with heavy usage. Charging 0 – 100% takes two hours and 30 minutes to charge.
So, we ran it through the PCMark’s Work 3.0 battery test and the device got a very low 5 hours and 26 minutes. Meanwhile, in our standard video loop test which entails playing a 1080p video on loop at 50% brightness, 50% volume, and airplane mode turned on, it yielded 14 hours and 42 minutes.
Conclusion
The realme Pad is available locally for PHP 10,990 for the 3GB + 32GB variant (WiFi only), PHP 14,990 for the 4GB + 64GB option with 4G LTE support and PHP 16,990 for the 6GB + 128GB variant with 4G LTE support.
The realme Pad delivers on what it promises. It has decent performance and gets its basics right when it comes to the display, battery life, and user experience. If you’re looking for a bang-for-the-buck Android tablet to get your regular work done or just need a bigger device for your binge-watching needs, you can definitely consider the realme Pad.
However, if you’re looking for a more powerful budget Android tablet then we recommend you get the Xiaomi Pad 5 instead, as it performs way better, supports HDR10, 120Hz display, long battery life, better cameras and it has a Xiaomi Smart Pen.
So that’s it for our realme Pad review. What are your thoughts about it? Let us know in the comments below.
realme Pad specs:
10.4-inch IPS (1200 x 2000) display
MediaTek Helio G80 processor
Mali-G52 MC2 GPU
3GB,4GB, 6GB RAM
32GB, 64GB, 128GB storage
8MP main rear camera
8MP selfie camera
4G LTE
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
Bluetooth 5.0
USB Type-C 2.0
7,100mAh battery with 18W fast charging
246.1 x 155.9 x 6.9 mm
440 g
Real Gray, Real Gold
.lwrp.link-whisper-related-posts{
margin-top: 40px;
margin-bottom: 30px;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-title{
}.lwrp .lwrp-description{
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-container{
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-multi-container{
display: flex;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-double{
width: 48%;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-triple{
width: 32%;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-row-container{
display: flex;
justify-content: space-between;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-row-container .lwrp-list-item{
width: calc(25% - 20px);
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-item:not(.lwrp-no-posts-message-item){
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-item img{
max-width: 100%;
height: auto;
object-fit: cover;
aspect-ratio: 1 / 1;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-item.lwrp-empty-list-item{
background: initial !important;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-item .lwrp-list-link .lwrp-list-link-title-text,
.lwrp .lwrp-list-item .lwrp-list-no-posts-message{
}@media screen and (max-width: 480px) {
.lwrp.link-whisper-related-posts{
}
.lwrp .lwrp-title{
}.lwrp .lwrp-description{
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-multi-container{
flex-direction: column;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-multi-container ul.lwrp-list{
margin-top: 0px;
margin-bottom: 0px;
padding-top: 0px;
padding-bottom: 0px;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-double,
.lwrp .lwrp-list-triple{
width: 100%;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-row-container{
justify-content: initial;
flex-direction: column;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-row-container .lwrp-list-item{
width: 100%;
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-item:not(.lwrp-no-posts-message-item){
}
.lwrp .lwrp-list-item .lwrp-list-link .lwrp-list-link-title-text,
.lwrp .lwrp-list-item .lwrp-list-no-posts-message{
};
}