For a long time now, we’ve been hearing that Xiaomi is to announce their own Android tablet, running of course, their MIUI software. Today, the Chinese giant is finally introducing their MiPad and what a tablet it is. Taking more than just a little inspiration from Apple, the 7.9-inch MiPad is powered by Nvidia’s latest and greatest and is a colorful, plastic affair aimed, once again, at the masses. For its Chinese price tag of just 1,499 Yuan, it’s hard to see why people wouldn’t want to give this WiFi-only tablet a try.
The MiPad features a 7.9-inch 2048 x 1536 display, which astute readers will note is exactly the same as the iPad mini, and deviates from Android’s 16:10 ratio used for tablets in favor of a 4:3 ratio. While the 4:3 ratio can be good for apps, it’s not great for consuming media on and a lot of Android apps are coded to use a widescreen format. Nevertheless, the display isn’t short on pixels and on the inside, the MiPad isn’t short on power, either. The Nvidia Tegra K1 inside Xiaomi’s latest is a quad-core Cortex A15 beast clocked at 2.2 Ghz with a Kepler Desktop-class GeForce GPU. The same type of GPU I use to play Titanfall is at the heart of this tablet, which isn’t to be sniffed at. With 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage – expandable to 128GB through the microSD card slot – the MiPad has a lot going for it.
A new version of MIUI is included on the MiPad, this time running on top of Android 4.4.2 KitKat and is said to be a little more tablet friendly. There’s a 5-megapixel front-facing camera included, as well as an 8-megapixel shooter around back. Bluetooth 4.0 and WiFi b/g/n are all included and the device will be available in 16 and 32GB variants for 1,499 Yuan ($240) and 1,799 Yuan, respectively. It’s to be available in a range of colors, including green, turquiose, pink, black and white. Bizarrely, the MiPad will be available next month, but only to those that have been chosen in an open beta of sorts. It seems that Xiaomi is looking to get some feedback on their software before they put it up for sale for all. Take a look at the photos below and let us know what you guys think to the new MiPad.
