Artist Review: Redmi Pad 2 (2025) with Redmi Smart Pen

Not a sponsored review

The Redmi Pad 2 was released in June 2025. This new Android tablet from Xiaomi pretty much sets the standard for budget tablets going forward. This tablet provides incredible value for money.

Prices are listed below:

• 4GB 128GB Wifi-only: SGD 219 (USD 170)
• 8GB 256GB Wifi-only: SGD 249 (USD 193)
• 8GB 256GB with 4G: SGD 279 (USD 217)
• Xiaomi Smart Pen: SGD 49 (USD 38)

Those are the official retail prices here in Singapore. You can get the tablet at even lower price on Shopee SG.

I bought the tablet and pen from Shopee SG for SGD 209 and SGD 44 for a total of SGD 253. This is a great deal for a good tablet.

Bottom line

Budget tablets usually have many compromises due to the low price point. The Redmi Pad 2 however delivers way more than what I had expected.

The tablet has a bright, sharp and vibrant LCD with 90Hz refresh rate. The 4 stereo speakers sound good, and audio quality is usually the first to be sacrificed in budget tablets.

The MediaTek Helio G100-Ultra and 8GB of RAM provides smooth overall performance for general use. Light gaming is possible but don't expect to play graphics intensive games at the highest graphics settings.

There's pen support, face unlock, auto-brightness, microSD card slot, 4G cellular model, 3.5mm audio jack and really long battery life.

And since there's an included flipcase, this may be a good inexpensive tablet for children as well who like to throw things around.

Downsides would be the lack of fingerprint scanner, long charging time

Specifications

Things included

• Tablet
• Flip case
• SIM ejector
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• 15W USB-A charger
• User manual
• Warranty info

Redmi Smart Pen is sold separately.

Design

Design of the tablet looks good. Corners for body and LCD are rounded off. Bezels are quite thin. The front is just 5MP but at least it supports face unlock and auto-brightness.

All the sides are flat. The top has the power button (no fingerprint scanner) and two speakers. There are two more speakers at the bottom.

Audio quality from the 4-way speakers has good clarity and decent surround. Audio quality is usually the first thing that budget tablets would sacrifice so I was genuinely shocked that the speakers actually sound good.

The bottom has two speakers, USB-C port with USB 2 transfer speed and a rare 3.5mm audio jack.

The SIM tray is located on the long side. There is an option to purchase the tablet with 4G cellular and the price difference is just SGD 30.

The back is matte textured metal and there's one 8MP camera. I guess the 5MP front and 8MP back cameras are probably the limitations of this tablet. Not really an issue because how often do you use those cameras to take photos? 8MP camera is still high res enough to scan documents, thankfully.

Xiaomi has even included a well made flip case.

The flip case protects the front, long sides, but not the top and bottom.

Display

This is an 11-inch LCD with 2560 x 1600 resolution. Aspect ratio is 16:10. Refresh rate is 90Hz.

Brightness is up to 500 nits with a 600 nits outdoor mode. Brightness is more than sufficient for use in a bright indoor environment. Even 600 nits won't be bright enough for use under sunlight or near sunlight.

Viewing angles are good but there's slight drop in brightness probably due to the refraction of the glass display.

The display is laminated so there's almost no parallax between the line and pen tip when writing.

This is a good display that's bright, vibrant and sharp.

Performance

The tablet uses the MediaTek Helio G100 Ultra processor with 2x Arm Cortex-A76 (up to 2.2GHz) and 6x Arm Cortex-A55 (up to 2.0GHz).

I don't have benchmarks tests for you but I can say that the overall performance for this tablet is smooth and responsive, thanks to the 90Hz refresh rate too.

This tablet can be purchased with either 4GB with 128GB storage, or 8GB RAM with 256GB storage. Definitely get 8GB RAM if you can spend the extra money. 8GB RAM will provide you with better multi-tasking experience.

OS and software

The tablet runs on Xiaomi HyperOS v2.0.103.0 on top of Android 15 and there is official support for Google Play Store.

I'm not sure how many years of OS updates this tablet will be getting but Xiaomi has mentioned that this tablet will receive security updates until June 2032.

Xiaomi HyperOS runs fine. It has split screen, no PC mode, raise to wake, double tap to wake or sleep and auto-brightness.

Pen

The Redmi Smart Pen is Redmi's first active pen.

This pen supports tilt, 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity, and palm rejection. Latency is 10 ms. Initial activation force is 10g. Battery life is rated for 12 hours. Touch sampling rate for the pen is 240Hz.

Battery life of the pen can only be seen in the pen setting's page. When the pen's battery life drops to 10%, an alert will appear on the display.

The pen uses Bluetooth and has a 240 mAh internal battery. The pen does not support magnetic charging so charging is through the USB-C port.

Important: Do not let pens with internal batteries to remain in discharged state for long periods of time (months) because that will damage the battery. If you do not use the pen regularly, you should charge the pen at least once a month (with the help of your calendar alarm).

The pen has two side buttons but no eraser at the back. You can press and hold the buttons for pre-programmed shortcuts:

• Button closer to pen tip: Opens up the Mi Notes app
• The other button: Opens up the screenshot interface

It's possible to set additional shortcuts to those buttons with your drawing or note taking app. But because the Redmi shortcuts cannot be disable, it is possible to launch the Mi Notes and screenshot UI with accidental button presses.

There's one spare pen tip replacement included in the pen's box. Replacement pen tips can be purchased from AliExpress.

Line tests

The pen performance is very similar to the Xiaomi Focus Pen.

Line tests below were created with Medibang.

1. Initial activation force is very low. Thin lines can be drawn easily even with a thick brush selected. There's wobble and jitter when drawing slow diagonal lines.

Note the little dot at the start of the lines. This problem affects Medibang Paint and CSP. This usually happens when drawing with a very light touch. It may be possible to choose a brush that does not have this effect. The problem with the dot does not affect Sketchbook, IbisPaintX, Concepts, Infinite Painter, Sketches.

2. Lines are able to taper smoothly but could be sharper.

3. Line transition from thin to thick and back to thin is smooth. This is also a diagonal line and there's diagonal line wobble and jitter.

4. Consistent line width can be drawn easily by maintaining consistent pressure.

5. Dots can be drawn easily.

6. Lines can join without leaving gaps or lines overshooting regardless of the angle of the pen.

Tilt sensitivity seems to work better than the Xiaomi Focus Pen, but still not as good as the Samsung S Pen. I was able to get tilt to work with Concepts, Sketchbook and Infinite Painter.

Tilt could not work with Krita, and could not use the settings to change things because the Krita UI is too big for the 11-inch display, so I can't see the whole settings page and click on the Save button.

Drawing experience

The 11-inch display is best used with drawing apps that have minimal user interface elements, so apps such as Krita and Clip Studio Paint are not ideal. But CSP has a tablet mode for minimal UI elements so it's still ultimately usable.

Here's a drawing I created with Medibang Paint.

Drawing experience is mostly fine. Palm rejection is an issue as I would activate the double tap undo quite often with my palm on the display. Palm rejection is an issue that can affect apps that support double finger tap to undo.

Another thing that affects drawing experience is it's not that easy to control the pen on the glossy glass display. I won't consider the pen tip to be slippery, but it does glide quite smoothly on the glass which is good for writing but not as ideal for drawing.

I did not experience the problem with the little dot at the start of the line for this drawing using the Medibang app.

Medibang does have noticeable latency so that affects the drawing experience, but Concepts app (below) has minimal latency so the experience is better.

And these are sketches drawn with my main drawing app Concepts.

For this drawing above, you can see the diagonal line wobble affect one side of the jawline and the neckline below. Other lines are straighter only because I draw them relatively fast, but when you slow down to draw diagonal lines, you can expect wobble and jitter.

To remove the wobble and jitter when drawing diagonal lines, you can increase the stablisation of the brush, but that will increase the latency.

Note taking experience is good. The tablet, pen and apps I use are able to capture my handwriting style quite accurately. I did not experience any issues with note taking.

Battery life

Battery capacity is 9000 mAh. Battery life with 75% brightness is around 15 hours easily.

Downsides

Auto-brightness does not work well as it sometimes just does not work.

Conclusion

I'm pleasantly surprised by how much the Redmi Pad 2 offers considering the price point. The display is bright, vibrant and sharp, and has 90Hz refresh rate. Audio quality sounds good. Performance overall is smooth. Processor is just powerful enough for light gaming. No issues with multi-tasking.

This tablet provides more than satisfactory user experience. This tablet is probably the one that sets the standards for budget tablet going forward. Usually budget tablets would sacrifice audio quality and/or display quality but the Redmi Pad 2 does not.

Pen performance is alright. Good enough for note taking, but just alright for casual drawing.

This is a budget tablet that I can recommend easily.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Clean simple design
+ Excellent build quality
+ Bright, vibrant, sharp display
+ 90Hz refresh rate
+ Laminated display
+ MicroSD card slot
+ 4G cellular model available
+ 4-speaker audio quality is good
+ 3.5mm audio jack
+ Portrait apps are automatically rotated in landscape orientation
+ No bloatware
+ Xiaomi HyperOS is stable
+ 15 hour battery life easily
- No PC mode
- Slow diagonal lines have wobble or jitter
- Xiaomi file manager has no integration with Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox
- No sure if backup options will backup 100% of the tablet

Availability

Redmi Pad 2 is available from AliExpress. Make sure to get the global version.

Those is Singapore can get the tablet from Shopee SG which was where I bought mine.