Xiaomi launches affordable iPad Air rival with bright 144Hz display and large battery

Xiaomi has launched its new flagship phones that are powered by the next-gen Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 line of SoCs, but these smartphones weren't the only highlight of the event. The brand has also released the Pad 9 series in China, and the vanilla tablet could be a good pick for those looking for an affordable rival to the iPad Air 11-inch.

This affordable Xiaomi tablet features an 11.2-inch display with a 144Hz refresh rate, 800 nits peak brightness rating, and DC dimming. The company highlights that it has a resolution of 3200x2136 pixels, supports Dolby Vision, and offers 12-bit color depth, making it a good pick for watching media. However, it's an IPS panel, and an OLED display would have made this tablet much better against the competition.

Under the hood, the Xiaomi Pad 9 packs the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, an upper-mid-range SoC from 2025, paired with up to 256GB of UFS 4.1 storage and 12GB of LPDDR5T RAM. It's not as powerful as the Apple M4 that powers the latest iPad Air line, but it can easily handle day-to-day tasks and light to moderate gaming.

There's no microSD card slot available for storage expansion, but the good part is that the USB-C port of the tablet is USB 3.2 Gen 1 standard. That means the Type-C port has a 5Gbps transfer speed rating, which users can use to attach external storage to the tablet (Lexar ES3 512GB curr. $129.99 on Amazon).

The company further highlights that the Pad 9 can be a good productivity tool, thanks to the support for PC-level professional apps. There's support for the Focus Stylus Pro 12 as well, which has 16,384 levels of pressure sensitivity.

Other notable aspects of the tablet are a thin design, a relatively large 9,720mAh battery, 45W fast charging support, a quad-speaker setup, and WiFi 7. In China, the Xiaomi Pad 9 starts at CNY 2,999, about $447, while the top-end configuration costs CNY 3,799, around $566. International launch details are under wraps, but the tab is expected to go global alongside the Xiaomi 18 Pro.