Introduction and specs
With the unexpected surge in tablet demand after the pandemic hit, smartphone makers were bound to try their luck once again in a once thought to be a dying market segment. Realme is no exception, and its latest offering is the Realme Pad X. It seems like a productivity-oriented solution for the masses, but unfortunately, it's an India-only device. And we mean that in the best possible way - it's a shame such a great looking tablet is not available globally. Read on to see why.
Realme Pad X sports a relatively big 10.95-inch display, and a relatively powerful Snapdragon 695 SoC for everyday tasks and multitasking. Realme offers a pressure-sensitive stylus and a magnetic keyboard to go with it. So if you don't need a fully-fledged laptop, then the Realme Pad X is a very plausible solution.
Realme Pad X specs at a glance:
- Body: 252.2x163.8x7.1mm, 500g; Glass front, plastic frame, plastic back; Stylus support (magnetic charging).
- Display: 10.95" IPS LCD, 450 nits (peak), 1200x2000px resolution, 15:9 aspect ratio, 213ppi.
- Chipset: Qualcomm SM6375 Snapdragon 695 5G (6 nm): Octa-core (2x2.2 GHz Kryo 660 Gold & 6x1.7 GHz Kryo 660 Silver); Adreno 619.
- Memory: 64GB 4GB RAM, 128GB 6GB RAM; microSDXC.
- OS/Software: Android, Realme UI 3.0.
- Rear camera: 13 MP, f/2.2, (wide).
- Front camera: 8 MP, f/2.0, 105˚ (ultrawide).
- Video capture: Rear camera: 1080p@30fps; Front camera: 1080p@30fps.
- Battery: 8340mAh; Fast charging 33W, Reverse charging, USB Power Delivery.
- Misc: Accelerometer, gyro, compass; stereo speakers (4 speakers); dual mic system for noise reduction.
In addition to the said hardware, the Pad X draws power from a quite large 8.340 mAh battery, promising lots of hours of autonomy. The big battery is supplemented with a 33W fast Dart Charge.
In case you need connection at all times, the Pad X is also offered as a cellular model - with 5G, mind you, which also has a GPS receiver - a rare feature on a midrange tablet.
Despite its relatively affordable price tag, the Realme Pad X offers a premium build, although it feels kind of hefty in hand. Some users will definitely find that attractive as this feature is often perceived as a proof of high-quality build.
However, there are quite a few options to browse from in the same price range, so join us on the next pages to find out if the Realme Pad X is the right tablet for you.
Unboxing the Realme Pad X
The device comes in a standard, although relatively compact (for a tablet) box containing the usual user manuals and a 33W charger with a USB-A to USB-C cable.
The smart Bluetooth keyboard cover and the Realme Pencil are both sold separately but we got them as part of our review kit.
Design and ergonomics
The Realme Pad X has a surprisingly premium feel with flat sides and sharp edges around the front and back panels. Realme didn't go into details regarding the materials used, but we are pretty sure the front is glass while the rest of the chassis is made of plastic.
We really liked the design and feel of the whole body. The side frame feels as if it's metal, while the back has a silky-smooth finish like a frosted glass surface. Given the all-plastic build, we were quite surprised to see it weigh 499 grams. That's more than most competitors, and it can't be attributed solely to the larger battery capacity either.
The extra weight may be a plus for some of you as it gives the device a premium feel. We have the Glacier Blue color option, and the side shimmers ever so slightly under a certain angle.
Realme Pad X
Aside from the camera bump, the back panel is completely flat and clean. The bump itself is nothing out of the ordinary, but we find the off-centered "AI" inscription below the camera a bit weird and out of place. Literally.
The front is home to a 10.95-inch display with rather thin bezels all around, which are symmetrical too. The bezels are thin enough not to be obstructive and are thick enough to provide a comfortable grip without accidental touches.
The device is clearly meant to be used in landscape mode, as in this orientation, the selfie camera is positioned in the middle of the top bezel, while the power button is placed on the top-left corner when holding the tablet horizontally.
As for the volume rocker, it's also placed near the top-left corner but on the top side. The USB-C connector is housed on the right side. And since we have the 5G-enabled variant, the SIM card tray is at the bottom edge.
Accessories: keyboard and stylus
As already mentioned, the Pad X supports a keyboard cover that uses magnets to keep the device slightly inclined. It feels quite sturdy, and it connects using Bluetooth.
Realme Pad X with Bluetooth keyboard
The keyboard itself is pretty simple, but we are pleasantly surprised by the key spacing and travel. Both seem to be more than adequate, given the keyboard size, and we believe it does a pretty good job at replacing a full-sized laptop keyboard.
Realme provided us with the Realme Pencil as well. It attaches to the top side of the tablet using magnets, and the tablet can charge the stylus' built-in battery wirelessly. It provides 25 minutes of work with just 1 minute of charging. Unfortunately, the magnets aren't strong enough, so the pencil may fall off easily.
Big and bright LCD panel
The Realme Pad X features a standard IPS LCD panel with 1200 x 2000px resolution, which makes for an unusual 5:3 aspect ratio. And although unusual, it seems to be pretty good from a productivity standpoint (and we already see several tablets with it. And before you get upset about why the company didn't use an OLED screen in a 2022 tablet release, you'd have to remember that LCD panels are still king in this price segment. Only a handful of high-end tablets use OLED panels.
This screen doesn't have any HDR capabilities, which is quite expected. However, we were disappointed that Netflix recognizes the device as having Widevine L3 only, which means only SD streaming is available. At least YouTube is happy to serve 1080p60 streams.
Aside from this, this display shows solid performance in almost all of our tests. The display reached 394 nits in manual mode and achieved a respectable 1:1655 contrast ratio. In auto mode, the display peaked at 496 nits - an excellent result that would ensure relatively comfortable use outdoors. Multimedia consumption might be an issue, but reading text and general browsing outdoors shouldn't be a problem.
The minimal brightness we measured was 1.6nits, which is really low - great for reading in the dark.
Best of all, the image quality is really nice, and there is absolutely no color shift when looking at the display from an angle.
| Display test | 100% brightness | ||
| Black, |
White, |
||
| 0.282 | 522 | 1851:1 | |
| 0.457 | 513 | 1123:1 | |
| 0.298 | 496 | 1664:1 | |
| 0.376 | 478 | 1271:1 | |
| 0.229 | 432 | 1886:1 | |
| 0.263 | 402 | 1529:1 | |
| 0.267 | 392 | 1468:1 | |
| 0.253 | 352 | 1391:1 | |
Out of the box, color accuracy isn't great, but we got the best results in the sRGB color space with the whites and grays still looking a bit too blue-ish. Setting the color temperature to Warm in the tablet Settings will get you an average dE2000 of 3.5, which is quite okay.
Battery life
The device's endurance is excellent, as expected from an energy-efficient Snapdragon 695 chipset coupled with a massive 8,340 mAh battery. The screen-on web browsing and video tests both returned impressive scores comparable to the recent tablets we got for testing.
The Realme Pad X came out on top compared to its competitors, with the Redmi Pad being a close second since it features a similar 8,000 mAh battery. Note that those runtimes will inevitably get lower if you use it on a cellular connection and not on Wi-Fi.
We don't calculate tablet endurance ratings as our formula for phones takes standby battery draw into account. Applying the same formula for tablets with their larger batteries doesn't make sense because their standby power draw is minimal, so we focus on the active screen-on tests instead.
Charging speed
In the context of a tablet, the Pad X charges reasonably fast. It replenished its battery in exactly two hours, while a 30-minute charging cycle got 30% of the battery back.
So the Realme Pad X not only has great battery life but it also offers a competitive 33W charging solution.
It also supports USB OTG with reverse charging, so it's capable of charging other devices with a cable.
30min charging test (from 0%)
Higher is better
- Apple iPad mini (2021)
35% - Honor Pad 8
35% - Realme Pad X
30% - Xiaomi Redmi Pad
25% - Oppo Pad Air
25% - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE
18%
Time to full charge (from 0%)
Lower is better
- Apple iPad mini (2021)
1:57h - Honor Pad 8
1:57h - Realme Pad X
2:00h - Xiaomi Redmi Pad
2:21h - Oppo Pad Air
2:25h - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE
3:05h
Speakers
Realme's tablet doesn't skip on multimedia-related features and offers a set of four stereo speakers. We found the sound quality to be pretty good, with clear vocals and deep bass. Loudness is also great - our test shows -22.5 LUFS loudness. That makes Pad X the loudest of the bunch. The quad speakers are complemented with Dolby Atmos tuning, too.
Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.
Realme UI 3.0 for Pad on top of Android 12
The tablet runs on Realme's latest Realme UI 3.0 for Pad, which is based on Android 12. It's indistinguishable from the smartphone version of the software, and it's also nearly identical to Oppo's ColorOS 12.
Overall appearance and aesthetics are pretty close to stock Android, but colors, iconography and some small UI elements are easily distinguishable as custom. The notification shade and the recent apps menu are business as usual.
Perhaps one of the centerpiece features of the software is the multi-tasking capabilities. The so-called Flexible Window feature is present on Realme's smartphones, but it works better on a bigger screen. There's a customizable sidebar, which houses a dock of apps that support Flexible Window. These apps will run in a small, interactable window, which can be minimized in the same sidebar tray. There's also a quick shortcut to Flexible Window in the recent apps menu.
Sidebar, Flexible Window, Split-screen multi-tasking
However, we found that you can run only one app in a window and another full-screen one. Opening a second app, say a file explorer and Chrome, would minimize the previously opened app. A bit limiting for a multitasking feature.
There's also the Multi-Screen Collaboration, which has been a thing on Honor and Huawei devices for quite some time now. It allows you to seamlessly share files with your phone and even share screens. Think of it as an extra small monitor for extra screen real estate as you work. Sadly, Realme says that only a handful of Realme smartphones support the feature so far - GT 2 Pro, GT Neo2 5G, GT Neo3, GT Neo3T and GT Master Edition.
A well-known feature but worthy of a mention is the Reading Mode. The standard LCD panel could be tiring to your eyes if you have an e-book or long documents to read. Reading Mode adjusts the display's color tone and contrast to mimic reading paper. There are two modes - Eye Comfort Mode that adjusts color temperature while the Dark Mode is more suitable for really dark environments.
Home screen, recent apps, app drawer, notification shade
Another standout feature is Limelight - an answer to Apple's popular Spotlight feature. It uses the front-facing 8MP camera, which has a wide-angle 105-degree field of view. A machine learning algorithm tracks you during a conference call, for example, and keeps your face in focus and zoomed in while cutting the excess frame around you. It can track the position and movement of more than one person too. It supports popular software such as Google Duo, Google Meet and Zoom at 1080@30fps video quality.
General settings and personalization options
Other notable options include customizations regarding icons, accent color and quick toggle shapes, as well as notification handling. An experimental feature under the Realme Lab tab allows you to stream audio simultaneously through two pairs of headphones - one wired and one via Bluetooth.
Performance and benchmarks
The Realme Pad X runs on the Snapdragon 695 chipset, which is often criticized in our reviews for not having the ability to record 4K videos. But since this a tablet implementation, our biggest complaint is no longer valid. After all, the Snapdragon 695 chipset has plenty of horsepower for your everyday tasks, and we didn't notice any performance issues throughout our testing.
The chip is based on the 6nm manufacturing node and has two Kryo 660 Gold (Cortex-A78) cores clocked at 2.2 GHz, while the six energy-efficient Kryo 560 Silver (Cortex-A55) are clocked at 1.7 GHz. The Adreno 619 takes care of the graphically-intensive tasks, and the SD695 now supports faster LPDDR4X memory at 2133 MHz.
GeekBench 5 (multi-core)
Higher is better
- Huawei MatePad 11 (2021)
3282 - Xiaomi Pad 5
2583 - Realme Pad X
2026 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
1904 - Xiaomi Redmi Pad
1852 - Oppo Pad Air
1661 - Honor Pad 8
1545
GeekBench 5 (single-core)
Higher is better
- Huawei MatePad 11 (2021)
920 - Xiaomi Pad 5
743 - Realme Pad X
691 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
615 - Xiaomi Redmi Pad
554 - Oppo Pad Air
384 - Honor Pad 8
376
AnTuTu 9
Higher is better
- Huawei MatePad 11 (2021)
639631 - Xiaomi Pad 5
555079 - Realme Pad X
395824 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
355430 - Xiaomi Redmi Pad
319077 - Honor Pad 8
279242 - Oppo Pad Air
249172
GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Huawei MatePad 11 (2021)
20 - Xiaomi Pad 5
16 - Realme Pad X
12 - Xiaomi Redmi Pad
8.3 - Oppo Pad Air
4.9 - Honor Pad 8
4.8
GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)
Higher is better
- Huawei MatePad 11 (2021)
21 - Xiaomi Pad 5
19 - Realme Pad X
8.2 - Xiaomi Redmi Pad
5.5 - Honor Pad 8
3.2 - Oppo Pad Air
3.2
GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (onscreen)
Higher is better
- Huawei MatePad 11 (2021)
44 - Xiaomi Pad 5
35 - Realme Pad X
31 - Xiaomi Redmi Pad
22 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
16 - Honor Pad 8
13 - Oppo Pad Air
13
GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)
Higher is better
- Huawei MatePad 11 (2021)
86 - Xiaomi Pad 5
43 - Realme Pad X
34 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
31 - Xiaomi Redmi Pad
25 - Honor Pad 8
15 - Oppo Pad Air
15
3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)
Higher is better
- Huawei MatePad 11 (2021)
3797 - Xiaomi Pad 5
3396 - Xiaomi Redmi Pad
1242 - Realme Pad X
1217 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
1092 - Honor Pad 8
450 - Oppo Pad Air
450
It appears that the Realme Pad X offers a proper implementation of the Snapdragon 695 chipset, and it's also one of the better performers in this price range, losing the race only to more expensive tablets such as the Xiaomi Pad 5, for example, which is running the Snapdragon 860 SoC.
13MP on the back and 8MP wide-angle selfie camera
The Pad X is equipped with a better-than-average rear camera for a tablet of this class. A 13MP f/2.2 camera sits on the back, and an 8MP f/2.0 shooter is on the front. The interesting bit is that the front-facing camera uses a relatively wide lens with a 105-degree field of view. That's essential for the so-called Limelight feature, which can follow you and keep you in the center of the screen during video calls.
The images taken with the main camera are looking pretty good - a nice color saturation, good contrast, decent enough sharpness and decently wide dynamic range. Compared to smartphones, the Pad X still has a long way to go, but for a tablet, the overall image quality is quite good.
Main camera samples
Selfie quality is also pretty decent as long as there's enough ambient light.
Selfie samples: Photo • Video framegrab
Video quality is lacking, but at least the color saturation is on point, the contrast is good, and the dynamic range is decent. It will get the job done if there's no alternative you can shoot a video with.
Verdict
We are quite disappointed to see the Realme Pad X is not offered outside of India, as it's an excellent budget tablet. There, you can get the Wi-Fi-only model for just around INR 20,000 (€250), and an extra INR 8,000 (€100) will buy you the 5G-enabled version. The display is bright, and of high quality, battery life is excellent, speaker quality is one of the best in class, the Snapdragon 695 SoC helps the Pad X edge out the competition in raw performance, and the software provides plenty of useful features and customizations.
Even if the tablet is sold at a considerably higher price in Europe, we think it would spark interest in consumers outside of India as well. Especially with the available smart Bluetooth keyboard cover and stylus. The former is a highly-recommended addition for just around INR 5,000 (€60).
Pros
- Very good IPS LCD panel.
- Premium look and feel.
- Excellent speaker system.
- Great battery life, fast 33W charging.
- Cellular model is DualSIM and has 5G connectivity and a GPS receiver.
- Very good camera performance for a tablet.
- microSD slot, USB OTG with reverse charging.
- Realme offers an optional pressure-sensitive Pencil with magnetic charging and a Keyboard Folio case.
Cons
- Heavier than other 10-inch tablets.
- Widevine L3 limits it to SD streaming on Netflix.
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