Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 vs Google Nexus 7 (2013) Specs Comparison

Written by B Johnson January 21, 2015
Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 vs Google Nexus 7 (2013) Specs Comparison
Hi guys, welcome back!

As a new-released tablet, Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is nothing but an impressive quality device at a great price point.

I know that this tablet is powered by Tegra K1 processor and if a tablet is powered by Tegra K1 processor, it means that device is going to be fast, smooth and powerful for playing games.

(Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 vs Google Nexus 7 (2013) Specs Comparison)

However, the thing that really impresses me a lot with this Xiaomi tablet is actually its entire quality.

I mean, despite being priced in mid-end price range, Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 surprisingly is really good in many ways – from display quality, sound quality, features, UI, cameras and even build quality.

And i think it’s still pretty rare to find tablets that are so powerful like Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9, but also have great price and solid build quality.

But that’s not the only thing that is so impressive from this device.

There’s a lot more to explore from this amazing impressive device actually, which is the reason why i’ve been talking a lot about this device in my previous comparison reviews in the past few days.

Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 vs Google Nexus 7 (2013) benchmarks and gaming performance

Anyway, besides Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9, there’s actually one other tablet that used to also impress me a lot in 2013.

And that is Google-branded Nexus 7 made by Asus, which was released back then in 2013, the same time Google announced Android 4.4 KitKat if i’m not mistaken.

Just like Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9, this Google Nexus 7 is also powerful for gaming – but of course, not as powerful as Xiaomi tablet – and it costs only $229 (as opposed to $250 of 16GB Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9).

However, there’s still a lot about this device that i still want to dig a little bit more in my review.

That’s the reason why today i wanna bring them up together in my next comparison review.

I think it would be interesting to compare between these 2 tablets. I know they both totally fall in different leagues – with Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 being the most powerful one -.

But as 2 affordable tablets, i believe comparing these 2 tablets would be great especially to some of you here who are still confused whether to pick up Google’s tablet or Xiaomi’s new-released Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9.

Or maybe some of you still have doubts regarding the entire quality of Xiaomi’s tablet.

You’re probably afraid that Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 will suck just because it’s made by Chinese company, right? Well, that’s why i’m here ready to help you.

Okay then, if you’re eager to know more about these 2 tablets and see how they compete head-to-head in terms of gaming performance, then here you go, my comparison review between Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 and Google Nexus 7 (2013 edition).

Introduction

Most people used to think that Chinese-made products really suck especially in quality. Well, they’re probably right about that.

However, that stereotyping should not be applied anymore to today’s Chinese products because now there has been a lot of changes and improvements made by Chinese manufacturers especially with their product quality.

And that’s what happens exactly with Xiaomi.

This company may be from China, however, Xiaomi now is led by Hugo Barra – the Vice President of marketing for this company – and this guy used to announce 2 of Google Nexus 7 tablets (actually, 4 Nexus devices including Nexus 4 and Nexus 10) back in the days of 2012 and 2013.

And he was responsible to handle the developments behind Google Android team.

So no doubt if this guy is one of the most important persons at Google back then, even until now.

Not to mention, Xiaomi now has become one of the top 5 biggest smartphone manufacturers in the world, even alongside Apple and Samsung, capable to sell million units of Xiaomi devices every quarter of each year.

So when it comes to quality, there should be no doubt anymore that Xiaomi devices are great in quality.

That’s exactly what you can totally expect from Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9.

This tablet costs only $250 for the basic 16GB internal storage.

But the entire quality of this device is just top notch for its class and price point. It has great quality display, camera, sound quality, performance, gaming capability, experience, features, UI and even build quality.

And thanks to the fact that it uses Tegra K1 processor – which is MADE for gaming -, this Xiaomi’s device will also be outstanding for playing games, in fact for playing console-quality games.

On the other hand, Google Nexus 7 may not be as impressive as Xiaomi’s homemade tablet, especially in terms of display and gaming performance.

And that’s actually quite surprising given that this device is made by respected companies – Asus – and designed by Google, which both are tech giants in this industry.

But even so, there’s still a lot to appreciate from this Google-branded device, from its great full HD display, good gaming performance, awesome Android experience and it now has a rear-facing 5MP camera.

But the questions remain, with all of the goodies and powerful gaming performance found on both devices, which one between Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 and Google Nexus 7 that deserves to be the best gaming tablet in this comparison review?

Which one between these 2 tablets that is a better tablet in the whole aspect?

Is it worth it to by any of these tablets on today’s tablet market?

You're gonna get the answers of these questions in my final conclusion of this comparison review. So be sure to keep reading!

Design

So what do we have here? Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 and Google Nexus 7. Well, in terms of design, in my opinion, i think both tablets are good on that department.

Google’s tablet has its own “Nexus” characteristic and it has good build quality thanks to Asus’ craftsmanship and impressive design approach.

Meanwhile, Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 also really excels especially when it comes to build quality, it may be built out of the plastic materials, but impressively, this tablet still feels really sturdy and comfortable on hands, also not prone to catch fingerprints.

Xiaomi Mi Pad
Xiaomi Mi Pad
Google Nexus 7
Google Nexus 7
However, if i had to choose, i think i have to go with Google Nexus 7 just because it has its own identity, especially when compared with other Android tablets on the market.

So at a very first glance without looking at the “Nexus” logo on the back, you can tell straightly that it is a Nexus tablet.

And that’s something that should be appreciated from Google that is responsible with the entire design of this device.

This really contradicts with Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9, which is hugely inspired – or blatantly copies, if you would – by iPad mini Retina 3, especially on the bezel size, screen specs and even aspect ratio.

But even so, despite using iPad mini’s design, Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 still is still good in terms of build quality. It feels really sturdy and comfortable to hold, and doesn’t feel cheap as glossy plastic material.

Not to mention, as mentioned above, it’s also not prone to catch fingerprints or human grease.

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Xiaomi Mi PadAsus-Google Nexus 7 (2013 Edition)

No SIM
Released June 2014
7.9 inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 1536 x 2048 pixels, (~324 ppi pixel density), 16M colors
Corning Gorilla Glass 3 Protection
2 GB RAM
Quad-core 2.2 GHz Cortex-A15 Nvidia Tegra K1 Chipset
ULP GeForce Kepler (192 cores) GPU
Android OS
16/64 GB of Internal storage
microSD card slo for up to 128 GB
8 MP rear-facing camera
5 MP front-facing camera
No EDGE
No GPRS
No Radio
No GPS
Java MIDP emulator
Li-Po 6700 mAh battery
Talk time (multimedia): for up to 11 hours
Music play: for up to 86 hours
    4G LTE (Micro-SIM)
    Released July 2013
    Weight 290 g (Wi-Fi), 299 g (LTE) (10.55 oz)
    7.0 inch LED-backlit IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen,
    1200 x 1920 pixels, (~323 ppi pixel density), 16M colors
    Quad-core 1.5 GHz Krait Qualcomm Snapdragon S4Pro Chipset
    Adreno 320 GPU
    2 GB RAM
    Android OS 4.3 Jelly Bean, upgradable to 5.0 Lollipop
    5 MP rear-facing camera
    1.2 MP front-facing camera
    No microSD card slot
    16/32 GB Internal storage
    GPRS, HSPA+, LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11
    NFC, GPS, Bluetooth v4.0, microUSB v2.0
    No Radio
    No Java
    Non-removable Li-Ion 3950 mAh battery
    Talk time (multimedia): for up to 9 hours

    As 2 tablets released in 2 different years – Google Nexus 7 in 2013, while Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 in 2014 -, of course, both devices are on the different sides of the read when it comes to specs, with Xiaomi’s tablet being the most powerful one.

    And that can be seen clearly from their spec sheet overall.

    Google Nexus 7 comes with a 7-inch display with 1920x1200 pixel resolution, a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro, Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB of RAM, 5MP rear-facing camera, 1.2MP front-facing camera, no microSD card slot (not surprised given the fact that it is Nexus tablet) and 3950mAh battery.

    On the other hand, Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 looks more prominent on this sector as it has a larger 7.9-inch display sporting iPad “Retina” 1536x2048 pixel resolution, a quad-core Tegra K1 processor, 2GB of RAM, 192-core Kepler GPU, 8MP and 5MP cameras back and front respectively, microSD card slot for up to 128GB and 6700mAh battery.

    So it’s quite clear which one is gonna be the winner here.

    But even so, there are still some great things to appreciate on Nexus 7, like its GPS, LTE, stock Android UI, NFC and GPRS, which cannot be found on Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9.

    However, Nexus 7 doesn’t have microSD card slot, as opposed to Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 that has it for up to 128GB.

    Screen

    When it comes to display, it’s really obvious that Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is gonna blow Nexus 7 out of the water.

    On paper, it comes with a larger 7.9-inch display sporting the 1536x2048 pixel resolution, which is the same one found on iPads.

    In fact, it has the same -324 ppi and aspect ratio of 4:3. But apparently, it’s not just on paper.

    In the real life implementation, the display of Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 actually looks really gorgeous.

    It has great viewing angle (it’s true!), good color reproduction, not overly-saturated colors and its sharpness is just impressive.

    But this is not so shocking given that Sharp is the one that supplies the screen of Xiaomi devices, and we should not forget that Sharp is one of the main screen suppliers for Apple devices.

    So when it comes to quality, there should be no doubt anymore.

    It actually goes the same with the full HD 1920x1200 pixel display found on Google Nexus 7.

    Okay, this tablet’s display may not be as great and sharp as on Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9, given its lower amount of pixels.

    However, according to Marques Brownlee – who is a famous tech reviewers on YouTube -, the display of Nexus 7 looks really gorgeous and sharp, especially given that it uses a smaller 7-inch display with narrow 16:9 aspect ratio.

    However, between these 2 tablets, i think it’s quite clear that Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is the clear winner here against the Google Nexus 7, not just on paper though, but also in entire display quality – from viewing angle, color reproduction, color saturation and sharpness of course.

    User Interface

    Both Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 and Google Nexus 7 actually deploy similar design layout of the standard Android OS, which has homescreen and widget element.

    However, if we go a little bit deeper with their UI, we can straightly tell the difference between the UIs of both tablets.

    Google Nexus 7 comes with the pure stock vanilla Android UI based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, so all of the standard features of Android 4.3 can be found on this device.

    On the other hand, despite using the same design layout and widget element just like stock Android UI of Nexus 7, the UI of Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 called MIUI actually looks and works very differently with the UI of Google’s tablet.

    The most noticeable one is definitely the app drawer.

    So on MIUI of this device, there’s no app drawer just like the one found on Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9.

    Instead, all the installed and pre-loaded apps on this device will be straightly shown on the homescreen area in icon-grid view just like the iOS of iPads.

    But even so, there are many great things to like on the UI of Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9, like the new method to swap/move apps in left-right finger gesture, easy method to uninstall apps on homescreen and not to mention, MIUI also has more attractive and advanced features plus visual presentations compared to stock Android UI, which is why this UI takes a lot of space in the memory/RAM (like around 600MB to 900MB in total).

    But the good news is, Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is provided with a huge 2GB of RAM, so there’s still a lot of space to use especially for multitasking many apps and playing heavy 3D games.

    The same thing also happens on Google Nexus 7, which comes with 2GB of RAM as well.

    However, when it comes to overall performance, i think Google’s tablet is the one that performs much faster and smoother especially because its stock Android UI doesn’t take too much space in the memory, and this significantly decreases the job of its processor to work especially in idle mode, thus making it more efficient in battery life.

    But even so, both UIs of Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 and Google Nexus 7 are great equally. It actually depends on your personal preference of which platform that suits you better.

    Back to Top
    In terms of gaming performance, it’s just no-brainer that Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 will blow Google Nexus 7 out of the water.

    And that’s quite obvious because its quad-core Tegra K1 processor and 192-core GPU are far more powerful than the Snapdragon S4 Pro plus Adreno 320 GPU found inside Google Nexus 7.

    So not only will you be capable to play games like Modern Combat 5, Asphalt 8 or GTA San Andreas perfectly on this device, but you’re also able to play some console-quality games like Trine 2, Half Life 2 and other games that are ported from consoles and PC.

    This really contradicts with Google Nexus 7.

    Okay, its Snapdragon S4 Pro and Adreno 320 GPU are great for gaming. However, in the real implementation, this hardware package apparently is not good enough especially to execute the latest most graphically demanding games the market.

    In fact, i’ve already seen this tablet run GTA San Andreas in full highest graphics and it’s not running smoothly, in fact, it’s really laggy and not playable for human being.

    But even so, for games like Modern Combat 4 or Asphalt 8: Airborne, there’s no issue at all with this tablet, both running smoothly and in full highest graphics.

    So between these 2 tablets, i think it’s not that hard to conclude that Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is a far better more powerful gaming tablet than Google Nexus 7.

    No doubt about that and there should be no argue about that as well (so please, just shut up and continue read the rest of this review okay! - just kidding ;D).

    Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is definitely one of the best choices out there for playing games on tablet, especially thanks to its monster Tegra K1 processor and 192-core GPU, which are capable to deliver the same graphical performance as today’s desktops.

    Cameras

    On the first-gen Google Nexus 7, there’s no rear-facing camera found on this tablet, which is why its price is so low only at $199.

    There’s a lot of complaints regarding the lack of this element on this device, and Google answered that by putting the 5MP rear-facing camera on the second-gen Google Nexus 7.

    However, according to some reviews on YouTube, there’s not much to write home about on its quality.

    So basically, it’s just there so users will be able to take some photos or videos with this tablet.

    This really contradicts with the cameras found on Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9. This device comes with 8MP and 5MP cameras back and front respectively.

    However, it’s not megapixel count that makes this device more superior than Google’s tablet. It’s also its quality.

    So the cameras of Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 – especially the rear one – really take great decent quality shots.

    In fact, i’ve already seen the 720p videos taken by this tablet and they look gorgeous and sharp, with good and almost realistic sound quality.

    That’s not shocking given that the camera sensors found on Xiaomi devices are mostly supplied by Samsung (or Sony?), which has been known for its great camera quality especially on its flagship devices.

    So if you’re looking for a tablet that takes good pictures, instead of buying Google Nexus 7, i strongly recommend you to pick up Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 because its cameras won’t leave you alone disappointed.

    Battery Life

    As far as the battery life is concerned, i think Google Nexus 7 is the one that has slightly better longer battery life than Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9.

    And that’s mostly because this device comes pre-installed with stock vanilla Android UI without any heavy customization from the manufacturer (Asus).

    So not only is this tablet capable to perform much faster and smoother thanks to its stock UI, but it’s also really efficient with the use of memory/RAM and battery, making its battery last much longer.

    But even so, Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is still pretty decent when it comes to battery life.

    And that’s because this device is powered by a much larger 6700mAh battery inside – as opposed to the 3950mAh battery of Nexus 7 -, which is not very surprising given that this Xiaomi’s tablet uses a higher-resolution display, more power hungry processor and heavy weight UI.

    So you can totally expect this tablet to last in a solid day on a full charge – of course in moderate use.

    Meanwhile, using it for doing some hardcore stuff intensively – like watching HD movies in marathon or playing games in the row -, its battery would of course drop drastically to just around 3 – 5 hours.

    My Personal Opinions

    So in my final conclusion, i think it’s quite clear which one is the total winner in this comparison review. And that is no other than Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9.

    I actually see no reason why i have to do the comparison review between these 2 devices in the first place because it’s really obvious that Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is far more powerful than Google Nexus 7, especially in terms of specs.

    But then again, i also think that there are many tablet shoppers out there (including you maybe) that are still confused and even have doubts about how great Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 really is.

    I mean, for some of you, Chinese-made products usually suck in quality, right? Well, that’s not the case here with Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9.

    As i already mentioned above, despite being made by Chinese company, this tablet uses some of the best hardware parts that are supplied by many renowned companies like Samsung, Sharp, Sony (or maybe LG).

    Not to mention NVIDIA that provides the processor and GPU. So there should be no doubt regarding the entire quality of this tablet. Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is a decent quality tablet.

    In fact, i think Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is so much better tablet than Asus-made Nexus 7.

    So to sum this up, i’m going to say to you straight away. Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is a much better tablet in the whole aspect than Nexus 7, and it is a far better gaming tablet than Google Nexus 7. It may be made by Chinese company, but trust me, its overall quality is decent.

    In fact, even its build quality is really good - despite using plastic material - but doesn’t feel cheap just like glossy plastic.

    It feels really sturdy, solid and comfortable on hands, plus not prone to catch fingerprints.

    Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 also has greater camera quality, better sound quality, microSD card slot for up to 128GB, great touch response on its display, gorgeous quality display, powerful graphical performance, full-featured UI and every thing about this tablet is just amazing.

    The most impressively is, Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 only costs $250 for the basic 16GB model and around $300 for the 128GB variant.

    So long story short, if you’re looking for possibly the best gaming tablet on the market with affordable price tag, then Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 can be one of your best choices here.

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