Xiaomi showed the Pad 9 Pro Max: a 13,3-inch tablet with a custom chip designed to replace a laptop

Xiaomi has a big day with four more days to go and is gradually revealing what it has in store. Alongside the 18 Fold foldable, on September 7 it will also introduce the Xiaomi Pad 9 Pro Max — the biggest tablet the brand has made so far. And judging by what we already know, it won’t be a tablet meant for watching videos in bed.

Thirteen inches, a keyboard and a stylus

Pad 9 Pro Max is built around a 13.3-inch LCD display. That’s the diagonal size you’d normally associate with a standard laptop, and Xiaomi means it exactly like that — according to the manufacturer, the tablet should be able to run apps made for computers and serve you for work, content creation, and everything you’d otherwise feel a ten-inch screen is too small for.

In the official image, the tablet is shown in a purple finish along with a keyboard cover and a touch stylus. On the back, a module sits with two cameras and the XRING label — Xiaomi is evidently proud of its custom chip even on the outside. A version with a so-called soft-light display is also expected, meaning a surface that reduces glare.

XRING O3: ten big cores and graphics up to 85 % faster

The most interesting part is the chip. Pad 9 Pro Max will be Xiaomi’s first tablet with a custom XRING O3 processor — the same one that powers the 18 Fold foldable. It’s a ten-core setup where all cores are big, with a maximum clock of 4.35 GHz.

The graphics are handled by a sixteen-core G2-Ultra NX, which Xiaomi claims should be up to 85% faster than the previous generation while also using 64% less energy. Some of the published graphics benchmark results even beat Apple A19 Pro — but we’ll have to wait for tests to see how that shows up in real use. Gizmochina notes that for now these are just reported figures.

HyperOS 4 customized for a large display

The tablet will be one of the first devices to ship straight with HyperOS 4. Xiaomi has tailored it specifically for work on a large screen for the Pad 9 Pro Max, and together with support for computer apps, that should result in a device that can handle office and creative work without a laptop.

It’s a direction every tablet maker is trying today, and most of the time it falls apart on software, not hardware. Whether Xiaomi can solve it better than the competition will be shown by real usage — the chip’s performance alone is clearly likely to be enough.

What’s confirmed so far is not

The rest of the specs come from leaks, not Xiaomi. It’s said to have a battery with a capacity of over 10 000 mAh and 120 W fast charging, memory versions of 512 GB and 1 TB, and a weight of around 650 grams. Xiaomi hasn’t announced pricing, and we also don’t know if the tablet will reach beyond China — with the previous Pad models, it usually took several months.

To get more updates from the world of Xiaomi, keep following our Xiaomi Planet website. Join our Facebook group, where we build an active community and help each other out. Subscribe to our Telegram as well, where we add the best deals and coupons from China every day.