Realme Pad X Review: An iPad Air-Inspired Android Tablet but at Half the Price

Android tablets saw a resurgence in India during the pandemic. As most people were working or studying from home, the demand for large-screen smart devices increased significantly. While things have started to go back to the old normal in 2022, companies continue to offer value-for-money Android tablets in India. The Realme Pad X is one such Android tablet, which launched in July for a starting price of under Rs. 20,000.

The Realme Pad X is currently the company’s most premium Android tablet offering in India. The unique proposition of the Realme Pad X is that it’s built for the creative crowd. From its large display, to the beefy battery and quad-speaker setup, to the support for a stylus that charges magnetically — Realme wants this to be in every creator’s travel bag. The tablet also packs a 5G SoC. With the kind of hardware it offers for the price, should you consider buying the Realme Pad X? Here is our full review to help you decide.

Realme Pad X price in India

The Realme Pad X is available in two models. The base Wi-Fi-only model has a single variant with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage and is priced at Rs. 19,999. Their 5G model with the same configuration costs Rs. 25,999, and the top-end variant with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage is priced at Rs. 27,999.

The keyboard accessory for the Realme Pad X can be purchased separately for Rs. 4,999, whereas the Realme Pencil is priced at Rs. 5,499.

Realme Pad X design

The Realme Pad X seems to have taken some inspiration from the iPad Air 2022 (Review) when it comes to design. The Android tablet sports a flat frame with a plastic body. It is fairly on the heavier side at 506g of weight but the tablet is quite sleek at just 7.1mm in thickness.

Realme Pad X comes in two colours, both of which have a matte finish

Although the rear shell is made of plastic, it does not look like it. I mistook it for glass while unboxing the Realme Pad X but once I held it, it was quickly evident that it wasn’t. That being said, the tablet does not feel cheap. Realme seems to have used some good quality plastics for the tablet and the glittery finish on the back panel makes it look quite premium. The company calls it the ‘Glowing Light Design’. We have the Glowing Grey colour, which has a frosted black finish. There is also a Glacier Blue colour, which should do a slightly better job of hiding fingerprints and smudges.

On the front, the Realme Pad X has a huge 10.95-inch IPS LCD with a WUXGA+ resolution (1200×2000 pixels). While the screen is of the LCD variety, it offers quite a good viewing experience. There is barely any visible colour shift when viewed off-angles, and with 450 nits of peak brightness the display is easily legible under most lighting conditions.

When outdoors though, I preferred keeping the display brightness at max for a better viewing experience. The symmetrical bezels around the display are fairly thin for an Android tablet at this price. I also liked how the company has placed the front camera on the right bezel (landscape mode), something which is now also seen in the iPad 10th generation (Review). This helps keep the user in the centre of the frame when using the tablet horizontally on video calls.

The bezels around the Realme Pad X’s display are fairly slim

There is support for Widevine L1 on the Realme Pad X, so apps such as Netflix can play back full-HD content. For its price, I would not expect an AMOLED display so the typical shortcomings of an LCD panel such as the lack of deep black levels or rich contrast is forgivable. The Realme Pad X does not support HDR10 and that’s most likely due to the SoC’s limitation. There is no high refresh rate support either as the Realme Pad X’s display runs at a standard 60Hz. In comparison, the much more affordable Redmi Pad (Review) offers a 90Hz refresh rate display.

When held vertically, the Realme Pad X’s top edge houses two of the four speaker grilles and the power button. The bottom edge houses the other two speaker grilles and the USB Type-C port. On the right edge, there are the volume buttons, whereas on the left, you get the SIM tray, which also has space for a microSD card.

The Realme Pad X comes with a quad-speaker setup

The Realme Pad X supports the Realme Pencil stylus, which can be attached on the right side of the tablet (when held vertically). There is also a keyboard cover, which comes with an in-built kickstand. There are no magnetic pins on the tablet to supply power to the keyboard, which means it needs to be charged separately via its own USB Type-C port. The keyboard does not have a trackpad. Both accessories are sold separately.

Realme Pad X specifications and software

The Realme Pad X is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 SoC. The chipset, which is based on a 6nm fabrication process, has been quite a popular choice among brands for smartphones under Rs. 20,000. It is an octa-core SoC with a peak clock speed of 2.2GHz. The tablet also packs a beefy 8340mAh battery with support for 33W fast charging. Connectivity-wise, the tablet supports up to 5GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.1.

The Realme Pad X, surprisingly, does not come with pre-installed bloatware

In terms of software, the Realme Pad X runs on the Android 12-based Realme UI 3.0 out of the box. The software experience is quite clean with no bloatware apps preinstalled. The software also comes with some useful features such as support for split-screen, sidebar and floating windows. Split-screen can be enabled by swiping down using two fingers from the top of the display. Sidebar, on the other hand, lists a few apps that support floating windows, which means you can place these apps anywhere on the screen while your primary app is running alongside.

Realme UI 3.0 also allows users to customise app icons, themes, wallpapers, etc. There is no word on long-term Android updates but we can hope that the tablet at least gets the Android 13 update.

Relame Pad X performance

The Realme Pad X offers a good experience when it comes to day-to-day routine tasks. I did not experience any lag while switching between apps, or even when loading one for that matter, which is something that I expected to see from the Snapdragon 695 SoC. Sometimes, a few apps in the background did reload after I switched back to them. If you need the tablet to keep certain apps in memory, you can use the ‘App Lock’ feature in the multitasking window. This can be useful for slightly heavy games such as Call of Duty: Mobile.

Call of Duty:Mobile on the Realme Pad X

The Realme Pad X, to my surprise, offered a good gaming experience. Once you get used to the large form factor, playing games on this is fun. Call of Duty: Mobile supports ‘Max’ frame rate at ‘High’ graphics. If you want the best ‘Very High’ graphics setting, you’ll have to settle for the ‘Very High’ frame rate setting. I chose the former and the gaming experience was quite good.

Coming to some benchmark tests, the Realme Pad X scored 692 and 2006 points in Geekbench’s single-core and multi-core tests, which was on par with phones that feature the same SoC. For example, the Moto G71 5G (Review) scored 668 and 1900 points. In AnTuTu, the Realme Pad X scored 3,96,551 points, which, again, is higher than some phones with the same SoC such as the Redmi Note 11 Pro+ 5G, which scored 365,861 points.

One of the factors for the marginally higher scores could be the tablet’s better thermal management due to the larger size, which could have helped with less throttling and better heat dissipation.

Realme Pad X with the keyboard accessory and Realme Pencil

I also used the Realme Pad X’s optional keyboard to file stories on Microsoft Word. While the key travel is good, there is no trackpad built-in. I had to often touch the screen to swipe up and down, which felt more of a chore than anything. Therefore, this setup is certainly not an ideal laptop replacement. The Pencil works fine but there is a noticeable lag when you draw or take notes. You can magnetically attach the pencil on the right edge of the tablet to charge it.

Moving on, I missed having a fingerprint scanner on the Realme Pad X. Users will have to choose between the lock screen password and Face Unlock for authentication. There is no 3.5mm headphone jack, in case you were wondering. The tablet comes with quad speakers which offer impressive sound.

The Realme Pad X does not come with a fingerprint scanner

The Realme Pad X does have solid battery life though. The company claims that users can get up to 19 hours of runtime when playing videos. In our battery loop test, the device lasted for 17 hours and 54 minutes, which was quite close to the claimed time. In fact, the battery life is better than the more-affordable Redmi Pad, but that did have a slightly smaller battery. The battery in the Realme Pad X takes quite some time to charge from zero to 100 percent. With the 33W Dart charger that’s provided in the box, it took more than 2 hours, 30 minutes to charge the tablet completely.

Realme Pad X cameras

The Realme Pad X has two camera sensors. The rear camera uses a 13-megapixel sensor which is good enough for scanning documents. There is no LED flash here. If you wish to use the tablet to capture photos, expect decent colours and dynamic range but average details. The rear camera can shoot up to 1080p 60fps videos.

The Realme Pad X has a 13-megapixel rear camera

Shot on Realme Pad X

For selfies and video calls, the 8-megapixel front camera is quite average. Selfies are slightly grainy and there is noticeable noise in videos shot in indoor lighting.

The front camera is placed on the right bezel when held in portrait mode

Shot on Realme Pad X

There is a feature called ‘Limelight’ which keeps you in the centre of the frame even when you move around during video calls. This is essentially Realme’s version of the iPad’s Center Stage feature. It is currently supported on three apps — Google Meet, Zoom and Google Duo. The front camera can also record 1080p videos at 30fps.

Verdict

The Realme Pad X is quite a solid offering in the budget Android tablet space. It offers a good multimedia experience and has a reliable performance unit. I also like how the company has offered a clean software experience while customising it enough to offer most of the essential features. The Realme Pad X also gets a huge thumbs-up for its battery life. While I do not expect tablets to offer good camera performance, I would have liked to see a better front camera.

Should you consider buying one? The Realme Pad X Wi-Fi variant has a starting price of Rs. 19,999, which is great value for money. However, the 5G variant which we have has a Rs. 27,999 price tag. For that price, you can get the more powerful Xiaomi Pad 5, which is currently available for Rs 26,999. The Android tablet comes with a powerful Snapdragon 870 SoC and a 120Hz refresh rate LCD display with Dolby Vision certification. The battery is also larger than the one on the Realme Pad X.