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This is also where I want to touch upon the accessories. The Xiaomi Smart Pen 2 is an excellent Apple Pencil rival, boasting 150 hours of battery life and 4096 levels of pressure
sensitivity. It looks, feels and charges like the Apple Pencil 2, so it’s easy to say what it’s copied from. Because I am not an artist, I called upon the expertise of a friend and ace
professional illustrator Parvathy Subramanian (you can check out her work at _@prrrbutt_). She uses an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil 2 for a lot of her work, so she spent some time with the
Xiaomi Pad 6, using the Sketchbook app to draw stuff. Overall she was very happy with the Pad 6 and Xiaomi Smart Pen 2 and found them quite similar to use. The Smart Pen 2 has a touch more
latency, but you’re unlikely to notice that without a side-by-side comparison. Especially considering the price difference, she says this could be a good option for amateur illustrators or
those on a budget. When it comes to art again, where the Pad 6 loses out is the lack of ProCreate. The industry standard drawing app is offered only for iPadOS, and while Sketchbook is a
capable app, ProCreate is simply superior. The Xiaomi Pad 6 keyboard works reasonably well and can be compared with Smart Keyboard Folio from Apple for less than a third of the price. I’m
personally not a fan of using this kind of keyboard for work, but for those who are, this should serve them well. Overall in terms of hardware, the Xiaomi Pad 6 and its accessories punch
well above their weight. SHOULD I BUY IT? There are many different answers to this question depending on who you are, so I’ll go in order. First, if you’re deep in the Apple ecosystem using
iPhones etc, then the answer is easy. Don’t buy this, just get the basic iPad. If you simply want a good value Android tablet below 30k, buy the Xiaomi Pad 6. There’s no competition. If
you are, like me, brand agnostic, then things get a bit more interesting. The Xiaomi Pad 6 offers a lot of bang for the buck, including broadly superior hardware and well priced accessories.
The Xiaomi Smart Pen 2 is a lot less fiddly than the first gen Apple Pencil that you’ll have to use with the base iPad. If your usage is mostly to watch streaming video, play some games,
and maybe do a bit of word processing, or even some amateur art, the Pad 6 is an excellent choice, delivering plenty of value at its price point. But if you’re someone who wants to use a
lot of social media and/or if you want to do illustration work professionally, or just have access to the plethora of great iPadOS apps that are not available for Android, you may be better
served picking up the iPad.