Cameras & Photography
The Readmi Pad 2 boasts an 8MP main camera and a 5MP front-facing camera. Although this setup may not be cutting-edge for tablets, it’s tailored for casual users who primarily want a device for video streaming and music playback. Unless you intend to use your tablet for frequent photography and also willing to pay double the price on a more expensive product, this camera configuration is unlikely to be a major concern for most users.
On a less favorable note, it is important to highlight that Xiaomi missed an opportunity to leverage the hardware capabilities by incorporating 2K resolution recording support for both the main and front selfie cameras. This enhancement would have dramatically improved the quality of photos and videos, making it particularly beneficial for video conferencing as well. We believe that customers would be more than willing to pay the additional cost for such a significant camera upgrade.
The main camera housing design
The camera housing features a flat oval design that integrates with the tablet’s surface, contributing to the overall appearance of the device. This design choice aims to enhance the visual appeal while maintaining functionality.
| Main Camera | 8 MP Resolution: 3264×2448 Sensor size: 1/4″ Apertures: f/2.0 Focal Length: 28mm Shutter speed: 1/100 – 1/5 s ISO sensitivity: 50-10000 |
| Video Capture | 720p@30fps 1080p@30fps |
| Front Camera (Selfie) | 5 MP Resolution: 2592×1944 Sensor size: 1/5″ Apertures: f/2.2 Focal Length: 27mm Shutter speed: 1/100 – 1/3.1 s ISO sensitivity: 100-4731 |
Personal impression
The camera quality was just average, yielding satisfactory shots both indoors and outdoors, as illustrated in the photos below. Additionally, the camera app comes equipped with fundamental and a few more advanced features, including a digital zoom up to 5x, focus lock, QR scanning, HDR settings, and document scanning. It is capable of capturing images and videos in FHD quality (1080P), which appeared decent overall.
Front Camera | Testing for selfie shots
Main (Rear) Camera | Outdoor & Indoors shots
Capturing videos and images at high resolutions
While the Xiaomi camera app restricts video recording to a maximum resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, you can circumvent this limitation by installing Open Camera, developed by Mark Harman, an open-source application.
Within the Video settings, you can find more flexible options to choose from, such as selecting different resolutions and additional cool features that are worth checking. The app installed on our device handled resolutions up to 2400x1080P without any problems, boasting a 20:9 aspect ratio, while the default Xiaomi option is restricted or locked only to a 16:9 ratio. This may not be 2K resolution, but it’s still an improvement over nothing.
Open Camera App (Screenshots)
