vivo just dropped a new Android tablet, the vivo Pad SE, aimed squarely at students—and it’s priced to match. Starting at just CNY 1,000 (~$137), this is vivo’s most accessible entry into the Origin OS 5 HD ecosystem, and it comes with a few smart tricks up its sleeve.
Designed with learning in mind, the Pad SE comes preloaded with a suite of study tools, including parental controls and a built-in scanner mode for textbooks and worksheets. It’s clear that vivo wants this tablet to be more than just a YouTube machine.
The tablet features a 12.3-inch LCD with a resolution of 2464 x 1600, offering full sRGB coverage, a smooth 90Hz refresh rate, and 600 nits of peak brightness—decent for both indoor and outdoor use. The display ratio is slightly wider than 3:2, which works well for reading and multitasking.
There are two versions of the Pad SE: the standard model (6.8mm thick, 559g) and the Soft Light Edition (6.87mm, 569g), which adds a paper-like anti-reflective coating to the screen. That version is clearly designed for long study sessions, where eye strain is the enemy.
Under the hood, vivo doesn’t specify the chipset, but all signs point to the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2. You’ll get either 6GB or 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, paired with 128GB or 256GB of fast UFS 3.1 storage—a nice touch at this price.
Powering it all is an 8,500mAh battery, which vivo claims can last up to 8 hours of video streaming. Charging is capped at 15W, so don’t expect blazing-fast top-ups. On the audio front, you get a quad-speaker setup, which should be enough for streaming and casual gaming.
Both the front and rear cameras are 5MP, but vivo’s real party trick is a clever clip-on mirror accessory for the front cam, which turns it into a makeshift scanner. Pair that with OCR (optical character recognition) in Origin OS and an integrated dictionary, and you’ve got a tool for digitizing and annotating printed homework or textbooks. You can even turn scanned content into interactive practice tests.
The vivo Pad SE launches in China on April 25, with multiple configurations available:
vivo Pad SE – Standard Edition:
– 6GB + 128GB – CNY 1,000 (~$137 / €120 / ₹11,700)
– 8GB + 128GB – CNY 1,300
– 8GB + 256GB – CNY 1,600
vivo Pad SE – Soft Light Edition:
– 6GB + 128GB – CNY 1,200
– 8GB + 128GB – CNY 1,500
– 8GB + 256GB – CNY 1,800
While it’s not here to compete with flagship tablets, the Pad SE is shaping up to be an affordable and thoughtfully designed learning companion. Whether vivo brings it outside China remains to be seen—but it’s definitely one to watch in the entry-level tablet space.
