Redmi Note 5 Pro complete review

Redmi Note 5 Pro complete review – An best budget phone with a better camera.

Xiaomi – a popular smartphone maker from China has released it next smartphone the Redmi Note 5 & Redmi Note 5 Pro in India. It is the successor of the brands most selling Redmi note series mobile – Redmi Note 4. The smartphone comes in two variants 4GB RAM and 6GB RAM with both having the same 64 GB of data. Though Xiaomi compares its smartphone camera with the iPhone X, we see what the smartphone really gives and completely about the smartphone in this review.

Design and Build Quality

The built quality of the smartphone is good enough. The 2.5D glass at the front and the curved edged metallic housing at the back makes the smartphone feels solid. Xiaomi has reduced the size of the smartphone by .5 mm when compared with Redmi Note 4.

The smartphone comes with the dual camera setup at the front with a LED flash above the display.  The 3.5 mm headphone jack with a mono speaker and the USB 2.0 port are located at the bottom. At the right, it has the power button with the volume rockers and to the left, it has the hybrid sim tray. At the back, the smartphone comes with the fingerprint sensor and a pair of rear camera sensors. We can clearly notice a slight camera bump at the back, which wobbles a little bit when we keep the phone down.

Though the smartphone doesn’t come with any water and dustproof, the Display of the phone has Corning Gorilla Glass protection (version is unknown).

Display Quality

The Redmi Note 5 Pro features a 5.99 inch, Full HD+ LCD display with the latest 18:9 Display aspect ratio(403 PPI density). The color production is quite natural and gives a sharper image tone. The viewing angles are quite decent and are pretty comparable with other smartphones at this price range. The brightness of the display is good enough to use in daylight.

Camera performance

The rear camera of the smartphone is packed with the 12MP main camera with f2.2 aperture and with the 5MP secondary camera with f/2.0 aperture. The images produced by the dual rear-facing camera is pretty good. They are sharp and produces detailed imaging. The color reproduction is also good enough. But at times the images get dark due to image processing, and we hope Xiaomi will correct it in its next software updates. You can take portrait shots using the secondary sensor. The Bokeh effects are also good, but not the best. When compared with the previous Xiaomi device, the artificial and low light images are quite improved. But still, it suffers a bit in low light or at indoor lighting conditions. It is also quite noticeable that the shutter speed is quite faster even during bokeh mode.

Here comes the important segment of this smartphone – The front-facing camera. Impressively smartphone comes with the 20MP front-facing camera with f/2.2 aperture. The phone also has a LED flashlight at the front to take low light selfie shots clearly.  The performance of the front-facing camera is very good. It took sharper image with clear dynamic range and is pretty awesome.  It does support portrait mode in the front camera, and the images are satisfactory. Overall I might say that this might be having the best front facing camera at this price range.

Comming to the video recording features of this smartphone, Xiaomi has finally introduced Electronic Image stabilization on its cameras. You will notice any vibration on the video taken with EIS, but you might lose a bit images at the corners due to stabilization. Apart from this, we noticed some focusing issues while taking videos. To the Max it can capture only 1080P video, for some reason, Xiaomi doesn’t make this phone with 4K recording capability, Even the Snapdragon 636 chipset is very powerful to support 4K video.

In terms of the overall camera performance, It is clearly noticeable that Xiaomi has worked a lot to give a good performance.

Performance and usability

The smartphone comes with the Snapdragon 636 chipset with 4GB or 6GB of RAM with 64 GB of internal storage. This is the first time we are seeing a smartphone with Snapdragon 636 chipset. It is a very capable octa-core chipset with custom Kryo 260 core. It gives a huge step up over the performance when compared with the Redmi Note 4 or with Redmi Note 5 smartphone. The phone runs quite faster and without any glitch when moving between apps and also gives a good gaming performance.

Sadly the phone runs on Android 7.1.2 (Nougat) instead of Oreo, under MIUI 9. Though it might get Oreo update Xiaomi doesn’t address anything about it. Though MIUI is far away from stock Android, The MIUI has its own tweaks and much more features on it.

Fingerprint Sensors

The fingerprint sensor located at the back of this smartphone is Rapid fast and is well responsive.  Xiaomi also confirmed that the face unlocking features are also get added to this smartphone in its upcoming OTA software updates.

Speaker

The phone comes with a mono speaker at the bottom, the audio outputted by it is quite clear and good. The sound produced by the 3.5mm headphone jack is good. The clarity of the audio produced is very nice. But the Amplification is not that loud when compared with MIA1. As of now, we don’t notice any glitch in cellular reception and The call quality is quite good.

Battery

The Redmi Note series is generally popular for its battery backup. This smartphone is powered by 4000mAH battery. It powers the smartphone continuously for more than One and a half days, at an above average usage.  and it may stands up to two days for the normal users. On the box, it comes with 5Volt, 2A charger, and it’s not a fast charger. Though there are no words regarding Fast-charging of the Redmi Note 5 Pro, Our test confirms that Redmi Note 5 Pro support Fast charging (Qualcomm 2.0 equivalent).

Verdict

Thought it is that great as said by Xiaomi on its release event, It is one the best at this price range with the better selfie camera. If you ask us which variant is best, we do recommend you to go ahead with the 4GB variant to save some penny, As there is a no need of 6GB RAM for this specification and moreover you won’t notice any between these two variants.