Xiaomi Redmi Note

As mentioned before, the Redmi Note is the largest smartphone offering in Xiaomi’s stable. With a phablet-grade display of 5.5-inches, there’s a little doubt that the device is quite big. It’s quite tall at 154mm and with a width of 78.7mm, wide too... especially when compared to other devices with a similar sceen size (The LG G3, for instance, measures 146.3 x 74.6mm). Such dimensions have also affected its weight and it tips the scale at 199grams. With a thickness of 9.4mm, the device is not slim by any means, but nonetheless feels solid in the hand.

The Redmi Note’s pull factor lies in its display, which measures 5.5-inches. The large screen is ideal for consuming content on the go, be it watching videos on YouTube or reading eBooks or browsing through web pages. While its resolution of 720p can’t match up to the full HD-toting displays these days, with a pixel density of 265ppi, it holds up pretty well. We didn’t notice any issue of pixelation and the display offers good viewing angles and reproduces vivid colours.

We’ve been fans of MIUI’s interface as well as the features it brings to the table ever since we saw it first on the Mi 3 and covered it extensively. In fact, we went as far as flashing MIUI’s upcoming version 6 on our Mi 4 to experience the new UI as well as to compare the two versions side-by-side.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note boasts some serious camera credentials with a 13-megapixel sensor at the back with f/2.2 aperture. For shooting in low-light conditions, the primary shooter is supplemented by an LED flash. Compared to the competition in its price band, the Redmi Note is right at the top with such specifications. In terms of quality as well, it doesn’t disappoint, as it’s able to capture ample detail and reproduces good colours. However, once you start zooming in, the images starts losing their sharpness and we also noticed a bit of colour spillover in the macro shots.

So the field is set, the players are ready and now it’s show time, and that’s where Redmi Note’s power-packed internals come to the fore. The Xiaomi’s phablet comes powered by an octa-core MediaTek MT6592 SoC with each core clocked at 1.7GHz. The true octa-core SoC keeps all the eight cores firing simultaneously under the hood to deliver good performance, which is further helped by the Mali-450MP4 graphics engine. Along with all the processing power, the phone offers 2GB of RAM to ensure smooth multitasking. At this point, its important to note that Xiaomi has introduced the Redmi Note in two variants back in its home country – standard and enhanced, and the specs mentioned above are for the latter, since that's the one that will be arriving in India.

Being a phablet, the Redmi Note is an ideal device for consuming multimedia on the go and hence it’s important to expect good battery life. The device surely lives up to the expectations by lasting us more than the entire working day on a single charge with heavy usage of gaming, using 3G or Wi-Fi for emailing, web browsing, tweeting, along with basic tasks like calls and capturing images. With light usage, it easily gave us a day and a half worth’s backup. Talking about actual numbers, the Xiaomi Redmi Note played back an HD video on loop for close to nine hours and 20 minutes as part of our standard battery test. While the playback time isn’t the best, it’s much better than the average time clocked by most devices.

Well, if you’ve been following us in the review so far, then it’s a no-brainer. Xiaomi is making it a habit – offering a complete package at an insanely-attractive pricing. What this results in is that despite having a few qualms about the device, we can quickly dispel them when we get the asking price of the smartphone into the equation.