Redmi Note 8 Pro review
What is it?
The newest member of India’s most popular budget smartphone series.
Design & Construction
- The Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro is beautifully built for a sub-Rs 20,000 smartphone. The glass sandwich construction here is solid and this green colour of our test unit looks stunning.
- The quad-rear camera setup has an asymmetric layout. Three sensors and the fingerprint scanner are arranged in a big central module, while the fourth macro camera is situated below the flashlight on the right.
- At the front, this phone has a generic design with a waterdrop-style display notch and a slim chin, which makes it quite indistinguishable from other smartphones.
Display
- The display on the Redmi Note 8 Pro is a 6.53-inch IPS LCD panel with a tall 19.5:9 aspect ratio. While not AMOLED, the display is still pretty bright and has good viewing angles.
- The overall colour reproduction of the display is a bit on the warmer side, though. But that’s noticeable only when you compare it side by side with competing phones, especially from Samsung.
User Interface & Performance
- The Helio G90T SoC providing power to this smartphone is phenomenally powerful as per sub-Rs 20,000 smartphone standards. Targeted specifically towards gamers, The Note 8 Pro won’t disappoint PUBG players at all. Graphic-intense games run on high settings with negligible frame drops.
- Also, thermal management is pretty good on this phone. You have to push the phone pretty hard to get it to heat up.
- Our Note 8 Pro got updated to the latest MIUI 11 during the test cycle. As always, the software optimisation is great and day to day usage is quite seamless. The phone now also supports Android 10-like navigation gestures, even though it is still running on Android 9 Pie.
- Despite the MIUI 11 updates, there are still ads baked into the user interface, and this can get annoying at times, especially if you haven’t used a Xiaomi phone before.
Cameras
- The 64MP f/1.8 primary camera on this Xiaomi smartphone is quite impressive for this segment. But, you have to keep in mind that 64MP does not mean that it will beat Google Pixels and iPhones of the world.
- The results from this camera, in the standard pixel-binned 16MP mode, showcase a good amount of detail in optimal lighting conditions. The camera can sometimes overexpose the bright areas in images, but toggling the AI mode helps combat it quite a bit.
- You can also shoot photos in full 64MP resolution, but this mode is best reserved only for those pics which you wish to get physically printed as you do lose some detail.
- There’s also a night mode which takes passable low light photos as long as your hand is stable, but don’t expect miracles here.
- The videos from the Redmi Note 8 Pro’s main camera also have a decent amount of detail, but what’s really impressive here is the stabilisation at 1080p @ 30 fps. You can also shoot videos from the ultra-wide and macro cameras, but the results aren’t great.
- Talking of the 8MP ultra-wide angle camera, it captures a lot more scene when compared to the main camera to give a completely different perspective to your image. Of course, you are not going to get the same amount of detail here as the main camera, but it’s fine for casual landscape photography.
- Same is the case with the dedicated 2MP macro camera, it’s not high resolution but produces very interesting results. The front camera produces some good 20MP selfies as well.
Check out the Note 8 Pro’s camera samples below:
Battery Life
- This smartphone has a big 4,500mAh battery, which makes sense since it’s targeted towards gamers. You can get a screen on time of over 6 hours on medium to heavy usage. The phone also comes bundled with an 18W fast charger.
What Else?
- Since the display is not AMOLED, you have to do with a rear-mounted capacitive fingerprint scanner, a bit old school, but still much faster than any in-display reader out there.
- If it still matters, this phone retains the 3.5 mm headphone jack.
Verdict
- Finally, what really makes the Redmi Note 8 Pro shine is its price tag. For Rs 14,999-17,999, you get a smartphone that looks premium, takes good photos and plays graphic-intense games with ease.
- The only possible drawback here is the lack of an AMOLED display.
- Still, if you wish to buy a powerful smartphone which does not break the bank, then this hugely popular Xiaomi phone is a no brainer.
Watch our Redmi Note 8 Pro video review:
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro
Rs 14,999-17,999
8.3
Pros
- Powerful gaming-centric SoC
- Versatile camera setup
- Great value for money
Cons
- UI ads
- No AMOLED display
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