Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 review

Best phone under RM1,000? For me — for as long as I’ve been writing tech — the answer was always Redmi Note. This year, their champion in this increasingly competitive segment of the market is called the Redmi Note 5 and I’m here to help you find out if it’s still the one true king.

It may seem obvious, but I will still say that Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 5 is the best Redmi Note handset the company has made so far. And I say that not only because it is an improvement over its predecessor, but also because it exceeds the conventional expectations for a smartphone refresh.

If we’re talking about a by-the-books update in the Redmi Note line I usually turn to the Redmi Note 4. Yes, it was a serviceable update, but I didn’t think it did much to raise the bar.

This latest Redmi Note device changes that, and I still find it quite hard to believe you can get such a capable smartphone for less than RM1,000.

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Specs:

Dimensions: 158.6 x 75.4 x 8.1 mm (6.24 x 2.97 x 0.32 in)

Weight: 181g

Build: Front glass, aluminum body

Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 (14 nm architecture)

CPU: Octa-core 1.8 GHz Kryo 260

GPU: Adreno 509

OS: MIUI 9 (upgradable to MIUI 10), based on Android 8.0

Memory : 3GB or 4/6GB RAM

Storage : 32GB or 64GB ROM

Expandable storage : Supported, up to 256 GB microSD (uses SIM 2 slot)

Display type : IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors

Display size : 5.99 inches, 92.6 cm2 (~77.4% screen-to-body ratio)

Screen resolution : 1080 x 2160 pixels, 18:9 ratio (~403 ppi density)

Mobile network support: GSM / CDMA / HSPA / LTE

Wi-Fi support : 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, WiFi Direct, hotspot

Bluetooth support : 5.0, A2DP, LE

GPS support : Yes, with A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS

USB : microUSB 2.0

Rear camera : 12 MP, f/1.9 and 5 MP, f/2.0

Front camera : 13 MP, f/2.0

Battery : Non-removable Li-Po 4000 mAh battery

Color : Black, Gold, Rose Gold, Blue, Flame Red

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This Redmi Note 5, paired with Qualcomm Snapdragon 636, is a decent mid-range SoC. It’s going to enough power to play all the games. It won’t be the fastest so you won’t be get the smooth frame rate as SD845, but in general, a very good chipset that is quite power efficient. The Antutu score we had tested out, can go up to 115000, and this is really good, better than the previous generation of Redmi Note series that was using the SD625.

The screen panel is in 18:9 aspect ratio (or 2:1), has a maximum brightness of almost 500Lux, which means very decent brightness output and you can see things in your screen under sunlight. The IPS panel, although not as good as Super AMOLED, but the overall color reproduction seems good.

The dual camera setup used in this smartphone, has a sensor that has dual pixel phase detection auto-focus. Which means the auto-focus capability is really quick, and it also doesn't have the focus hunting issue like previous phones did. The front facing camera also did a great job, it can capture your selfies with blurred bokeh backgrounds with it. There's a LED flash beside the front camera, so you can take selfie pictures even in the dark.

In terms of build quality, you can see we’ve got a full (but not quite a full metal unibody). The back it's all metal but the tops and bottoms are made out of plastic, so there's a slight disappointment here. No Type-C port either at the bottom although now it is 2018, i think most of the phones should include a Type-C port and not still using microUSB. Like previous Xiaomi Redmi phones, it has dual SIM support but if you want to use a microSD card, then unfortunately the microSD card slot is shared with SIM 2 slot, which means you need to sacrifice either 2nd SIM slot or microSD slot.

The phone is shipped with MIUI 9 based on Android 8.1, which is good. But there's some minor problems with the UI like a little bit of stuttering happens especially when using full-gestures mode, and we hope that next update/patch will fix that. The face-unlocking is really quick under sufficient amount of light, it can be slow under low light conditions. The fingerprint unlock is also really quick like the previous phones like Redmi Note 4.

The Redmi Note 5 supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3, which allows you to fully charge your phone in 1 hour 49 minutes from 5% with a QC3 supported charger. The SoT is also not bad, we managed to get 9 hours 15 minutes of SoT, with most of the time using Wi-Fi and sometimes using data connection. Thanks to the SD636 power efficiency, we managed to get such good results.

The internal storage I/O speed is okay with eMMC 5.1 built in, and it is expected with this kind of budget phone. We can get about 265 MB/s of sequentian read and 200 MB/s of sequential write. Talk about GPS performance, as always, decent GPS performance with Qualcomm chipset, we always managed to get around 3 to 4 meters of accuracy with Qualcomm chipset phones. For the Wi-Fi performance, the Wireless AC throughput can reach up to 300Mbps, but for the 4G throughput, I'm not really happy about it because it is slower than what it should.

The rear camera quality seems really good, it can even match or sometimes better than the quality of the photo produced by the Samsung Galaxy S7, a two-year old flagship phones. What impresses me is the focus and you could still take a decent macro to with this camera. What isn't good is the low-light photo, it produces a bit of grain pixel, it's over sharpening. Talk about video recording performance, yes you can shoot in 1080p with EIS support, so you won't get shaky footages while recording video. If you want to record in 4k, you'll need third-party app called Open Camera.

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Pros:

a. Latest Snapdragon 636 SoC

b. Great battery life

c. Decent audio from 3.5mm headphone jack, calls and loudspeaker

d. Decent 2:1 IPS screen (500 lux brightness)

e. Depth effect / portrait camera

f. Best camera seen on a smartphone with same pricing level

g. Android 8.1 out of the box

h. Great EIS on rear camera video footage

Cons:

a. Wi-Fi and 4G should perform much better

b. Minor UI animation stutters

c. Still not using USB Type-C although now is 2018