Xiaomi launched the Redmi Note 12 Pro series, the company’s latest mid-range 5G smartphones, in India last week as the successor to last year’s Xiaomi 11i. These were launched in China last year, and the company has launched the phones in the same name in India. Even though the Redmi Note 12 Pro retains the similar display specs, and design as the predecessor, this has new display features, a slightly faster processor and a new camera.
Is the phone worth the price of Rs. 24,999? Let us dive into the review to find out.
Box Contents
- Redmi Note 12 Pro 8GB + 256GB in Stardust Purple colour
- 67W fast charger
- USB Type-C Cable
- SIM Ejector tool
- Clear protective case
- Screen protector (Pre-installed)
- User guide
Display, Hardware and Design
Starting with the display, the Redmi Note 12 Pro has a 6.67-inch Full HD+ Pro AMOLED display with a pixel resolution of 2400 × 1080 pixels, 20:9 aspect ratio 2.5D curved glass screen and a pixel density of about 394 PPI. The display is bright, thanks to 900 nits brightness in high brightness mode, which is enabled when you are watching HDR content. It supports DCI-P3 wide colour gamut, so the colours are vibrant.
It has 120Hz display refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling rate, which when enabled offers a buttery smooth user experience, especially when you are scrolling through the UI and when gaming. This has adaptive refresh rate, so it can switch between 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz depending on the content. It also has HDR 10+ support, which works for YouTube and Netflix. There is also Dolby Vision support that works for Netflix. This is rarely seen in phones in the price range. The phone comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection.
Under the display options, there are different options to adjust colours and contrast based on your preference, reading mode that lets you reduce the display’s blue light emission. There is Dark mode. It also has, 1920Hz High Frequency PWM Dimming which is automatically enabled to reduce flicker in low brightness.
The phone has an always-on-display option, which can be enabled from display settings. This doesn’t consume a lot of power since this is an AMOLED screen, but the company says that it increases the power consumption, so it turns off automatically when the phone stays dark for a long time or battery saver restrictions are applied.
The phone has a tiny punch-hole that houses a 16-megapixel camera, which doesn’t disturb when watching videos since it just occupies a small space. Above the display there is an earpiece on the top edge which also doubles up as a secondary speaker. The phone also has the usual set of proximity and ambient light sensors, as well as a gyroscope and a magnetic sensor, otherwise known as a magnetometer.
The phone has 2.9mm ultra-narrow bottom bezel which is good, but the realme 10 Pro+ has 2.33 mm bottom bezel which is smaller, also has a 61° curved screen and 2160Hz PWM dimming.
Coming to the button placements, the volume rockers and the power button that integrates the fingerprint sensor are present on the right side of the phone. The dual SIM slot, loudspeaker grill, primary microphone and USB Type-C port are present on the bottom. On the top there is a 3.5mm audio jack, vent for speaker, secondary microphone and an infrared sensor.
Since the phone has a polycarbonate frame, you don’t see any antenna cutouts. The phone features an X-axis linear vibration motor, which enables custom vibration patterns across the UI for the best haptic experience. The predecessor had a hybrid SIM slot, but this lacks expandable storage.
Even though the phone has a large screen, it is easy to hold since it is 76mm wide. It is also just 7.98mm thick and the weight distribution is good, so at 187 grams, it feels light even with the glass back.
We have the Stardust Purple colour, which has tiny speckles behind the glass. The phone also comes in Frosted Blue and Onyx Black colours in India. Since the phone has an anti-glare matte finish that doesn’t attract fingerprints. Xiaomi says that it uses hardened glass, but it doesn’t have Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection on the back. The phone also has IP53 ratings that you rarely see in other phones in the range.
Camera
- 50MP rear camera with 1/1.56″ Sony IM766 sensor, OIS, f/1.88 aperture
- 8MP 120° ultra-wide angle camera, f/2.2 aperture
- 2MP macro camera, f/2.4 aperture
- 16MP front camera, f/2.45 aperture
The camera UI is familiar with other Xiaomi or POCO smartphones running MIUI 123You get all the features such as Pro, Night, 50MP, Short Video, Panorama, VLOG, Slow motion, Time-lapse, Dual video, AI watermark, Long exposure and Pro mode lets you adjust white balance, focus, shutter speed (1/4000s to 30 seconds), ISO (50 to 6400) and option to select main, ultra-wide and macro lens. You can also shoot in RAW in Pro mode and enable focus peaking, exposure verification and more options. Redmi has enabled Cam2API by default, so you can side-load ported Google Camera APKs for advanced editing, including RAW capture.
Coming to the image quality, daylight shots came out well with good dynamic range. After pixel binning technology, you get 13.3MP output. HDR shots are better with improved dynamic range. 8MP wide-angle shots are decent. 50MP mode that offers a lot of details. Even though there is no telephoto lens, it uses the software for offering up to 10x digital zoom. This is like taking an image and cropping up later. Even in the 2x zoom, images start to lose details, so it is not recommended going beyond 2x if you don’t want to lose details. The dedicated 2MP macro sensor is average. Edge detection in decent portrait shots, even thought it lacks a dedicated portrait camera.
Low-light shots are good, thanks to the sensor and tuning, and the night mode is even better, making the images brighter offering more details. In pro mode it was even better. Images with flash are good, and the flash is not overpowering. Daylight front camera shots from the 16-megapixel front camera are decent, but not the best even in daylight conditions due to the tiny sensor. Output is 16MP in resolution, and the image size is around 5MB. Portrait shots have decent edge detection, even though it is done using software.
Check out the camera samples.
It can record videos at 4k resolution at 30 fps, 1080p at up to 60 fps, and it also has slow motion 1080p at up to 120 fps and 720p resolution video recording at up to 960fps, but this should be 240 fps converted into 960fps. You can also shoot 1080p videos using the ultra-wide and 720p video using macro camera. Front camera supports up to 1080p 60fps recording.
Software, UI and Apps
It runs Android 12 out of the box, with MIUI 13 on top. It has November 2022 Android security patch recently. The company said it will get the Android 13 update. Since the MIUI 14 has not been launched globally, it is not clear when it will get the update. MIUI 13 lets you uninstall several system apps. This has all the usual set of features such as Gesture shortcut, one-handed mode, Quick Ball and more.
Since the phone has an infrared sensor for remote function, it comes with Mi Remote that lets you control your home appliances easily. Out of 8GB LPDDR4X RAM, you get 7.5GB of usable RAM, and about 3GB of RAM is free when default apps are running in the background. It also has up to 5GB of memory extension or virtual RAM, which you can disable from additional settings. Out of 256GB, you get about 225GB of free storage. It has UFS 2.2 storage, and we got sequential read speeds of 996.85MB/s.
Apart from the usual set of utility apps, Google apps and Xiaomi’s own set of apps, it comes preloaded with Amazon Shopping, Facebook, Prime Video, Netflix, LinkedIn, Zili, Spotify and Snapchat apps. It also asks for additional app installation during setup, which you can skip. You can easily uninstall these apps, but these come up when you reset the phone. Even though there is personalized ads option during set up and recommendations in all the apps, you don’t get any ads in apps.
Fingerprint sensor and Face unlock
Even though it has an AMOLED screen, the phone has a fingerprint sensor on the ride side, embedded into the power button. It immediately unlocks the phone just by keeping your finger on the power button so that you don’t have to press it. This is more convenient compared to the rear-mounted fingerprint scanner and faster than the in-display fingerprint scanner. You can add up to 5 fingerprints.
You can also use the fingerprint for app local and payments in apps. There are also some gesture features in the power button that lets you double tap to perform actions such as take a screenshot, turn on torch, launch camera, enable silent mode, and more. The phone also has face unlock, but it is not as secure as fingerprint since it can be unlocked with a photo.
Music Player and Multimedia
The Mi Music Player is the default music player with usual Xiaomi audio effects and equalizer. Audio through the speaker is loud. Since the phone has stereo speakers, audio is pretty loud. Audio through earphones is good as well. There is Dolby Atmos and Hi-Fi audio that enhances the audio performance. It doesn’t have FM Radio.
It has Widevine L1 support, so you can play HD content on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other streaming apps without any issues. The phone also supports Dolby Vision content in Netflix.
Dual SIM and Connectivity
It supports 5G, and has support for SA (n1/3/5/8/28a/38/40/41/77/78) / NSA (n38/40/41/77/78) bands and works with Jio and Airtel 5G out of the box. The phone supports 5G carrier aggregation as well. Other connectivity options include Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ac. It has VoWiFi / Wi-Fi calling support, Bluetooth 5.2 LE, Dual GPS/AGPS, Glonass, Beidou, but it doesn’t have NFC. It also has USB OTG support that lets you connect USB drives. Call quality is good, and we did not face any call drops and the earpiece volume was loud.
The Redmi Note 12 Pro’s body SAR is 0.810 W/Kg (Distance 15mm) and head SAR is at 0.844/Kg, which is well under the limit of 1.6 W/kg (over 1 g) in India.
Performance and Benchmarks
This is one of the first phones to be powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 1080 6nm SoC, which is just an overclocked Dimensity 920 used in the 9 Pro+. It has 2 x A78 CPUs clocked at up to 2.6GHz, 6x A55 CPUs clocked at up to 2GHz. It has Mali-G68 MC4 and up to 8GB LPDDR4X RAM.
The company says that it has 3000mm² VC liquid cooling heat dissipation and 12 layer graphite sheets, an improvement compared to the predecessor. It gets a bit warm on intensive gaming like Genshin impact and 4G data use, but it doesn’t get too hot to handle.
We did not face frame drops or any other issues in games like BGMI or COD, and it reached maximum 41º in our testing indoors in Wi-Fi, but this might vary outdoors in 4G or 5G. That said, check out some synthetic benchmark scores below.
Battery life
Coming to the battery life, the phone has a 5000mAh (typical) built-in battery that lasts for a day even with heavy use, and with average use it lasts for more than a day, thanks to optimization in the MIUI 13. I got over 6 hours of screen on time with over a day of use in 120Hz refresh rate.
Since the phone has support for 67W fast charging, it can charge up to 50% in 15 minutes and up to 100% in about 46 minutes with the bundled 67W charger. The Redmi Note 12 Pro+ has a slightly smaller 4980mAh battery with 120W fast charging. To remind you, the Xiaomi 11i had a 5160mAh batery.
Conclusion
At a starting price of Rs. 24,999, the Redmi Note 12 Pro is decent upgrade to the Xiaomi 11i with a new display feaures that include adaptive refresh rate, Dolby Vision and 1920Hz High Frequency PWM Dimming. The Dimensity 1080 SoC offers a good performance and a decent gaming performance without heating issues, and the camera has been upgraded, and has OIS as well. However, the design, ultra-wide and 2MP macro camera are similar to the predecessor, and the phone still runs Android 12.
Alternatives
The realme 10 Pro+ is the direct competition with a curved screen, but it lacks a good cooling mechanism for gaming. The POCO F4 is now down to the same price that offers Snapdragon 870 SoC for a better gaming experience.
Availability
The Redmi Note 12 Pro is priced at Rs. 24,999 for the 6GB + 128GB, Rs. 26,999 for the 8GB + 128GB and the 8GB + 256GB model costs Rs. 27,999.
It will be available from Flipkart, Mi.com, Mi Home Stores, and offline stores from January 11th.
Launch offer
With the launch offers of up to Rs. 3000 instant discount with ICICI Bank Cards and EMI / Exchange bonus of Rs. 3000 and additional Rs. 1000 off on exchange for existing Xiaomi/Mi and Redmi smartphones, the effective starting price is Rs. 20,999 which is a good deal.
Pros
- 120Hz AMOLED display with Dolby Vision is good
- Smooth performance and good gaming performance
- Stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos
- Primary camera is good with OIS
- IP53 water-resistant body
- Good battery life
Cons
- Runs Android 12 at launch
- Same old design