Redmi Note 10 Pro 60 Days Later - What's Wrong? By Renzo Claros - Tech & Cameras

This is the Redmi Note 10 Pro with a 108MP camera, and here's my full review after making it my main phone. If you're new to the channel, I make tech videos of all sorts, and for all the subscribers, welcome back. It's been nearly two months since Xiaomi announced its affordable camera-centric device, and since then, we've seen a few interesting devices such as the POCO X3 Pro, F3, and even the realme 8 Pro. Though none of the POCO devices that I just mentioned come with a massive camera like this one, the realme 8 Pro, which recently launched in the Philippines, don't come close to the value offering of the Redmi Note 10 Pro. In case you're wondering, here's the full spec sheet of this phone. You won't be able to see this kind of packages on the market, such as the AMOLED and 120Hz pairing, that massive camera, and a massive battery with fast charging.

But what really surprised me when I first held this phone is its design and build. I was expecting this phone to be as thick and heavy as the X3 Pro, given they have similar schematics, but it's actually thinner and lighter, thus making it a bit comfortable to use. It's not as thin as the F3 nor the Mi 11 Lite, but the heftiness is enough to make me use it with a case without worrying about that extra bulk. Both sides are of Gorilla Glass 5, which neither realme nor Samsung can copy as they're fully switched to all-plastic at this price point, but I do have to mention that the frame is still plastic on this phone. It's also glossy and attracts fingerprints, but not as bad as the iPhone 12 Pro models.

Serving as the icing on the cake is an official IP53 dust and splash resistance. I have here the Glacier Blue color, which I personally would recommend to anyone looking for a casual-looking phone. The finish on the back is frosted and hardly attracts smudges, but you do have to be careful using this phone naked as it can easily slip away from your grasp whether you have dry or sweaty hands. But if you're a case person, you can just forget all about that. And lastly, there's no notification LED indicator, so you just have to make do with the Always-on Display feature.

Speaking of the display, this 6.67" 120Hz AMOLED is bright, colorful, and impressively comes with wide viewing angles. While it's still not as color accurate nor as bright as my Samsung Galaxy Note 9, the overall quality is close to POCO F3, which I praised in my separate review video. Out of the box, the color scheme is set to Auto which basically makes the screen more colorful while maintaining that natural look, however, I find the setting to be too saturated and weird, particularly when viewing photos on this phone. That said, I just chose Standard with default white balance to rid of the weird inconsistencies. But when it comes to that refresh rate, you do get the benefit of better responsiveness when gaming or scrolling, as well as the perceived smoother animation across apps, well, except when you're on YouTube, Netflix, or any video streaming app, because like most high refresh rate phones, it downclocks to 60Hz to save battery.

Perhaps the reason why this phone isn't as smooth as the POCO F3 despite sporting the same panel is the chipset. Inside this phone is the Snapdragon 732G from last year. Like other OEMs, Xiaomi had to recycle the chipset either for the reason of lack of supply or to cut the cost to make way for that 108MP camera. To be fair, the chipset isn't bad per se. It certainly gets the job done despite its age, whether you're playing games or applying tons of Tiktok filters.

But because the processing power is just enough, MIUI can stutter at times. Xiaomi could fix this by making the software more optimized, but as of MIUI 12.0.15, that has yet to happen. In fact, the biggest bug that I've seen so far is the slowness of the UI when playing a youtube video in picture in picture mode. It doesn't only happen to the app itself but the entire system, including other apps and the home screen. However, that's still not enough to make this phone unusable.

After turning off battery restrictions for my messenger app, I finally get my notifs almost always on time. Nova Launcher is still my default choice of launcher despite the lack of support for gestures from MIUI 12. Day-to-day operations were also almost fluid as the X3 Pro which has a much powerful chipset. The fingerprint scanner is fast and accurate, but I'd suggest turning off the haptic feedback in the setting as it's only as good as the X3 Pro, which by itself means buzzy and loose. The dual speakers are a bit of a mixed bag for me.

They are loud and clear, but they do sound tinny for a stereo speaker, and slight distortions are present on high volume levels. But then again, it's definitely better than most single-firing speaker phones. You do have an audio jack here, so that's a nice bonus. When it comes to battery, the 5020mAh is enough to last you up to two days worth of use. During my 6-month revisit of the X3, I was already blown away by the impressive battery life despite the high refresh rate and IPS LCD.

But now that the Redmi Note 10 Pro is using an AMOLED panel, as you may have expected, the battery performance is slightly longer. Between 16 hours to 24 hours of use, 4 to 7 hours of those are with my screen turned on. Sometimes, I would end the night with 35-50% percent left with medium-to-light usage. And with the 33W charger, getting from 0-100 percent is just as fast on the X3 Series, taking just about a little over 60 minutes. Apparently, this phone has a dual-layer graphite cooling system that makes it as good as some gaming phones in dissipating heat.

Whatever the case may be, I do think it distributes the heat to the outer shell of the device effectively as the back panel feels warm in light use. Now with heavy use, it does get hot but not at an alarming rate nor at a cost of performance. If you're looking to squeeze the performance, the 8GB RAM probably won't give you that FPS boost that you need, unless the games you're playing are very RAM intensive. That said, most users should be fine with 6GB even after a couple of years provided it's still the same apps you're going to use. Now for the biggest selling feature of this phone -- the 108MP camera.

Four sensors command the back -- an 8MP ultrawide, a 5MP macro, and a 2MP depth, in addition to the main sensor. The photos you get out of the main sensor are very impressive. Whether or not I'm using 108MP mode, the results are nearly identical. Colors are natural with just the right amount of saturation, although sometimes HDR goes overboard in processing. The main sensor applies pixel binning to output 12MP photos, however, I shoot mostly on 108MP mode simply because I can and it makes the photos appear sharper when viewed on a small screen.

I can further see the advantages of the large sensor in limited lighting conditions, as the noisy and blurry processing is minimized here. But make no mistake, darker parts of the images struggle in preserving sharpness, resulting in smudgy quality not even the hardware can fix. In low-light conditions, you can get away with just regular mode thanks to the light-absorbing ability of the sensor. Using Night Mode definitely makes the photos better, but it's hard to see the improvements in detail preservation. Overall, I think the 108MP camera takes solid photos in all scenarios.

It's already a very good camera. If Xiaomi included OIS in this phone, even by slightly bumping up the price, I think this would take the camera into that greatness category. But when it comes to videos, it's good enough. The main camera can record up to 4K@30frames but the ultrawide camera can only go up to FHD@30frames. On the flip end, both 4K and FHD look excellent already.

So no problems with that. If there's one thing I wish this phone could've done better -- that would be stabilization. At 4K, the electronic image stabilizer could barely keep up with video recording while walking. But at 1080p, it's significantly smoother. I'm not sure what Xiaomi did here, but the X3 Pro and X3 even have better stabilization than this phone.

Switching to the 16MP selfie, at the very least, selfie recordings are stable. You may want to extend the field of view by using a selfie pod, though. Photo-wise, I think the overall quality of selfies are good. You just need to watch out for group shots as any subject that's not on focus will appear noisy and smudgy. I really enjoyed my time with the Redmi Note 10 Pro.

As the most affordable 108MP phone on the market, it's definitely a device aimed towards those who prioritize camera quality above else. But what's special about this phone is that Xiaomi didn't skimp on the other features -- you still get a great and fast display, a durable and relatively thin design, and even a two-day battery that charges in an hour. Sure, the chipset is recycled but in 2021, the chipset isn't really a bad performer unless you play the top-end games out there. With a few more optimizations, especially with the arrival of MIUI 12.5, this phone will only get better. --------flash pricing at the same time-------------- That's it for my Redmi Note 10 Pro review.

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Source : Renzo Claros - Tech & Cameras