Xiaomi launched its latest Flagship of the Note series, named ‘Redmi Note 5’ and the ‘Note 5 Pro’. Talking about the phones, Note 5 doesn’t seems much impressive but the Pro variant is indeed the rocking Flagship in the said price range of Rs. 13,999. Not only it brings Dual Camera setup or Full view display but so many more features with it, along with powerhouse processing units. Here’s my personal experience with the phones, in this short review of Note 5 Pro.
Design:
Nothing new, same metal unibody design that we’ve all seen in the past and now it has become a bit boring but it still looks good and feels good in the hand. Towards the back we’ve got dual camera and dual tone dual LED flash. The fingerprint sensor is at the rear too in the center which is very easy to access.
Power and volume rockers are to the right and these buttons are nice and clicky, and to the left there a Hybrid SIM-slot. To the top an IR blaster and a secondary noise cancelling micro-phone and to the bottom there is a headphone jack, primary microphone and a Micro USB port which is a disappointment in a PRO model in 2018.
Hardware:
The Note 5 Pro is really fast and snappy which is expected with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 inside which is a capable Octa-Core chip, this is a huge improvement from Note 4 or this year’s Redmi 5 plus or Note 5. There are 3GB, 4GB and 6GB RAM options to go with but only one storage option that is at 64GB. Graphic department is handled by Adreno 509 GPU which is a boost to games and performance. Powering all this is the 4000mAH battery with fast charging feature. The full charge will last for a full day with medium to high usage and with 7-8 hours of screen-on time.
Display:
This one is the same as one on the Redmi Note 5, which is 5.99-inch display with 18:9 aspect ratio and has FULL HD Plus resolution. The screen is bright and vibrant with 450nits and visible even under bright sunlight. On the top of the display there’s a single 20-mp camera for selfies and the regular sensors and the earpiece. The phone has good body-to-screen ratio thanks to the 2.5D curved glass display with rounded edges.
Cameras:
On the rear the primary camera is of 12-mp (f/2.2) and secondary camera is of 5-mp (f/2.0). The images clicked are decent and the secondary camera helps in the portrait mode which comes out quite decent too. Images were sharp with good amount of contrast and saturation. The 20-mp front camera in very nice in clicking selfies and it has an LED flash too. But with such a high-end hardware there’s no support for 4K video recording.
Software:
Redmi Note 5 Pro runs on MiUI 9 based on Android 7.1.1 Nougat. Oreo would’ve been better here being a 2018 phone but the update is expected soon. The MiUI has many perks to offers such as Second Space which is kind of app twin giving you option to use two accounts of WhatsApp, twitter etc. Out of the 64GB internal storage you get around 54GB of available storage and from the RAM usage around 1.8GB is occupied by the system.
My Take:
PROS: The latest Snapdragon 636 chip is the USP and will be a deal breaker for many specially the power users or gamers. Fast charging capability, the 20-mp camera with a flash and the bright and beautiful display is also what we liked in this phone.
Cons: No USB type-C and no fast charger included in the box here, so another expense coming up for you. The camera app is not that powerful as seen on the Honor series or specially the Honor 9i and 9 lite. The Pro mode only gives you control over white balance and ISO and that’s not expected with the kind of lenses in this phone. Still hybrid SIM-slot! The company could’ve given two SIM slots and a dedicated Micro SD card slot too and given that you are also restricted too 64GB variant only. Inspite a dual camera set-up it doesn’t match its completion like Mi A1 or the Honor 9Lite.
The Redmi Note 5 Pro looks very similar to the Redmi Note 5 . Xiaomi boasts of it having a maximum brightness of 450 nits, which means that in the real world, the display is easily legible even under direct sunlight , Many thanks for sharing this review.