Review of Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro - a smartphone that can hardly be called a top for your money

2023 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-07-28 10:38

With long-term use of the novelty, its top-end characteristics are not at all impressive, and "childhood diseases" appear where you would not expect them in any way.

Redmi Note 10 Pro is a top-end smartphone from the midrange series, which has always stood out for the best value for money. At first glance, it looks almost perfect: there is a flagship screen, an excellent camera, stereo speakers, a capacious battery and, in general, a fairly balanced filling. However, in reality, the device turned out to be not without flaws, so even such advantages may not be enough for it to become a real hit.

Table of contents

• Specifications
• Design and ergonomics
• Screen
• Sound
• Performance
• System
• Camera
• Autonomy and charging
• Outcomes

Specifications

Platform	Android 11, MIUI 12.5 firmware
Display	AMOLED, 6.67 inches, 2,400 x 1,080 pixels, 120 Hz, DCI ‑ P3, HDR10, up to 1,200 nits, Corning Gorilla Glass 5
CPU	Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G (8nm)
Memory	6/128 GB (microSD card support)
Cameras	Main: main - 108 Mp, f / 1.9 with a 1/1, 52 ″ sensor, 0.7 μm pixels and Dual Pixel PDAF focusing; wide-angle - 8 megapixels, f / 2.2, 118 °; telemacro - 5 megapixels, f / 2.4 with autofocus; depth sensor - 2 Mp, f / 2.4. Front: 16 MP, f / 2.5
Communications	2 × nanoSIM, Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n / ac (2, 4 and 5 GHz), Bluetooth 5.1 LE, NFC
Battery	5,020 mAh, 33W fast wired charging (USB-C 2.0)
Dimensions (edit)	164 × 76.5 × 8.1mm
The weight	193 g
Additionally	IP53 splash proof, stereo speakers, 3.5mm jack, fingerprint reader

Design and ergonomics

Externally, the Redmi Note 10 Pro looks more like Xiaomi's flagship series than the previous model in the line. This is especially noticeable in the massive photo module, which is now shifted to the left corner.

Usually all the elements of the camera are located on one protruding block, but there are two such "steps": on the bottom - the flash and the autofocus sensor; on the next one, just above, there are four cameras.

The body frame is made of glossy plastic, while the front and back are Gorilla Glass 5. For testing, we got the version in the color "onyx gray", and there are also "ice blue" and "bronze gradient".

The smartphone is quite easily soiled, but the set comes with a silicone case, which will allow you not to worry about it. It fits very tightly to the device, completely covering its corners. As it turned out by chance, such protection will also save you when you fall from a low height.

The cutout in the case for the rear camera has a small rim, which will protect the photo module from damage in case of careless contact with surfaces, but will not get rid of dust. It constantly accumulates around this block.

Redmi Note 10 Pro has IP53 protection, which means that a certain amount of small particles can get inside the device, but this will not affect its operation in any way. In addition, the smartphone will survive light rain. And the complete case also covers the USB-connector.

All buttons are concentrated on the right edge. There is a volume rocker and a power key with a built-in fingerprint scanner. The latter works very accurately and quickly.

On the left side there is a tray for two SIM-cards and a microSD card, and it is separate, so you won't have to choose between a second SIM card and memory expansion.

As for the size of the case and ease of use, Xiaomi can be praised here, since the Redmi Note 10 Pro has become a little more compact, thinner and lighter than its predecessor with the same screen diagonal. The novelty lies well in the hand and practically does not slip if you use a case.

Screen

The smartphone is equipped with an AMOLED display with a diagonal of 6.67 inches, a resolution of 2,400 × 1,080 pixels (20: 9 ratio) and, most importantly, with a refresh rate of 120 Hz. True, by default, the settings are set to 60 Hz, which has a logical explanation: saving battery power.

A 120Hz screen is a rarity in the low-cost segment. It is not difficult to notice the difference in comparison with the standard 60 Hz. High smoothness of the picture is especially well seen in some games, system animation and scrolling. It is enough to look through the desktops - and everything becomes clear.

The smartphone supports the Always on Display mode and allows you to display time, text, battery power, animation and various images, including custom ones, on the screen off. For example, you can display a photo from a camera or just make an inscription.

Also in the settings of this mode there is an option that allows you to set a specific effect for notifications. This could be a ripple at the edges of the display or flickering green dots. Thus, the manufacturer has solved the problem of the absence of an LED indicator above the screen.

The peak display brightness reaches 1200 nits, but this is only a theoretical figure for HDR content. Typical value is 450 nits. This is significantly less, but still sufficient for everyday use. However, there is one problem: automatic adjustment does not always accurately respond to changes in lighting levels. Often, to make the picture more readable, you have to change the brightness manually.

Due to problems with the light sensor, color reproduction also suffers in some places, since it initially adjusts to the ambient light. Almost always, the shades lack saturation, as if it were an IPS-matrix. This can be easily corrected in the preferences by changing the color scheme from Auto to Vivid. Then the picture becomes typical for an AMOLED panel: bright, contrasting and “colorful”.

Here we note the problems with the proximity sensor, due to which the screen periodically turns on right during a call, when the phone is brought to the ear. Moreover, repeated zooming in and out does not solve the problem. You don't expect such disadvantages from such a device.

Sound

Redmi Note 10 Pro received full stereo speakers. And we are not talking about a pair of spoken and bottom, but about two separate sound sources at the bottom and top ends. The earpiece located next to the selfie camera is responsible for calls only.

The sound from the stereo speakers is decent. It's nice to watch YouTube, movies and videos on social networks, but it's not so comfortable to play. The thing is that the top speaker is located on the left side of the edge, so when the device is horizontally oriented, it is often blocked by the hand. If you are used to playing with headphones, this feature will not be a problem for you. In addition, thanks to the presence of a 3.5 mm jack, it is quite possible to connect an ordinary wired headset to the Redmi Note 10 Pro, but it is better to look for an option with an L-shaped plug.

Performance

The smartphone is equipped with a modern Snapdragon 732G processor (8 nm), 6 GB of RAM and a 128 GB UFS 2.2 storage. A separate slot for a microSD card allows you to add a couple of hundred gigabytes of content.

In normal day-to-day use, the Redmi Note 10 Pro's performance is complete. All applications start almost instantly and open from the background just as cheerfully. The main thing is that the system does not undertake to restrict the activity of programs that you need all the time. To prevent this from happening, check the settings in the "Activity Control" section. There you can remove restrictions for any application so that it does not unload from the background when inactive.

As for the maximum gaming load, here the smartphone showed itself not in the best way. After half an hour of playing heavy Call of Duty: Mobile at high graphics settings, throttling begins to be felt - the frame rate decreases, and the device itself heats up noticeably. And if the temperature rise can still be leveled out with a silicone case, then nothing can be done with the FPS drawdown, you will have to take a break.

System

The smartphone runs on Android 11 with MIUI 12.5 interface. The abundance of advertisements and recommendations is the first thing that catches your eye when you get to know the shell. Intrusive ads quickly start to get nervous, increasing the time of habitual actions - here and there you need to brush off a new banner or notification. Even with a simple selection of a background image, MIUI will certainly offer you other wallpapers that you can not help but look, since the window with them pops up in full screen.

Fortunately, Lifehacker has a guide to help remove most of the ads.

Aside from this unpleasant feature, MIUI is outwardly a modern and functional shell that strives for simplicity, but at the same time retains its corporate identity. Here are the usual rectangular interface elements with rounded flat icons and traditional Xiaomi colors.

Support for themes allows you to change the appearance and shape of icons and make the interface, for example, more "google", as below in the screenshot on the right (for this, the free theme Android O V10 is suitable).

Among the nice features of MIUI 12.5 are the following:

• Black as night dark mode that turns on on schedule.
• Ability to fine-tune the size of desktop icons for any theme.
• Two types of "Control Center" (curtains) to choose from: a more familiar and new one, in which quick settings and notifications are dropped from different halves of the curtain.

• Different styles of displaying notifications in the curtain: standard for Android and adapted for MIUI. The selection affects the size of text and headings.
• Two formats for displaying thumbnails on the multitasking screen: horizontal carousel or vertical box with two columns (default).
• Convenient gesture navigation that allows you to abandon the three buttons at the bottom of the screen.

Separately, I would like to note the function of floating windows, thanks to which applications open in a mini-format (seen in the screenshots above). They can be docked to the desktop and quickly expand to full screen when needed. They are accessible from a curtain or multitasking window. In the same place, holding the task thumbnail, you can switch to split-screen mode to open two programs at the same time, one above the other.

The MIUI shell has always been distinguished by its high speed and responsiveness, but in the case of the Redmi Note 10 Pro, not everything is so smooth. We faced a number of problems. Applications sometimes freeze, navigation buttons do not appear, closed tasks suddenly pop up in the shutter, and in some cases the screen does not turn on at all when you press the power button, so you have to wait or restart your smartphone. These are all clearly software problems that can and should be fixed in the future.

Camera

Redmi Note 10 Pro has become one of the most affordable smartphones with a 108 megapixel camera. It was complemented by an 8 megapixel wide-angle module, a 5 megapixel macro lens and a 2 megapixel depth-of-field sensor.

The main camera is great. By default, it shoots with a resolution of 12 megapixels, but in the settings you can turn on the 108 megapixel mode for better detail (and more weight in the photo, of course). During the day, outdoors and indoors with good lighting, you can not worry about the quality of the pictures. Even without active AI algorithms, the picture is almost always clear and rich.

Photo with the main camera in good lighting (to view in full resolution, open in the next tab):

With a lack of light, the frames sometimes turn out to be fuzzy. Optical stabilization would be very useful here, but this, of course, is not a middle-class device's capabilities. In some cases, in Redmi Note 10 Pro, night mode helps out, combining several neighboring pixels, but often it makes the frame unnaturally bright.

Photo with the main camera in low light:

The 8MP wide-angle lens is useful for shooting landscapes and architecture, but only in good natural light. If bad, we get noise, artifacts and blur. This module does not support night mode.

Photo with a wide-angle camera:

Macro mode is not surprising at all, but the 2 megapixel sensor is just a tool for blurring in portrait mode. By the way, the smartphone does a good job with it.

Photo in portrait mode:

We also note the presence of a digital double zoom in the main camera, achieved by cropping, that is, simple cropping. In terms of quality, such images are noticeably inferior to those taken without zooming.

2x zoom example:

The 16 megapixel selfie camera allows you to get good shots during the day. There is a software blurring of the background and a "beautifier" - for Instagram it will be useful.

Selfie example:

Autonomy and charging

Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro received a 5,020 mAh battery. Taking into account the energy efficient chip and AMOLED display, the autonomy promised to be decent. However, in real scenarios of intensive use without recharging, the smartphone worked day - from morning to evening at 4.5–5 hours of active display. And this is without launching heavy mobile games.

One of the reasons for the relatively low autonomy is the screen frequency of 120 Hz. But even taking this factor into account for 5,020 mAh, the operating time without recharge seems too modest. Probably, the firmware also leaves its mark, which clearly has enough problems. Be that as it may, at the time of writing the review, even after receiving two system updates, the Redmi Note 10 Pro is not happy with its autonomy - it is average.

For charging, a USB Type-C connector is used, through which the smartphone can be powered at 33 watts. The manufacturer promises the ability to charge the device up to 59% in just half an hour, and from 0 to 100% in less than an hour and a half. We tested a smartphone without a complete memory, but there is no reason not to trust the data from Xiaomi. The gadget does not support wireless charging.

Outcomes

Redmi Note 10 Pro seems to be a very controversial smartphone. Immediately he impresses with a lot of cool advantages, but after a detailed acquaintance, their list is somewhat thinning. Without reservations, the smartphone can be praised only for the smooth AMOLED display, a good 108 megapixel main camera and stereo sound, which is still not often found in mid-range devices.

Taking into account the autonomy of one daylight hours, the battery can be deleted from the list of advantages. The same is with the processor, which obviously throttles under load and gets pretty hot.

The frank flaws include the incorrect operation of the proximity and illumination sensors, as well as the raw MIUI firmware with intrusive ads. Banners and ads can be removed independently, but the rest of the shortcomings are on the conscience of the manufacturer. Perhaps they will be eliminated over time, but so far, alas, Redmi Note 10 Pro hardly claims to be "top for its money". This is just a smartphone with a set of notable advantages and not less noticeable disadvantages.