
The Redmi lineup of smartphones from Xiaomi have gained a lot of success
ever since their launch, one being the Note series. In the mid range
segment there are many smartphones giving competition to the Redmi Note
series. The Redmi Note series provides the best combination of design,
performance and battery life.

Last year the Redmi Note 7 Pro was launched with a 48MP camera and came with one of the best mid-range chipset the Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 at Rs.13,999 which made the device out of stock on online as the smartphone sold at a huge number. Realme and Samsung are holding a strong foothold in the mid range segment so Xiaomi had to pull the latest Note series giving some serious competition. Realme XT was launched at Rs.15,999 that sports a 64MP camera and Samsung came with the M30s which sports a 6000mAh battery. Xiaomi launched the Redmi Note 8 Pro but this time with a gaming centric Mediatek chipset. So we will look at the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro and see is this the best Note made by Xiaomi till date?

Last year the Redmi Note 7 Pro was launched with a 48MP camera and came with one of the best mid-range chipset the Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 at Rs.13,999 which made the device out of stock on online as the smartphone sold at a huge number. Realme and Samsung are holding a strong foothold in the mid range segment so Xiaomi had to pull the latest Note series giving some serious competition. Realme XT was launched at Rs.15,999 that sports a 64MP camera and Samsung came with the M30s which sports a 6000mAh battery. Xiaomi launched the Redmi Note 8 Pro but this time with a gaming centric Mediatek chipset. So we will look at the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro and see is this the best Note made by Xiaomi till date?
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro Design:
Like the last year Redmi Note 7 Pro, the Redmi Note 8 Pro also comes
with a glass design on the front as well as back. This time the Redmi
Note 8 Pro packs a larger screen at 6.53 inches compared to the Redmi Note 7 Pro which packed a 6.3 inches
display. On the front there is a water drop notch which houses the
front camera. The earpiece sits on top of the camera with the proximity
and ambient sensors. On the top there is a secondary noise cancelling
microphone with an IR blaster to control televisions, refrigerators etc.

The side frame of the Redmi Note 8 Pro is made of plastic but it looks
premium. On the sides of the smartphone, there are volume controls with
power button and the SIM trays. You get a dedicated microSD card slot
for expansion. On the back, the Redmi Note 8 Pro houses quad cameras to
the back and under the cameras is the fingerprint scanner which is quite
fast and accurate. The macro camera is under the LED flash whereas the
64MP camera and other three cameras are in the middle of the back. There
isn't any IP rating for the smartphone but Xiaomi claims it as splash
proof means it can be used during rain or any liquid spills, the
smartphone would work fine. At 200gms, the Redmi Note 8 Pro weighs a bit little as it packs a larger 4500mAh battery.
At the bottom there is a loudspeaker vent with USB Type-C slot and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Xiaomi ships the Redmi Note 8 Pro with a 18W fast charger in the box. The build of the Redmi Note 8 Pro is quite good but since it has a glass back it is slippery. Though Xiaomi provides a plastic case in the box.
At the bottom there is a loudspeaker vent with USB Type-C slot and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Xiaomi ships the Redmi Note 8 Pro with a 18W fast charger in the box. The build of the Redmi Note 8 Pro is quite good but since it has a glass back it is slippery. Though Xiaomi provides a plastic case in the box.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro Display:
The Redmi Note 8 Pro features a 6.5 inches full HD+ panel with (1080 x 2340 pixels) with a screen-to-body ratio of 19.5:9.
The display is larger compared to last year's Redmi Note 7 Pro and also
some of its rivals like the Realme XT, Samsung M30s etc. This time
Xiaomi has gone for a drew drop notch instead of U-Notch on the Redmi
Note 7 Pro. The screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5
and supports HDR content which is very rare to find on a smartphone at
this range. The screen is very good with good color accuracy and becomes
bright when taken under direct sunlight. At night the screen can go
very dim as the brightness levels are well calibrated not putting
pressure on the human eyes as you have also the option of Blue Light filter.
The screen on the Redmi Note 8 Pro supports Widevine L1 so you can stream HD content using Amazon Prime,Hotstar,Netflix etc. The Chinese variant of the Redmi Note 8 Pro lacks this feature. The Redmi Note 8 Pro does lack an AMOLED screen that is found on the similarly priced Realme XT but the bright LCD display does make it look good.
Overall the Redmi Note 8 Pro offers a very good multimedia and viewing experience in all conditions.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro Performance:
The Redmi Note 8 Pro now sports a Mediatek Helio G90T chipset
instead of any Snapdragon counterpart like the earlier Redmi Note 7 Pro.
It is a gaming centric chipset from Mediatek which houses an octa core
configuration where 2x2.05 Ghz Cortex-A76 cores & 6x2.0 Ghz Cortex-A55 cores coupled with a Mali G76 MC4 GPU built on a 12nm process.
This chipset is still more enery efficient and powerful than some
Snapdragon 10nm chipsets. The smartphone comes in three RAM and storage
variants namely 6GB RAM and 64GB storage, 6GB RAM and 128GB storage and 8GB RAM and 128GB storage.
There is also the support of microSD expansion as it has a dedicated
microSD card slot. All variants of the Redmi Note 8 Pro come with UFS
2.1 storage.
The Mali G76 GPU takes care of most of the tasks easily and
provides a smoother experience throughout for normal usage and also
while gaming. The Hyper Engine Technology provides good gameplay
when dealing with heavier games and also improves WiFi and LTE for more
stable and faster connection.The smartphone is good at multitasking as
it can easily breeze through most of the light to heavily intensive
applications easily. On various benchmarks like Antutu it scored 224769 which is almost close to last year's flagship Snapdragon 845 and above than the Snapdragon 712 powering the Realme XT.
Coming to gaming performance, Xiaomi claims that the Redmi Note 8 Pro
comes with a gaming centric chipset that is the Helio G90T, it should
handle all the games easily. PUBG, Asphalt 9 Extreme, Call of Duty
all ran smoothly with ease and the temperature at the back of the
smartphone was well maintained as the Redmi Note 8 Pro came with a liquid cooling system like the Xiaomi POCO F1 which is having last year's flagship Snapdragon 845 and is priced at Rs.15,999.
Overall the performance of the Redmi Note 8 Pro is really good at this
price segment which will give the smartphone a run for its money making a
true gaming centric smartphone.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro Software:
The Redmi Note 8 Pro runs MIUI 10 out of the box built on top of Android 9 Pie. MIUI 11
update has been released for the Redmi Note 8 Pro and is around the
corners. This time with the Redmi Note 8 Pro brings system wide dark mode,game turbo
for enhanced gaming and does still provide ads on its user interface
but you can easily disable ads from the settings option. It offers a
dedicated reading mode for reading in night and the system wide dark
mode does conserve battery. The face unlock on the Redmi Note 8 Pro is
very fast and reliable as it unlocks the smartphone within a second.
With MIUI you get a lot of themes and customizations and the battery
life is also very well optimized for all small to heavy applications.
Xiaomi has claimed that the Redmi Note 8 Pro will soon get the Android 10 update
which will bring a lot of improvements to the smartphone. Digital
Wellbeing is one feature which wasn't available with Android 9 Pie is
available in the Redmi Note 8 Pro as it shows the complete usage of the
device and shows how much battery each application uses.
Xiaomi provides good software and security updates to its smartphones
and with the Redmi Note 8 Pro having a powerful chipset, the software is
much faster and better.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro Camera:
The Redmi Note 8 Pro has significantly bumped up in cameras compared to
last year's Redmi Note 7 Pro. Last year the Redmi Note 7 Pro came with a
48MP Sony IMX586 camera which was seen in many of the
smartphones this year in mid-range smartphones as well in some
flagships. This time the Redmi Note 8 Pro packs four cameras to the
rear: 64MP Samsung GW1 sensor f/1.9 being the main camera, 8MP f/2.2
ultrawide lens for wider shots, 2MP f/2.4 macro lens, 2MP f/2.4 depth
sensor for portraits. This same camera setup is found on the Realme
XT. However both the smartphones miss out on telephoto lens. The Redmi
Note 8 Pro provides Panorama, Pro, Short Video, Slow Motion, Portrait and Night Modes along with the 64MP shooting mode in the camera software.
The photos taken from the main camera came out to be good with good color saturation in the background. The images does oversharpen a bit but still it captures good photos in daylight with good detail. The photos took with the Redmi Note 8 Pro came out to be better than that of the Realme XT as it had lesser noise in the background and the colors looked more natural than on the Realme XT. Coming to night, the Redmi Note 8 Pro comes with a dedicated Night Mode which makes the color in the objects in the photos look punchy and well detailed. The images taken at the night look good but in certain places the contrast gets a hit which will be improved in a further update. When the images were taken in 16MP mode, there was less noise in the images but didn't quite match to the quality of the 64MP images. You can easily switch between cameras on the Redmi Note 8 Pro.
Coming to the ultrawide camera, the photos taken from this camera came
out to be good but some photos turned out to be soft and the dynamic
range isn't as good as one on the main camera. In terms of color and
contrast, a lots need to be improved. Coming to night, the photos came
out be well detailed using the dedicated Night Mode and with the HDR on
the main camera and the ultrawide camera shoot good and detailed shots.
The 2MP macro lens worked well most of the time as there was good
contrast and dynamic range. There was proper background blur and the
edge detection worked well. When zoomed in, the photos does get a hit
but still it is a good macro camera. Coming to portraits, the Redmi Note
8 Pro took some really good portraits with good natural looking skin
tones, wider dynamic range and proper background blur.
The front camera on the Redmi Note 8 Pro is a 20MP which takes very good photos with wider field of view. Now coming to portraits from the front camera, they come to be good though the edge detection needs an improvement but overall the front camera on the Redmi Note 8 Pro is good.
Coming to videos, the Redmi Note 8 Pro supports 4k video recording at 30fps. The smartphone also supports slow motion video recording which can go as high as 960fps at 720p but there is certain lack of detail at that resolution. Xiaomi will fix that issue in a future software update. At 1080p at 60fps, the videos come out to be well detailed and stabilized. The dynamic range is very good and with the HDR turned on the videos come out to be great at 1080p. At 4k the videos come out to be good but there is little bit loss in detail and the stabilization isn't that great. With the ultrawide camera, the 1080p videos come out be good with good level of details.
Overall the cameras are very good for the smartphone at this range.The cameras are better than the one on the Realme XT but in some areas it needs improvement.
The front camera on the Redmi Note 8 Pro is a 20MP which takes very good photos with wider field of view. Now coming to portraits from the front camera, they come to be good though the edge detection needs an improvement but overall the front camera on the Redmi Note 8 Pro is good.
Coming to videos, the Redmi Note 8 Pro supports 4k video recording at 30fps. The smartphone also supports slow motion video recording which can go as high as 960fps at 720p but there is certain lack of detail at that resolution. Xiaomi will fix that issue in a future software update. At 1080p at 60fps, the videos come out to be well detailed and stabilized. The dynamic range is very good and with the HDR turned on the videos come out to be great at 1080p. At 4k the videos come out to be good but there is little bit loss in detail and the stabilization isn't that great. With the ultrawide camera, the 1080p videos come out be good with good level of details.
Overall the cameras are very good for the smartphone at this range.The cameras are better than the one on the Realme XT but in some areas it needs improvement.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro Battery Life:
This year the Redmi Note 8 Pro gets a massive 4500mAh battery
which is 500mAh more than that of the Redmi Note 7 Pro. This results in
good battery life overall as compared to its predecessor. The smartphone
supports 14hrs of video playback and a screen on time of 5-6 hrs
which is very good in our opinion. When used on a normal basis the
phone breezes through all applications easily and with high usage that
includes heavy gaming, viewing videos etc. there is a 20-30 percent left
at the end of the day. This time the Redmi Note 8 Pro comes with a 18W fast charger
which charges the smartphone to 62 percent in just half an hour and to
100 percent within 2hrs. It also supports USB Type-PD charging which
means the Redmi Note 8 Pro can be charged fast using a cable with power
banks. The battery life on the Redmi Note 8 Pro is a slight improvement
from the last year's Redmi Note 7 Pro.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro Sound Quality:
The Redmi Note 8 Pro houses only a single downwards firing loudspeaker
which sounds loud and good. The audio quality is good and the smartphone
comes with Dolby Atmos which instances the audio quality even better. It gets the 3.5mm headphone jack which gives very good output.
The Redmi Note 8 Pro comes with a built in Alexa support through which you can play the Alexa and can wake up using the commands. That is a good feature and the Google Assistant also works very well.
Verdict:
Overall the Redmi Note 8 Pro is a good option for the smartphone users at the 15k. The Redmi Note 8 Pro starts at Rs.14,999
for the 6GB RAM and 64GB storage, Rs.15,999 for the 6GB RAM and 128GB
storage and Rs.17,999 for the 8GB RAM and 128GB storage both on Mi.com and Flipkart
making good value for money option. Sure there are many rivals at this
range like the Realme XT which has a lot going for it as it has an
AMOLED screen, in display fingerprint scanner and faster VOOC charging.
Samsung M30s is also a very strong smartphone with that 6000mAh battery
and an AMOLED screen at this range. What works for the Redmi Note 8 Pro
is the new glass design, quad cameras to the back and the most
interesting is the gaming centric chipset Mediatek Helio G90T which is
the absolute chipset for gaming at this price range. If gaming is your
priority then the Redmi Note 8 Pro is the smartphone for you. Overall
the smartphone offers good build, good battery life and exceptional
performance. With a good price tag starting at Rs.14,999, it will surely
make a huge sale in the market and fill the gap where its predecessor
the Redmi Note 7 Pro left.
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