The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 comes with a 12MP rear and a 5MP front-facing camera. The device is bundled with 32GB of expandable onboard storage space and runs Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box. The device is armed with an octa-core Snapdragon 625 chipset and 3GB of RAM. It packs a Li-Ion 4,000mAh non-removable battery and ships with 4G, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, microUSB 2.0 port, and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n as connectivity options. On top, there is a 5.99-inch Full HD+ display. The other variant of this mobile is Redmi Note 5 Pro . The latest budget smartphone you may also like are Redmi Y1 and Redmi 5A.
Key Specifications
Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Price starts at Rs. 9,999. The lowest price of Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 is at Flipkart, which is 17% less than the cost of Redmi Note 5 at Amazon (Rs. 11999). This phone is available in 32 GB, 64 GB storage variants.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 (32 GB): Pros & Cons
- Good Stuff
- Bigger screen with minimal bezels.
- On-screen buttons on a mid-range Xiaomi phone (finally!).
- Good rear-facing camera.
- Front-facing LED flash.
- Fast fingerprint reader.
- Good build quality and design.
- Useful software features in MIUI 9.
- IR emitter and Mi Remote come in handy for operating electronic appliances.
- Very good battery life.
- Bad Stuff
- No Android 8.0 in 2018.
- UI stutters here and there.
- No 1080p 60fps video recording.
- No dedicated microSD card slot.
- No USB Type-C port.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Review: Affordable Bezel-less Experience
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (review) was India’s highest-selling smartphone last year, thanks to its smooth performance, decent camera, and more importantly, great battery life. The phone got sold like hot cakes, and took the company to new heights, not only in India, but also in other markets worldwide. One year later, the Redmi Note 5 has been released, and it has huge shoes to fill in.The Redmi Note 5 comes with an all-new 6-inch screen with minimal bezels around it as well as a new 12MP camera with 4K video recording. There’s no dual-camera on this phone, though, something that’s present on competing phones like the Honor 7X (review) and the Honor 9i. If you want a dual-camera phone, you’ll have to upgrade to the Redmi Note 5 Pro instead, which also comes with a better processor and a higher resolution front-facing camera.
What’s inside the Redmi Note 5 box?
1. Redmi Note 5
2. Clear soft case (quality is pretty bad)
3. User guide
4. Warranty card
5. USB Type-A to microUSB 2.0 cable
6. SIM ejector tool
7. 5V 2A wall charge adapter
1. Black colour looks better from the front and goes well with the bezel-less screen design. Blue colour variant looks fresh.
2. Better to go with the 4GB RAM, 64GB storage variant.
Design & Build Quality
The 5.99-inch screen uses an IPS LCD panel with Full HD+ resolution, 1000:1 contrast ratio, and 450 nits brightness. Our review unit had a noticeable red tint, and although the Redmi Note 5 Pro has the same screen, it did not have a red tint. It could’ve been a one-off case with our review unit. We can’t confirm if the same problem would appear in retail units because the phone did not go on sale by the time we had finished our review.
What about the Redmi Note 5, though? Is it worth the upgrade over last year’s model? Let’s find out.
What’s inside the Redmi Note 5 box?
Buying Suggestions
Design & Build Quality
While the rear design of the Redmi Note 5 isn’t different from its predecessor, there’s a striking difference in its frontal design and that’s mostly due to the larger screen and minimal bezels (brands like to call it a bezel-less design, but it’s far from bezel-less). The 5.99-inch screen covers most of the Redmi Note 5’s front, and the company has finally ditched traditional capacitive touch buttons in favour of on-screen buttons. There’s no change in the placement of the power and volume buttons or the fingerprint reader.
Excellent build quality.
The Redmi Note 5’s body is made of a metal frame and metal back, with small plastic portions covering its top and bottom, act as antennae. The build quality is excellent and all the buttons offer good feedback when pressed. The position of the fingerprint reader is spot on. A few issues that I noticed while reviewing the Redmi Note 5 is its extremely slippery body and a 3.5mm headphone port that’s placed at the top. I personally prefer headphone ports at the bottom of the phone since the wire doesn’t get in the way while using the screen.
Screen
The 5.99-inch screen uses an IPS LCD panel with Full HD+ resolution, 1000:1 contrast ratio, and 450 nits brightness. Our review unit had a noticeable red tint, and although the Redmi Note 5 Pro has the same screen, it did not have a red tint. It could’ve been a one-off case with our review unit. We can’t confirm if the same problem would appear in retail units because the phone did not go on sale by the time we had finished our review.
The screen has a higher resolution compared to the Redmi Note 4’s screen, but the pixel density remains the same due to increased screen size. I did not face any issue related to touchscreen accuracy or response time. There’s no improvement in terms of brightness, contrast ratio, and viewing angles compared to the Redmi Note 4. While the screen is bright enough for most lighting conditions, harsh sunlight could be a problem, and it can be harder to clearly see what’s being displayed on the screen in such situations.
Watching videos on the bezel-less screen is a great experience.
Watching videos on the bezel-less screen is a great experience, and the Redmi Note 5 could be the first bezel-less screen phone for many users in the Indian smartphone market. The phone didn’t support YouTube’s stretch-to-zoom feature at first, but it later started working after a small software update. Except the average brightness level, we don’t have any major issues with the Redmi Note 5’s screen.
Camera Quality
There’s an all new rear-facing camera on the Redmi Note 5. The 12-megapixel single camera sensor is an improvement over last year’s 13-megapixel sensor, thanks to larger pixels (1.25µm). The phone can record 4K videos, which is an improvement over Redmi Note 4’s 1080p video recording. There’s no change in the front-facing camera sensor, but it is now accompanied by a front-facing soft-LED flash which should improve selfies in low light conditions.
Image quality considerably improved compared to Redmi Note 4.
There’s considerably more detail in the images captured using the Redmi Note 5 compared to the images clicked using the Redmi Note 4. The images exhibit good sharpness and low noise in daylight conditions. Focussing was mostly quick and reliable. Colours are not completely accurate, but they’re not too far off from reality. There’s a slight warm tone to the images, but most people like it that way, including me. Dynamic range could be limited in scenarios where there’s harsh light against the camera, but the HDR mode comes in handy during such situations. There’s no Auto HDR feature, though, so you’ll have to turn on the HDR mode inside the camera app. It improves dynamic range and recovers details from highlights.
The image quality drops in low-light conditions but it’s not as bad as images captured using the Redmi Note 4 in similar scenarios. Images appear softer. Using the HHT mode slightly improves the quality of such images but it also takes longer to capture images in this mode. Images captured in good lighting conditions appear slight better than even the Mi A1, but the camera can’t match the Mi A1’s camera in low-light conditions. It’s still an improvement over the Redmi Note 4, though. Selfies are strictly decent in good lighting conditions, but a lot of noise creeps in during low-light conditions. You can use the front-facing flash to remedy this situation, but the colours won’t be accurate.
The phone can record 4K videos at 30fps, but there’s no 1080p 60fps video recording mode. For the price, the quality of 4K videos is surprisingly good, but the audio capture could’ve been better. Quality drops when you shift to 1080p or 720p video modes. Overall, the camera quality of the Redmi Note 5 is slightly better than that of its prime competitor, the Honor 7X, be it still images or videos.
Performance & Software
The Redmi Note 5 doesn’t bring any improvements over the Redmi Note 4 in terms of processing chipset or memory. It still comes with the more-than-a-year old Snapdragon 625 processor, 3GB/4GB RAM, and 32GB/64GB internal storage. The chipset comprises of eight ARM Cortex A53 cores clocked at a maximum of 1.8GHz, Adreno 506 GPU, Hexagon DSP, dual-ISP, 4G LTE modem, dual-band gigabit Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, Qualcomm Aqstic audio processor, and support for Quick Charge 3.0 (but the Redmi Note 5 supports Quick Charge 2.0 only).
We noticed a few stutters and frame drops.
Although the Snapdragon 625 used to perform quite smoothly in the Redmi Note 4 when I reviewed it last year, I noticed a few stutters and frame drops in the Redmi Note 5. I think it could be fixed with a software update. If you are thinking to upgrade from the Redmi Note 3 or Redmi Note 4 to the Redmi Note 5 in hopes of achieving better performance, you should skip ahead to the Redmi Note 5 Pro. There’s considerable performance difference between the Redmi Note 5 and Redmi Note 5 Pro.
On the software front, the Redmi Note 5 runs MIUI 9.2 (stable 9.2.6 NEGMIEK) which is based on Android 7.1.2. It’s really a shame that it doesn’t run Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box, which was released by Google more than six months ago. Although MIUI 9 comes stuffed with a lot of customisation options and useful software features, it still lacks features like App Shortcuts, notification channels, picture-in-picture mode, and an option to snooze notifications. MIUI 9 finally brings quick replies feature.
No Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box.
The auto rotate feature was too eager to kick in whenever the phone was even slightly tilted, which ended up frustrating me. Other than that, there weren’t any glaring issues. The new image editor and video player are impressive. Apart from regular image adjustment features, the new image editor offers a lot of additional features, including an option to erase objects, blur parts of an image, add stickers and text, and even doodle. The video player can group and arrange TV shows or movie series by identifying file names. It now supports multilingual subtitles, an option to hide private videos, ability to click screenshots of the video, and an option to switch between audio tracks.
The calendar app shows important events from history for the same day of the month. It even offers users an option to follow certain cricket and football teams, and automatically add reminders for their matches. Other options in the calendar include Panchang Calendar, Horoscope, News, and Health & Fitness. There’s a Google Now style shortcuts page on the left most side of the home screen, which offers shortcuts to sports scores, order a cab from Ola, calendar events, notes, and even pay using Paytm.
Battery Life
One of the most striking aspects about the Redmi Note 4 was its exceptionally good battery life, and it was one of the first phones in its price range to do so. The Redmi Note 5 comes with the same 4000mAh battery and the same Snapdragon 625 processor which is known to be quite frugal. The phone is now even compatible with Quick Charge, but there’s no rapid charger inside the box. Xiaomi’s Quick Charge 3.0 compatible charger will cost your Rs. 449.
Battery life was shorter than our expectations.
Since the phone is very similar to the Redmi Note 4 in terms of battery capacity, one would expect similar, or slightly worse battery life due to slightly larger display. However, I was slightly disappointed with the Redmi Note 5’s battery life. Since I used to get 10+ hours of screen-on time with the Redmi Note 4, I had high expectations from the Redmi Note 5. The phone lasted a day and a half on a single charge, with the screen-on time of anywhere between 6-7 hours.
I had two emails accounts synced, four messaging apps, and four social networking apps on the phone. The Redmi Note 5 Pro which we reviewed along with this phone offered us much better battery life, with screen-on time reaching 10 hours on a single charge over two days of usage. We think that the reason for Redmi Note 5’s relatively lower battery life could be due to unfinished software optimisation. We hope Xiaomi releases an update to improve the battery life.
Verdict
The Redmi Note 5 is a good upgrade over the Redmi Note 4.
The Redmi Note 5 is a good upgrade over the Redmi Note 4, and mostly because of the larger screen with minimal bezels and improved camera performance. The battery life is good, but going by what the Redmi Note 4 used to offer, we think that the phone can last even longer if the software is optimised further. If performance is your main concern for upgrading from an older phone to the Redmi Note 5, you should buy the Redmi Note 5 Pro instead.
There’s no Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box, and we can’t know if and when the company would update the Redmi Note 5 to Oreo. Still, the software is leagues ahead of Honor 7X’s EMUI 8, which looks dated and filled with bloatware. The Redmi Note 5 could’ve been even an better phone if it had a USB Type-C port and a dedicated microSD card slot. Even with a few niggles, at Rs. 9,999, the Redmi Note 5 still emerges out to be the leader in the price segment.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Details
Introduction
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 is the successor to one of the most popular smartphone in India, the Redmi Note 4. The Redmi Note series from Xiaomi had achieved a great success due to its solid build quality, great battery life, and ample processing power. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 carries forward the same design from its predecessor that includes metal unibody with a symmetrical design. Redmi Note 5 price in india starts from Rs. 13,999.
Display & Camera
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 is equipped with a 5.9-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD display, but this time around the display brightness and overall performance have been improved. The screen on the Redmi Note 5 is covered with Gorilla Glass 4 to protect it from accidental drops and scratches. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 sports a 12-megapixel primary camera with phase detection autofocus and dual-tone dual-LED flash. The front-facing camera remains the same as 5-megapixels. The increase in camera resolution results in a better image quality. The videos are now recorded at 4K resolution.
Hardware & Software
To attract the ‘core-crazy’ Indian crowd, Xiaomi has used Snapdragon 625 octa-core processor for the Redmi Note 5. The new processor has two more cores than the processor in the Redmi Note 4, but it is still behind in terms of performance and power efficiency. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 comes standard with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. Xiaomi is also offering variants with higher storage options. The Android 7.1.2 Nougat OS comes pre-installed on the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 with company’s MIUI 9. The device has high chances to receive Android O operating system too.
Battery & Connectivity
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 packs a 4,000 mAh Li-Po non-removable battery. The battery is a tad smaller than the one found on its predecessor, but it won’t make much of a difference as the battery consumption is taken care by Android Nougat’s battery optimisation. This time around, Xiaomi has equipped the device with Quick Charge 3.0 for faster, cooler, and efficient charging. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 is connected via dual-SIM dual-standby 4G LTE along with VoLTE, dual-band Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth v4.2, and USB 2.0 port.
Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Specifications
| Summary | |
| Performance | Snapdragon 625 |
| Display | 5.99 |
| Storage | 32GB |
| Camera | 12 M.Pixels |
| Battery | 4000 mAh |
| RAM | 3GB |
DISPLAY
| Display Type | IPS LCD |
| Resolution | 1080x2160 pixels |
| Size (in inches) | 5.99 |
| Pixel Density | 403 pixels per inch (ppi) |
| Touchscreen type | Capacitive |
| Color Reproduction | 16M Colors |
| Protection | Corning Gorilla Glass |
| Screen to body percentage | 77.4 % |
DESIGN AND BUILD
| Dimensions | 6.2x2.9x0.3 inches |
| Weight | 180 grams |
SOFTWARE
| Operating System | Android OS, v7.1.2 (Nougat) |
CAMERA
| Rear Flash | Yes, Dual LED |
| Selfie Flash | No |
| Primary | 12 M.Pixels |
| Front | 5 M.Pixels |
| Video | 1080p@30fps |
STORAGE
| Internal | 32GB |
| RAM | 3GB |
| Expandable | MicroSD, 128GB |
BATTERY
| Type | Li-Ion |
| Capacity | 4000 mAh |
| Turbo Charge | Yes |
CONNECTIVITY
| Bluetooth | v4.2 with A2DP |
| Wi-Fi | Yes with hotspot |
| 3G | Yes |
| USB | MicroUSB 2.0 |
| Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) | Yes |
| 2G | Yes |
| 4G | Yes |
| SIM Configuration | Dual SIM (Nano SIM) |
| GPS | Yes |
| NFC Chipset | No |
| Infrared | Yes |
PROCESSOR
| Chipset | Snapdragon 625 |
| Architecture | Cortex-A53 |
| No of Cores | 8 (Octa Core) |
| Make | Qualcomm MSM8953 |
| Frequency | 2.0 GHz |
| GPU | Adreno 506 |
SENSORS
| Proximity | Yes |
| Accelerometer | Yes |
| Gyroscope | Yes |
| Ambient Light | Yes |
| Fingerprint sensor | Yes |
SOUND
| Loudspeaker | Yes |
| Headphones | Yes |
