Friends+Design
- Nice design (although it's largely recycled from the Redmi Note 4) - with a polished and minimalist feel - and good build quality
- Good, fast fingerprint sensor
- Recycled design - continues the same design language as the Redmi Note 4
Display
- One of the major improvements over its predecessor is the modern bright, tall, 5.99-inch Full HD+ 18:9 display, with minimal bezels - bringing the Redmi Note series on par with the current display trend
- Apart from the form factor of the display, it is otherwise pretty good too - in terms of brightness levels, sunlight legibility, customisable color modes, and a nifty reading mode (that puts a monochrome tint over the display much like an e-ink panel)
Software
- The MIUI interface over Android is snappy, minimalistic and packed with nifty features - the MIUI 9 brings in a bunch of optimisations including the newer F2FS file storage format, real-time defragmentation and dynamic resource allocation, among other things - the nifty ‘Quick Ball’ offers another way to navigate the phone while ‘Dual Instance’ allows two accounts of the same app to run on the phone
- MIUI is one of the better Android UIs but there is still some unnecessary bloat - for instance, there are also two apps for the same thing — Music, Gallery, Browser, etc. which takes up precious storage and cannot be deleted
Performance
- Good speed/performance, based on the same hardware as the Redmi Note 4 - feels snappy to use - apps don’t take much time to load and games run just fine with minimal stutters
Camera
- The other (small) improvement over its predecessor is in terms of a slightly better camera - the combination of the larger pixel size and lower aperture allows more light to fit into individual pixels with lesser spillage - the results are slightly better detail reproduction, improved dynamic range and deeper contrasts - the camera on the Redmi Note 5 is also high on contrasts, and this helps with indoor shots too
- The camera app also has a good bunch of filters
- Overall, the rear camera is pretty good (though not the absolute best in this price bracket)
- Decent selfie camera too
Battery
- Also continues the stellar battery life performance of its predecessor, with the same 4, 000mAh battery - the battery life lasts way over a day and then some - if you need a phone that lasts really long, this is without a doubt the phone to get
- Decent (though not exceptional) charging speed - takes about 2 hours to charge fully
More
- On the whole, the Redmi Note 5 is a solid upgrade over its super popular predecessor - if there’s any company that knows how to strike a balance between performance, imaging and battery life, it has to be Xiaomi and the Redmi Note 5 is one of the best example of the fact
- When pitched against the competition, the phone wins particularly in terms of battery life and the display quality - the camera quality is also good, although it may not be at par with what the Honor 7X or the Moto G5 Plus has, but it’s enough to get appreciated on social media, and that’s mostly what people want
- Overall, if you're looking for a no-nonsense device that offers the right mix of battery life and performance, you can't go wrong with the Redmi Note 5
- Still continues with the old micro-USB port instead of a USB-Type C which is quickly becoming the modern standard
- Unlike when the Redmi Note 4 was launched, there are now other phones in this price bracket that can offer pretty solid competition to the Redmi Note 5 - the likes of Honor 9 Lite for instance - it comes with a similar 18:9 display, front and back glass design, dual cameras at the front and back that let you add DLSR-like bokeh effects to your selfies, and ships with Android Oreo out-of-the-box
