Friends+Design
- Nice, utilitarian (though not exceptional) design and good build quality, as has been the case with the entire Redmi Note series
- The design is simple and works, but is largely a continuation of the old Redmi Note design - it's not a gorgeous, stand out device by by any means
Display
- Nice looking, modern 5.99 inch 18:9 display, with minimal bezels - has good viewing angles, brightness levels, and colour reproduction - looks pleasing in day-to-day use
- In spite of the large screen, the phone remains quite ergonomic because of the tall, minimal-bezel form factor
Software
- MIUI interface over Android is snappy, and offers some added features such as dual apps and second space - with dual apps, one can run separate accounts of the same service/app and the second space functionality provides separate user experiences for example for work and home
- While MIUI is one of the nicer Android UIs, it does have some bloat in terms of unneeded apps - and a lot of people still prefer a more stock Android approach
Performance
- Stellar performance - the single most defining aspect for the Note 5 Pro may be the excellent new chip that powers it - the Snapdragon 636 - in short, in terms of both benchmarks, and real life use, it blows every other phone in the price bracket out of the water - be it the loading times for heavy games, opening multiple apps or just switching between multiple heavy apps and games - the phone simply sails through everything
- The heat management is excellent too - the phone hardly gets warm even after playing games on the phone for an hour straight
Camera
- Very good set of dual cameras at the rear - you have a 12MP primary camera (Sony IMX486) with a sensor size of 1.25um and an aperture of f/2.2 - the secondary 5MP camera is used for depth sensing only and has a sensor size of 1.12um with f/2.0 aperture - in ample lighting conditions, the camera captures a good amount of details and has a punchy colour reproduction - low light image capabilities are equally good and the camera has good dynamic range - even the portrait (bokeh) images look better than most of its competitors - they carry plenty of details and the background blur is also quite good
- Overall, this is the arguably the best camera phone in this price bracket now, having a slight edge over the existing top camera phones in the bracket, like the Xiaomi Mi A1
- Very good front camera too - takes good images in all kinds of lighting conditions - you also get software based portrait image, which lets you take that ‘Bokeh’ image with background blur and is decent
- While the cameras are excellent in still photography, they are only average as far as video recording goes
Audio
- Good audio quality through both headphones, and the speaker
- Good call quality
Battery
- Stellar battery life - still runs for two days straight, continuing the tradition of the Redmi Note series
- Decent (though not great) charging speed - takes a little over two hours to fully charge the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro’s 4, 000mAh battery
More
- On the whole, Redmi Note 5 Pro offers everything you need from this price bracket - superior performance, excellent battery life and a good camera - simply put, this is almost a complete package when it comes to mid-range smartphone
- Still continues with the old micro USB standard, there is no modern USB Type-C support
