Friends+Design
- Very good build quality and premium glass sandwich design, similar to its predecessor, the Redmi Note 7 Pro
- Uses Gorilla Glass 5, front and back
- The camera bump on the rear is on the big side
- Hefty for the screen size, at 200g
- It's slippery like glass backs tend to be, so using a case is recommended
Display
- Good quality, bright 6.53 inch IPS panel, with very good sunlight legibility
- Supports HDR - a rare find in this price range
Software
- MIUI is one of the more refined and smooth Android skins around, and has a number of add-on features and a lot of customizability
- It's not as clean and minimalistic as stock Android though - in the default setup you will get both plenty of bloatware, and ads in the UI
Performance
- Excellent, best-in-class performance with the powerful Helio G90T on board - that performs around the same level as last year's flagship Snapdragon 845 - the Redmi Note 8 Pro sails through anything you throw at it - this is essentially a top-end gaming phone on the cheap - and it has a significant edge in benchmarks over it's main competitor, the Realme XT, that packs the Snapdragon 712
Camera
- The Note 8 Pro once again delivers some superlative camera performance for the price bracket (as the Note Pro series has done for a few years now) - especially from the main 64MP camera
- The quad camera setup on the rear includes a 64MP primary camera + 8MP ultra-wide + 2MP depth sensor + 2MP macro lens
- The main 64MP sensor is versatile and delivers excellent images at day and night
- It is also capable of some surprisingly good 2x (digital) zoom photos eliminating the need of a cheap telephoto lens
- The 20MP selfie camera is also pretty good
- Great video recording quality overall
- Overall, this is now the best camera phone under INR 20k, with a slight edge over the other great camera phone of this price bracket, the Realme XT, with clearer low-light photos, and slightly sharper images
- The macro and ultra-wide cameras are uninspiring - for high quality photos you will want to stick to the main camera
- Video recording in 1080p could have been a bit better
Audio
- Excellent headphone audio
- Weak-ish mono speaker - while okay, it isn’t very loud or crisp
Battery
- Outstanding, class-leading battery life, with a 4500mAH cell and a super-efficient chipset - you will comfortably get 2 days of use and more
- Supports USB PD 18W fast charging, that can charge the phone from 0 to 40% in about 30 minutes - and for a change (for the Redmi Note Pro series), now also includes a compatible fast charger in box
Verdict
- As usual, the new leader of Xiaomi's Redmi Note series is a fantastic bang-for-the-buck phone and will compete strongly with the Realme XT - choosing between the 2 will be down to your preference - the Note 8 Pro will deliver slightly faster performance, longer battery life, and slightly better camera - on the other hand, the Realme XT will deliver a better (OLED) display, under-display fingerprint reader, and faster 20W VOOC charging - you won't go wrong with either really
