Redmi Note 8 Pro Review
Redmi Note 8 Pro, the first smartphone in India which was powered by the Mediatek Helio G90T SoC Processor had some high hopes bestowed on it both by the company itself as well as the tech reviewers as it was the successor to Redmi Note 7 Pro which delivered quality at it’s highly affordable price point.
The Redmi 8 Pro was launched in August 2019 and claimed to deliver a smooth and power-packed gaming experience for the brand new Helio G90T processor which is an 64-Bit octa-core processor with 4x ARM Cortex A55 and 4x Cortex A76 whose clock frequency varies around 2.05 GHz and it’s coupled with 800MHz ARM Mali G76 MC4 GPU which will work to provide a seamless gaming experience.
The smartphone was launched with 3 variants, viz. 6GB RAM + 64GB ROM, 6GB RAM + 128GB ROM and the 8GB RAM + 128GB ROM. Also there is 4 color themes to choose from, viz. Shadow Black, Halo White, Gamma Green and Electric Blue.
Design and Physical Overview Insights
Talking about the design, the smartphone boasts of a 6.53" LCD Full HD+ HDR display of 2340 x 1080 resolution with an aspect ratio of 19:5:9 along with 2.5D curved glass. It has a dot-notch design which provides an immersive experience overall. The bezels of the smartphone are pretty thin to provide the full screen display experience in a greater way. The bottom bezels have been reduced to a great extent by MI by providing a chip-on-film display driver bending downwards.
As the waterdrop notch houses the 20MP front shooter, the earpiece is hidden well in it’s upper portion to provide crystal clear calling experience. In the left side of the display, we find the 2 SIM trays side by side providing a hybrid solution to house 2 nano sim cards with dual 4G standby and a memory card which can expand the storage capacity by 512GB. On the top we find the secondary noise cancellation microphone along with the IR blaster. On the right side we find the volume rockers and the power ON/OFF buttons which are positioned well and are fairly strong. On the bottom we have the USB Type-C port along with the speaker grills, the 3.5 mm headphone jack and the primary microphone.
Now, speaking of the backside of the device, we have Corning Gorilla Glass 5 spanning the entire back body. Then we have the raised camera module with 3 cameras bundled with the fingerprint sensor and next to that we have the macro lens coupled with the Dual LED flash sensor. On the lower portion we have the REDMI branding. The device comes with an IP52 rating and it’s splash proof.
We have a 4500mAh Li-Polymer battery integrated in the smartphone which provides a talk time of 41 hours and a standby time of 666 hours as stated by the company. It comes with a 18W fast charger out of the box along with a sim tray ejector pin, a transparent silicon case and some documentations. The smartphone weighs 200gms and feels compact in hand.
Performance and Specifications Overview
Performance is the key feature when using any smartphone be it a gaming-centric one or normal one. And speaking of performance of Redmi Note 8 Pro, it does a pretty decent job in providing the smooth experience both in the gaming segment as well as in the normal user experience segment. The smartphone can withstand long continuous hours of gaming perfectly and lag doesn’t spoil the fun in the process. The smartphone performs well in the moderate graphics settings, but if it is set at the highest level, we encounter warming of the device gradually.
The smartphone ships with MIUI 10 with Android 9 running on top of it. And with the higher MIUI updates, the user experience improves surely, but the battery life degrades a bit along with the performance to some extent.
Redmi has done a pretty good work in implementing liquid cooling along with dual pyrolytic sheets which works to lower the device temperature while performing heavy tasks, though continuous hours of heavy usage warms it a bit.
The smartphone is equipped with Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi 802.11ac with dual 4G VoLTE standby for smooth enriching network connectivity and along with these, it is integrated with Gyroscope, InfraRed, Proximity Sensor, Accelerometer as well as Ambient Light Sensor and Compass.
The audio quality is decent but not top-notch, and it comes with a self cleaning speakers which plays low frequency sound to automatically clean the speaker dust.
Assistants have become an important feature of current day smartphones and with Android, Google Assistant is already equipped with maximum smartphones and Redmi Note 8 Pro is not an exception. But apart from former, we also have Amazon Alexa integrated with it to listen to our queries. Though after using the smartphone for more than a year and a half I experienced summoning Alexa always doesn’t give back a response. The device also has a dual wake feature which allows to invoke any of the assistants even when the screen is locked.
Speaking of the User Experience again, the smartphone revamped the traditional navigation through the smartphones by introducing the gesture navigation which enhances the full screen display UX by using swipe to navigate through.
The fingerprint scanner integrated in the device does a good job indeed and unlocking times are pretty fast, but, it would have been better if the scanner was made of metal instead of plastic as gradually, it catches impressions on it and lowers the UX. Apart from this, the device also has an AI powered Face Unlock to seamlessly unlock the smartphone.
Camera Quality and Insights
Equipped with AI Powered Quad Cameras, I observed the quality to be pretty descent overall. It comes with a 64 MP Samsung’s S5KGW1 sensor with f1.79 aperture, 8 MP Ultra-Wide angle sensor with f2.2 aperture, 2MP depth-sensing and 2MP Macro sensors powered by Dual LED Flash. And in the front, it houses a 20MP shooter.
It captures 16MP pictures by default and does a 4-in-1 pixel binning. The smartphone has a lot of camera features to choose from and to get the perfect shot, viz. Portrait, Panorama, Night Mode, Time Lapse, Slow-motion, Short Video, Pro mode, 64MP shot apart from the default features. Also, there is a wide range of filters to choose from for specific modes. HDR capture and AI Camera modes are some of the key features. Also, it has Google Lens support integrated with it.
The camera performs pretty well as I played around with it, though at some points shots weren’t as expected but, overall it gets the job done well. Portrait shots had clear detailing and the blur effects didn’t hamper the main objects in the picture. Picture quality for the selfie camera were pretty good and details are well noticeable. For videos, the natural light condition videos perform well and stabilization works well too, but I noticed that in artificial lighting conditions, it’s gets affected a bit. Overall it’s a pretty good fit according to my opinion.
Redmi Note 8 Pro was an aggressive mid ranger smartphone when it was launched and delivered performance for it’s price point. So as mentioned, the Redmi Note 8 Pro was a clear winner at it’s segment and it is a powerful and quality smartphone to it’s predecessor the Redmi Note 8 Pro. Even after a year and a half of usage of the smartphone I have never rushed into any problem using it though I feel after this time span, the battery life has degraded to some extent, but overall the smartphone is still a decent fit.
Currently, the smartphone costs Rs.19,999 for the 8GB+128GB variant
