Xiaomi Redmi 13 review

Design, build quality, handling

There is nothing particularly standout about the design of the Redmi 13. It is your basic "slab" phone with a few circular camera modules on the back, a punch hole on the front and a reasonably-sized, well-proportioned and weight-balanced body.

Perhaps the color selection is the one thing that grabs our attention in the Redmi 13 design. If you want to keep things simple, there is Midnight Black. Things don't get more straightforward than that. Sandy Gold is also rather unassuming. It is still a nice shade, though.

We are partial to our Pink review unit. It is a very subtle and playful shade of pink that you rarely see on a phone. Ocean Blue has to be the "hero color" of sorts. It is the only one out of the lot with a wavy color pattern.

The Redmi 13 has a pretty standard set of controls. The layout is as expected as well. You get a volume rocker and power button on the right-hand side. The latter has an integrated capacitive fingerprint reader that is both snappy and reliable. We have no complaints about it.

The buttons are well-positioned height-wise and pretty clicky, which is good.

Redmi 13

The left side of the phone is mostly empty, save for the SIM and microSD card tray. The bottom houses the main microphone, the singular speaker and the Type-C port. The top of the phone holds the 3.5mm audio jack and the IR blaster. Both are great little extras.

The front of the phone has a typical budget design to it. That includes fairly sizeable display bezels. Wide enough to hold the light sensor above the display. There is a punch hole for the selfie camera, which is also on the larger side.

On to materials, then. Despite its budget nature, the Redmi 13 still has two flat sheets of glass in its construction - one on the front and one on the back. The front one is a Corning Gorilla Glass of some sort. Though, we don't know exactly what kind.

The middle frame is made of plastic, but it both looks and feels good in the hand. That goes for the entire phone as well. There is no noticeable flex in the chassis or hollowness anywhere. As already mentioned, the Redmi 13 only comes with basic IP53 ingress protection.

The Redmi 13 feels solid and quite comfortable in the hand, thanks to its nicely rounded corners. Its surfaces don't gather or show smudges too badly, which is a always appreciated.