Xiaomi Redmi Note review: Warning note

Decent 13MP camera

Xiaomi Redmi Note features a 13MP camera, equipped with a LED flash.

The interface is fairly simple - everything is placed at the two side bars. On the left you get front camera shortcut, camera/camcorder switch and flash settings. The right sidebar has the settings toggle, the camera shutter and the gallery shortcut.

Camera UI

The settings offer HDR, scenes, focus mode, white balance, exposure and ISO manual settings, among others. The Face Detection switches is within the additional settings.

Xiaomi Redmi Note camera resolves a decent amount of detail although that comes at the price of rather high noise levels. The smartphone's camera renders colors well - slightly oversaturated, but not too much to create an unrealistic effect. Not quite the best 13MP samples out there - but certainly among the finest in this price range.

Xiaomi Redmi Note camera samples

The HDR mode is conservative adding up just a little bit of extra detail in both the highlights and shadows.

HDR off • HDR on

Panorama shots are available too - you can capture both landscape and portrait panoramic photos at about 180 degree. Shooting is easy but the stitching takes more than a minute to complete. The end result is rather disappointing though - the landscape shots come in 2300x400px pixels while shooting in portrait mode results in the somewhat more usable (but again far from great) 3000x800px.

While the panoramic images are stitched very well, the quality and resolution are below the competition.

Xiaomi Redmi Note panorama samples in landscape and portrait modes

Photo comparison tool

The Xiaomi Redmi Note is more than capable of carrying its own weight in our Photo Comparison tool. You can see it puts up a good fight against the other snappers we've tested and comes on top even against some far pricier options.

Xiaomi Redmi Note in our photo quality comparison tool

1080p video recording

Xiaomi Redmi Note camcorder has the same UI as the still camera. It supports time-lapse videos with customizable snapping interval.

Camcorder UI

The Xiaomi Redmi Note is capable or recording up to 1080p@30fps. The bitrate of the samples is 17 Mbps, audio is captured at 128 Kbps with 2 channels (read stereo).

The detail levels in the 1080p videos are decent if not quite mind-blowing. Colors and contrast are very good, though and with the framerate consistent at 30fps the videos are more than usual.

And here is a 1080p video we've uploaded on YouTube.

You can also download the 1080p untouched video sample taken straight off the Xiaomi Redmi Note.

Video quality comparison tool

The Xiaomi Redmi Note enters our video comparison too. There are plenty of 1080p camcorders you can compare it with. It slightly above average in detail and colors, while contrast is very good.

Xiaomi Redmi Note in our Video quality comparison tool