Quality at a Budget

The price and the brand might be synonymous to entry level smartphones, but the phone definitely feels a lot more premium than suggested. The build of the phone is sleek, smooth and solid, with a matte back and a 5.7-inch 18:9 display that sports a thin bezel. Comfortably fitting on one hand, the phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450, giving a smooth, speedy performance. It has a 3300 battery, which lasts comfortably for a working day. Although, the resolution of the screen isn’t that high, so displays can be less sharp than you’d hope. With options of 32 GB, 3/4 GB RAM or 16 GB, 2 GB RAM, the processor is optimised for performance, but the storage might run out real quick.

Work Powerhouse, Not for Gamers

While it works like a dream when it comes to daily tasks, including multitasking and task switching, it starts to fall a bit short when it comes to gaming. While running some low resources games, it is a tad bit slower and less reactive than some of the flagships I’ve tested; at this price point, it actually is quite decent. Of course, any graphic heavy games might start to lag significantly, but if it’s just a quick puzzle game it handles it just fine. Other than that, it handles multitasking very well, switching between tasks without a glitch. It’s got a few standard apps for the phone but no pointless bloatware that weighs it down. Plus point, the design of the theme is simple, clean and minimalist, making it very pleasing on the eyes.

Hi, I’m…13?

Unlike the many craze over dual camera setups in other phones, Redmi remains with a single rear and single front camera setup, at 12-megapixels and 5-megapixels respectively. While the camera takes decent shots, with nice colours; it can turn out to be rather grainy, with pictures that are good enough for social media, but not quite sharp. An interesting feature to note, is the front camera detects faces and takes a guess at your age and gender…which it failed for every test. My colleagues and I are in our mid to late twenties, but the camera detects us as 13, 20 or 30 depending on angle, and person. While it was amusing, the algorithm might need a bit more work in giving a good estimation.

Verdict

A solid phone giving good performance at a very affordable price point. For what you’re paying, you’re definitely getting a very good bargain.