Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro+ hands-on review

Design

The Redmi Note 14 Pro+ has an updated design for 2024, with the vertical camera arrangement of the previous generation giving way to a new squircle-shaped camera island that also happens to look like the Mi logo. Within this are four elements, out of which three are usable cameras and the fourth is the flash.

Also hidden above the flash is the IR blaster, which is positioned somewhat awkwardly and requires you to point the back of the phone to the device you are trying to use, which can be inconvenient if it's something like an air conditioner that is placed high up.

The Redmi Note 14 Pro+ comes in three colors, Titan Black, Spectre Blue, and Phantom Purple. Out of these, the Phantom Purple model pictured here is the only one that has a vegan leather back while the other two get Corning Gorilla Glass 7i. The vegan leather variant is ever so slightly thicker while the glass models are 5g heavier. All models feature a plastic frame with a glossy finish on the sides and matte on the top and bottom.

Overall, the build quality and finish are good, and details like the fluted pattern around the camera island are a nice touch. The phone also has an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance. The vegan leather finish doesn't feel especially premium to us, but your mileage may vary.

Display

The Redmi Note 14 Pro+ has a 6.67-inch, 2717x1220 resolution curved AMOLED display. The display has a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz with 240Hz standard touch sampling rate and 480Hz in games. Most of the specs of this display are identical to that on the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ except the peak brightness, which has been increased from 1800 nits to 3000 nits.

The display has good color accuracy but could be better. Despite having several options to adjust colors, there doesn't seem to be a single setting that offers a standard sRGB color gamut with D65 white point out of the box without some tinkering as all the presets are set too cool.

The phone supports HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision, which is where you get to flex the full range of that 3000 nits display. Strangely, though, while testing in YouTube, we observed that the display drops peak brightness if you choose resolutions above 1080p for HDR videos. Now, 1080p videos don't have the best bitrate on YouTube and you also don't get to fully utilize the 1220p display but even if you switch to 1440p, the display will dim as soon as the higher resolution loads in. This only happens with HDR video and is likely done to avoid overheating the device.

The display is curved again this year, which Xiaomi says is to give the device a premium look that buyers in this segment demand, even though it is a dying trend on flagship devices. The edges do catch some glare as you expect and also make side gestures a bit unreliable.

Finally, the display has a built-in optical fingerprint sensor. The sensor is fast and accurate but is placed rather low on the screen. It also doubles as a heart rate monitor and you just have to place your thumb on the sensor for a few seconds to get a reading. The sensor showed some wildly fluctuating readings at times so we wouldn't rely on it for any serious monitoring.

The phone also offers haptic feedback using an x-axis linear motor. While the effect is decent, the motor is rather loud and you hear it go off every time you trigger it in a quiet environment.

Battery and charging

The Redmi Note 14 Pro+ has a 6200mAh silicon carbon battery, which is quite a bit larger than the 5000mAh lithium polymer unit in the previous generation mode. The phone now supports 90W of fast charging, which is a downgrade compared to 120W of its predecessor.

While this preview won't delve into battery testing, the Redmi Note 14 Pro+ was an absolute beast when it came to usable battery life, with guaranteed two full days of use and maybe even a third for those who use their phone lightly.

Unfortunately, the combination of a vastly bigger battery and slower charging means the charging times have slowed down considerably. The Redmi Note 14 Pro+ takes nearly 30 minutes to reach where the 13 Pro+ could in 15. But most importantly, 0-100% times have more than doubled, with the new phone taking almost an hour for a full charge.

Considering the size of the battery and what you benefit in terms of usable battery life, the reduction in charging speeds isn't a terrible deal. Still, we would have preferred if the gap between the two wasn't so large.