Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro+ hands-on review

Software

The Redmi Note 14 Pro+ ships with Xiaomi HyperOS 1 on top of Android 14, both of which are out of date considering HyperOS 2 and Android 15 have already been released. It's disappointing that despite having its own custom skin on top of Android, Xiaomi continues to launch new phones with outdated versions.

The company has promised three major Android updates and four years of security updates for the Redmi Note 14 Pro+. But since one of them will be Android 15, an update that should have been present out of the box, it's realistically just two major Android updates.

The software experience here is largely similar to what you find on other Xiaomi devices, and you can read our review of it here. Since ours is an Indian review unit, it also came with a bunch of bloatware (we counted 18 apps), ads, and promoted content. The Redmi devices have consistently gone up in pricing over the years yet the company's policy on stuffing its devices with as much revenue-generating content as possible hasn't changed.

Xiaomi HyperOS

There are also a lot of AI features advertised this time around, 20+ to be vaguely exact. However, most of these are slated to arrive over time through updates, and at the time of writing, many weren't available to test.

Xiaomi is also promising four years of fluency for the phone, which means the phone is expected to run fluidly for that period regardless of usage. This seems like a tough promise to follow through on, considering we did have some issues in our testing, as discussed in the next section.

Xiaomi HyperOS

Performance

The Redmi Note 14 Pro+ runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset. It features a choice of 8 or 12GB of LPDDR4X memory and 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB of UFS 2.2 storage.

Xiaomi's choice of hardware is certainly at odds with the competition; the OnePlus Nord 4, for example, has faster LPDDR5X and UFS 4.0 memory and storage as well as the vastly more powerful Snapdragon 7 Plus Gen 3 chipset.

In terms of performance, the Redmi Note 14 Pro+ isn't going to wow anyone, with modest improvements over its predecessor. The aforementioned Nord 4, meanwhile, is significantly ahead, despite being in the same price segment.

In terms of everyday use, the Redmi Note 14 Pro+ was a mixed bag. Basic apps like Instagram or WhatsApp work great and are perfectly usable. On the other hand, there is noticeable sluggishness in other apps, particularly the camera app, which lurches every time you switch lenses while taking pictures. At least in the tested firmware, the chipset was not able to keep up with having to capture and write the image to buffer while processing previous images and rendering the viewfinder preview.

Similarly, there was also some noticeable delay when applying image-heavy effects in the Gallery app, such as the sky replacement option. It remains to be seen how the device will handle many of the upcoming AI features as well, which should be equally demanding. Finally, watching 4K 60fps video, especially in HDR, also caused some stuttering and delay, especially while scrubbing through the video.

In terms of gaming performance, the Redmi Note 14 Pro+ also does not impress, with a somewhat unstable frame rate in Genshin Impact with frequent stutters.