Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro hands-on review

Performance

The Redmi Note 5 Pro is the first smartphone to have Qualcomm's newest Snapdragon 636 processor. While the 600-series has largely been rather here nor there, things are now starting to look up a little. The reason for that is the inclusion of the semi-custom Kryo 260 CPU, which is a combination of 4x Cortex-A73 and 4x Cortex-A53 CPU cores from ARM. It's the A73 part that really excites us, as that is exactly what's found inside the more powerful Kryo 280 on the Snapdragon 835.

While last year's Redmi Note 4 was no slouch, it did lack some of oomph from the Snapdragon 650 running Redmi Note 3 and was more serviceable than exciting. But the Snapdragon 636 has us excited again, not just for the Redmi Note 5 Pro but for all the mid-range devices that will be shipping with it in future.

Using the Redmi Note 5 Pro for a while reassured us that our excitement was well grounded. The performance on this device is a noticeably improved over its predecessor and genuinely good for most parts. There were times when someone could have told us there was a Snapdragon 835 inside and we would have believed with little hesitation. Other times, you do see some hitches while scrolling or opening apps but this could easily be fixed with some more optimization down the line.

Some of the credit for the performance likely also goes to the use of the more expensive LPDDR4X memory, which is an inspired choice, especially at a time when memory prices worldwide have gone up considerably.

Graphics performance has also seen a small improvement over its predecessor. It's not quite the same leap we saw over on the CPU side but the GPU is now powerful enough to play almost every game you throw at it perfectly fine. The device also maintains its temperature quite well during gaming and we didn't notice any undue heating.

We tried running our usual suite of benchmarks but for some reason, a lot of them refused to run on our test unit, so we only have limited results available at the moment.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 5T
  6701
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro
  4696
• Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018)
  4418
• Moto G5S Plus
  4193
• Asus Zenfone 4 ZE554KL
  4145
• HTC U11 Life
  4140
• Motorola Moto X4
  4136
• Sharp AQUOS S2
  4046
• Huawei Honor 7X
  3535
• LG Q6
  2244

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 5T
  1960
• Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018)
  1532
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro
  1327
• Huawei Honor 7X
  904
• HTC U11 Life
  873
• Sharp AQUOS S2
  869
• Motorola Moto X4
  866
• Asus Zenfone 4 ZE554KL
  858
• Moto G5S Plus
  843
• LG Q6
  652

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• OnePlus 5T
  179790
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro
  90642
• Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018)
  85389
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  76186
• HTC U11 Life
  72854
• Motorola Moto X4
  71224
• Sharp AQUOS S2
  69524
• Asus Zenfone 4 ZE554KL
  68343
• Moto G5S Plus
  64554
• Huawei Honor 7X
  62177
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  61616
• LG Q6
  40558

Basemark X

Higher is better

• OnePlus 5T
  38656
• Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018)
  15299
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro
  14897
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  14717
• Motorola Moto X4
  14479
• Asus Zenfone 4 ZE554KL
  14343
• Sharp AQUOS S2
  14298
• HTC U11 Life
  14286
• Moto G5S Plus
  10488
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  10446
• Huawei Honor 7X
  8616
• LG Q6
  6336

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• OnePlus 5T
  3632
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro
  2030
• Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018)
  2007
• Motorola Moto X4
  1532
• Asus Zenfone 4 ZE554KL
  1498
• Sharp AQUOS S2
  1492
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650)
  1426
• Huawei Honor 7X
  1398
• HTC U11 Life
  1342
• Moto G5S Plus
  1176
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (S625)
  1050

Connectivity

Our review unit had no issues with call quality and network performance and both worked admirably. Both the earpiece and the loudspeaker are perfectly clear for calls and the loudspeaker is loud enough for ringtones but doesn't sound especially good for music.

It's good to see the Redmi series step up to Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 5.0, even though this is exclusive to just this particular model for now. IR continues to be part of these devices and the Mi Remote app works great with a bunch of devices. The phone also has a headphone jack as well as an FM radio.

One major bummer is the continued presence of microUSB, which really should have no place in the year 2018. Another issue is the continued use of hybrid SIM slot, which means you can't use two SIM cards if you choose to have a microSD card or vice versa. The 64GB storage on the Pro takes some edge out of this but still, we would like to see dedicated dual SIM and microSD slots as we see on some of the competition.