Xiaomi Redmi 12 review

Big LCD panel on the cheap

The Redmi 12 features a 6.79-inch IPS LCD with 90Hz refresh rate and 1080 x 2460px resolution. It's a somewhat big jump from the 6.5-inch panel on the Redmi 10. There are no fancy HDR-related features, but we didn't expect those in the first place in this price range.

In our tests, the screen peaked at 540 nits, which is really close to the advertised 550 nits and there was no brightness boost in auto mode. We also didn't find a proper ambient light sensor, so we assume the brightness control relies on the front-facing camera, which is energy-consuming and unreliable way to control brightness. Also, 550 nits are not great for a comfortable viewing experience on a bright sunny day. The contrast is nice, though - 1:1507.

But although not the best display ever the panel is still more than adequate for the price range. What we can't fail to mention is the absence of a hardware proximity sensor inexcusable. It makes the voice calling experience really bad because the screen often turns on during phone calls and accidental touches are unavoidable.

We were not expecting accurate color reproduction, but we were pleasantly surprised by the Standard color preset. We got dE2000 of just 1.6 and fixes the blue-ish whites and grays from the default color mode. However, this comes at a cost of about 50 nits of brightness. The display can only reach 501 nits in the color-accurate Standard preset.

Battery life

The Redmi 12 runs on a 5,000 mAh battery and the not-so-demanding Helio G88 SoC, so battery life is expectedly great. However, the overall endurance score is actually a bit lower than what the Redmi 10 managed. Looking past the 117h overall score we find some key nuances.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

For instance, the Redmi 12 posts significantly better video playback runtimes but a lower web browsing score. It also fails to impress in the standby and talk time scenarios. The only difference between the Redmi 10 and the Redmi 12 is the software - the latter runs on a more recent MIUI 14 based on Android 13. So we suspect that the current state of the software needs a little tweak.

Still, the overall score isn't bad by any means, it's just a bit lower than expected.

Charging speed

The Redmi 12 supports 18W charging over Power Delivery, which is pretty much what you'd expect from a phone in this price range. The bad news is that the handset doesn't ship with the appropriate charger and you get only a cable inside the box. The good news is that 18W chargers, even Power Delivery-compliant, are easy to come by.

Regarding actual charging speeds, the Redmi 12 performs on par with the competition and even trims a couple of minutes from the Redmi 10.

Speaker

The Redmi 12 offers a single, bottom-firing speaker - a downgrade from the Redmi 10's dual speaker setup. Not that Redmi 10's pieces were particularly great, but they were loud enough and the stereo setup was extremely hard to come by in this price range. We are sad to see it go in the Redmi 12.

Not only is the new loudspeaker unimpressive when it comes to loudness with an "Average" score of -29.9 LUFS, but the overall quality is not great either. Then again it's unrealistic to expect excellent sound quality from a sub-€200 device and those that care about quality should probably go for a decent pair of headphones anyway.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.