Xiaomi Redmi 13 review

A powerful 108MP main camera

The main camera is a clear highlight of the Redmi 13. It is the first 108MP camera to come to the Redmi numbered series. It uses a Samsung s5khm6 sensor, commonly referred to as the HM6. It is a 1/1.67" sensor with 0.64µm pixels. The sensor sits behind an f/1.8 lens and has PDAF.

The budget price point of the Redmi 13 seemingly didn't leave enough budget for anything beyond a very basic 2MP macro camera on the back. There is no ultrawide and definitely no dedicated telephoto.

The final camera is the 13MP selfie. It is pretty basic, based on the OmniVision ov13b10 sensor with fixed focus and an f/2.5 lens.

• Wide (main): 108 MP Samsung ISOCELL HM6 (S5KHM6) f/1.8, 1/1.67", 0.64µm, PDAF; 1080p@30fps
• Macro: 2 MP GalaxyCore gc02m1, f/2.4, 1/5", 1.75µm.
• Front camera: 13 MP OmniVision OV13B (OV13B10), f/2.5, 1/3", 1.12µm; 1080p@30fps

Nothing has changed much in terms of camera UI. You get a well-organized interface with a mode carousel on the right, next to the camera shutter, a few toggles on the left, and a slide-out menu for more options.

Daylight photo quality

Main camera

The main camera on the Redmi 13 captures solid overall photos with plenty of detail and nice and mostly natural colors. Dynamic range is limited though.

Redmi 13: 12MP main camera samples

Once you start pixel-peeping, however, it quickly becomes apparent that these photos are a bit harshly processed. There is plenty of sharpening. Some noise is also left behind, and there is some color fringing in the finer patterns. Still, overall, these are pretty decent photos for a budget device.

The Redmi 13 does pretty well with human subjects, too. Skin tones and texture come through and look pretty realistic. The main camera can do portraits as well. While these aren't perfect, and the algorithm occasionally trips up, they are darn good. We like the accuracy of the subject detection and separation and the quality of the background blur.

Redmi 13: 12MP main camera portrait samples

There is no dedicated telephoto on the Redmi 13, but its main camera still has plenty of resolution to pull off decent digital zooms. There is a 3x toggle in the camera UI. 3x shots look very good, practically identical to 1x ones. There is plenty of detail, nice colors, great contrast and good dynamic range.

Redmi 13: 12MP main camera 3x zoom samples

You can force the main camera to shoot in its full 108MP resolution. We wouldn't necessarily say that you get better detail from these shots, but the processing is much less aggressive, resulting in more natural-looking shots, especially when pixel-peeping.

Redmi 13: 108MP main camera samples

If you don't mind the bigger file size, then 108MP mode might be the way to go for the best possible quality out of the Redmi 13.

Macro camera

The dedicated 2MP macro camera isn't particularly impressive. Given its limited resolution and fixed focus, it does about as well as one can expect. With enough fiddling, you can get some interesting shots. Just don't expect any extreme close-ups or crystal-clear quality.

Redmi 13: 2MP macro camera samples

Selfie camera

Despite its rather modest specs, the selfie camera on the Redmi 13 captures some surprisingly clean shots. These have plenty of detail and nice colors, especially skin tones. Contrast and dynamic range are also good.

Redmi 13: 13MP selfie camera samples

Low-light camera quality

The main camera captures decent low-light photos, but nothing more than that. The results are hardly spectacular. There is enough detail in the frame and darker areas are exposed well enough. However, there is a lot of corner softness and light sources are handled very poorly and almost always blown-out.

Redmi 13: 12MP low-light main camera samples

There is a dedicated Night mode, but it hardly does anything beneficial. In fact, it seems to soften up the photos a bit, which is not a desired effect in these circumstances.

Redmi 13: 12MP Night mode main camera samples

Usurpingly, at 3x zoom things aren't any better. You get what we would consider mostly usable shots, but you do have to be a bit persistent and battle with the autofocus to get a vaguely decent result.

Redmi 13: 12MP low-light main camera 3x zoom samples

Night mode doesn't really do all that much for 3x zoom shots either. You generally get more shot-to-shot variance in normal mode simply due to the autofocus and minor camera shake.

Redmi 13: 12MP Night mode main camera 3x zoom samples

Low-light selfies look really soft and noisy and are barely usable.

Redmi 13: 13MP low-light selfie camera samples

Yet again, Night mode does almost nothing to improve the shots. Well, perhaps it cleans up a bit of noise and on occasion handles light sources better, though the effect is hardly consistent and hence not likely due to Night mode processing at all, but rather shot-to-shot variance.

Redmi 13: 13MP Night mode selfie camera samples

Video capture quality

The MediaTek Helio G91 Ultra might have an upgraded ISP compared to the G85 and G88, but it still has a 1080p max video capture limitation. That's kind of unfortunate since the main camera has more than enough resolution to pull off 4K, but it's also not entirely unexpected on a budget device. The main camera and the selfie can both do 1080p@30fps. That's not the only shortcoming that video capture has. Another is the fact that the Redmi 13 only records mono audio. On a more positive note, you can choose between the default AVC/h.264 format and the more space-efficient HEVC/h.265.

The FullHD videos from the main camera look decent enough but are nothing to phone home about. The detail is alright, given the resolution, and there is aggressive sharpening going on to create the illusion of a sharper, more detailed image. The colors are nice but not what we would call true-to-life. Saturation is cranked up quite a bit. Dynamic range and contrast are decent.

Just like with photos, there is a 3x zoom toggle for videos. These don't look as good as 1x ones and are understandably a bit softer but still quite aggressively sharpened.

The Redmi 13 lacks any video stabilization. Any sort of motion results in very shaky videos, almost unusably so. This goes for both the main and the selfie cameras.

Speaking of the selfie camera, it does a decent job, but again nothing spectacular. Detail is alright, given the resolution, and colors are quite nice. However, the contrast and dynamic ranges are far from ideal.

Not unlike low-light photos, low-light videos from the main camera are decent, but nothing more than that. There is enough detail for the resolution, colors look ok and there is even some detail developed in darker areas of the frame. Light sources, however, are handled quite poorly and almost always blown-out.

Video sample playlist

You can check out the playlist below, which includes multiple video samples.