Xiaomi Redmi 2 review: Spare hand

Decent 8MP camera

Xiaomi Redmi 2 features an 8MP camera, equipped with a LED flash. Its interface is fairly simple, though has changed a bit since MIUI v.5. Now you have three scrollable pages - the default one shows the viewfinder with a virtual shutter, flash trigger and front camera key. The top page has 12 filters with live preview, while the bottom has advances modes such as Panorama, HDR, Skin Tones, Manual.

Camera UI

The Manual Mode offers you settings for white balance and ISO manual settings. The Face Detection switch is within the additional settings.

More camera settings

Our Xiaomi Redmi 2 unit came with a defective camera lens and was able to focus only at objects at about 2 meters distance or less. The camera resolves a decent amount of detail although and manages to keep the noise levels low. The smartphone's camera renders colors well - slightly oversaturated, but not too much to create an unrealistic effect.

Xiaomi Redmi 2 camera samples

Update, Feb 19: We got another Redmi 2 unit and snapped new camera samples. There were no issues with the lens, so we were able to do all of our tests properly. The resolved detail is decent, but not impressive, while the dynamic range is OK. There is little noise, the colors are slightly over-saturated, but still quite close to the realistic ones.

Xiaomi Redmi 2 camera samples

The HDR mode is conservative and rescues both the highlights and shadows without making the contrast too low.

HDR off • HDR on • HDR off • HDR on

Panorama shots are available too - you can capture both landscape and portrait panoramic photos at about 180 degree. Shooting is easy but the stitching takes a while to complete. The end result is rather disappointing though - the landscape shots come in 2300x400px pixels while shooting in portrait mode results in the somewhat more usable (but again far from great) 2000x800px.

While the panoramic images are stitched well, the quality and resolution are below the competition.

Xiaomi Redmi 2 panorama samples in landscape and portrait modes

Photo comparison tool

The Xiaomi Redmi 2 is more than capable of carrying its own weight in our Photo Comparison tool. You can see it puts up a good fight against the other snappers we've tested and comes on top even against some far pricier options.

Xiaomi Redmi 2 in our photo quality comparison tool

1080p video recording

Xiaomi Redmi 2 camcorder has the same UI as the still camera. It supports time-lapse videos with customizable snapping interval.

Camcorder UI

The Xiaomi Redmi 2 is capable or recording up to 1080p@30fps. The bitrate of the samples is 15 Mbps, audio is captured at 96 Kbps with 2 channels (stereo).

The detail levels in the 1080p videos are average, colors and contrast are good and the framerate consistent at 30fps. The dynamic range is low and there are visible compression artifacts due to the low bitrate. Finally, the automatic exposure is too harsh and may ruin the overall video quality.

And here is a 1080p video we've uploaded on YouTube.

You can also download the 1080p untouched video sample taken straight off the Xiaomi Redmi 2.

Video quality comparison tool

The Xiaomi Redmi 2 enters our video comparison too. There are plenty of 1080p camcorders you can compare it with. It resolves average detail, while contrast and colors are good.

Xiaomi Redmi 2 in our Video quality comparison tool