Xiaomi Redmi 4 Prime review: Fancy on a budget
Fancy on a budget
The gallery
The redesigned MIUI 8 gallery app we saw on the Redmi 3S is back on the Redmi 4 Prime. It defaults to your camera roll, but it also supports different albums. Xiaomi's new app now automatically stacks your photos in Camera, Video, People, Screenshots, and Panoramas albums. The People sorting, once chosen, sorts all of your photos by people's faces.
The MIUI 8 gallery seems to have borrowed some of the iOS Photos looks, but nevertheless, it's better than before, and we appreciate the new looks and features.
Gallery
The new integrated editor powered by Camera 360 offers various filters, crop options, enhancements (sharpen, contrast, brightness, saturation, vignette), and doodles. Oddly, this image editing app is less capable than the one supplied with the MIUI v7.
Editing an image
For video playback you can simply open the files from within the gallery. The video player interface is very basic; subtitles and pop-up play are not supported. You do get a separate brightness slider just for video playback.
Browsing and playing videos
There is also a new video editor with MIUI 8. It supports trimming, filters, and adding text, and audio tracks.
Video editing within the gallery
Music player
The MIUI music player is a custom app with a well laid out, easy to navigate interface. The player has cool effects, transitions, and transparent elements, in particular on the expandable Now Playing section. Lyrics are supported, too.
Music Player
Now playing
Xiaomi Redmi 4 Prime offers customizable equalizers within the phone's Settings menu - there are a few default presets already available for use. You can also try Xiaomi's MiSound enhancer, which comes into play when you use headphones, and especially, a Xiaomi-branded headset.
Audio enhancements and equalizers
An FM radio app is also available. The Redmi 3S requires a headset to use as an antenna. FM recording is also available.
FM radio
Audio output impresses
The Xiaomi Redmi 4 demonstrated perfectly clean output when hooked up to an active external amplifier. Its loudness was very high too, adding up to one of the finer showing out there.
Better yet, there was next to no degradation when you plug in a pair of headphones. Outside of a moderate stereo crosstalk hike, the output remained just as good. Loudness was unchanged too, making this one of the better outputs we've seen, and much more so in the entry level.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| Xiaomi Redmi 4 | +0.02, -0.06 | -91.6 | 92.4 | 0.0016 | 0.0081 | -93.3 |
| Xiaomi Redmi 4 (headphones) | +0.04, -0.04 | -91.4 | 92.2 | 0.0058 | 0.036 | -64.0 |
| Xiaomi Redmi 3s | +0.02, -0.07 | -94.3 | 90.6 | 0.0024 | 0.0087 | -91.8 |
| Xiaomi Redmi 3s (headphones) | +0.02, -0.10 | -93.7 | 90.3 | 0.028 | 0.061 | -72.2 |
| Oppo F1s | +0.37, -0.00 | -71.2 | 75.3 | 0.936 | 1.190 | -41.2 |
| Oppo F1s (headphones) | +0.80, -0.05 | -67.8 | 74.6 | 0.336 | 0.579 | -42.3 |
| Huawei Honor 7 Lite (5c) | +0.03, -0.44 | -90.4 | 90.9 | 0.0019 | 0.011 | -87.9 |
| Huawei Honor 7 Lite (5c) (headphones) | +0.04, -0.47 | -90.3 | 90.7 | 0.0067 | 0.072 | -73.1 |
| Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) | +0.04, -0.24 | -92.4 | 92.5 | 0.024 | 0.023 | -91.3 |
| Samsung Galaxy J3 (2016) (headphones) | +0.37, -0.04 | -88.5 | 90.6 | 0.045 | 0.226 | -56.9 |
| Sony Xperia E5 | +0.14, -0.81 | -92.3 | 92.4 | 0.0072 | 0.0093 | -91.9 |
| Sony Xperia E5 (headphones) | +0.15, -0.88 | -89.5 | 88.9 | 0.0090 | 0.370 | -50.7 |
| Motorola Moto G4 | +0.02, -0.07 | -92.4 | 92.5 | 0.0028 | 0.0084 | -92.1 |
| Motorola Moto G4 (headphones) | +0.04, -0.08 | -92.0 | 92.0 | 0.0073 | 0.070 | -63.8 |
| Sony Xperia XA | +0.01, -0.18 | -93.6 | 90.6 | 0.0030 | 0.010 | -91.7 |
| Sony Xperia XA (headphones) | +0.85, -0.18 | -87.1 | 87.8 | 0.018 | 0.327 | -54.9 | Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus | +0.02, -0.08 | -93.8 | 92.8 | 0.0037 | 0.034 | -91.3 |
| Lenovo Vibe K5 Plus (headphones) | +0.09, -0.03 | -93.5 | 92.6 | 0.070 | 0.075 | -49.0 |
Xiaomi Redmi 4 frequency response
You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.
Reader comments
- sskre
- 16 Feb 2021
- fxR
still using this phone from 2016, just replaced the battery, storage getting full, no other compact phone with this price and battery life available to replace this ..
- Xceed
- 05 Jul 2020
- KSE
Using this phone since 2016, Good screen, Processor, Battery life it is my favourite phone. Now storage getting full (32gb), need to find good replacement....
- milovers4prime
- 26 Apr 2020
- tDI
I have this phone from Nov 2016 until now. Now i just have a problem with storage and battery. overall this phone is awesome