Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro long-term review

Performance, smoothness

The Redmi Note 10 Pro performs well for its price point. Compared to the Redmi Note 9 Pro we long-term reviewed last year, it feels faster in use even though on paper, the difference between the chipsets used seems minor. This, however, is one of those cases where specs don't tell the whole story - or maybe they do, but a 5% improvement feels higher subjectively the lower your baseline is.

We've seen a similar thing in the Poco X3 NFC, which uses the same Snapdragon 732G as the Redmi Note 10 Pro, so we're pretty sure we're not just imagining things. Like the Poco X3, the Redmi Note 10 Pro also feels subjectively smoother than the Redmi Note 9 Pro in every interaction. Not by much, mind you, but it's still an improvement that was obvious to us while we were using it.

All this said, the SoC here is decidedly mid-range, despite what the 7-series designation might imply in relation to the high-end 8-series - that's a neat marketing trick Qualcomm pulled, by the way. Because it's mid-range, and not "almost premium" as the naming might imply, you get what you pay for. This isn't a knock on the Redmi Note 10 Pro, it's just a fact. Then again, it also depends what you compare to - Samsung, for example, seems to always have a more expensive offering available running on similar if not inferior silicon, so compared to one such device, you're actually getting more value with the Redmi.

It's one of the fastest-feeling and smoothest-feeling phones with a 4G 7-series Qualcomm chip (the 5G 7-series SoCs also have better CPUs and GPUs which is why we're excluding them), but that doesn't mean it doesn't stutter from time to time, or that it's anywhere near as fast-feeling as even a flagship from last year (or two years ago). You just can't get there with a Snapdragon 732G.

What you do get, on the other hand, is perfectly adequate performance for most day-to-day tasks, if you can handle a general requirement for a teeny tiny bit of patience in everything you do. Things you intend to happen will happen, but never instantly - if you don't mind waiting a split second, you're set. Smoothness is okay, while obviously nowhere near perfect. The 120 Hz screen helps with smoothness a lot, even though it feels less smooth in operation than a 120 Hz panel on a flagship.

It is, however, a massive improvement compared to the Redmi Note 9 Pro's 60 Hz panel. And most of the time, we'd wager a bet that you won't feel disappointed. Some random stutters do feel shocking, but they aren't worse than what Samsung's One UI used to produce on flagship devices a couple of years ago.

Heat hasn't been a problem throughout our time with the Redmi Note 10 Pro, as in we haven't felt it overheating (and we've used it during a heatwave). That said, note that this reviewer isn't a gamer, so we can't speak for sustained performance during games - and how heat might be handled there.

Battery life

Just as it seems like the cheaper a Xiaomi/Redmi/Poco phone is, the less quality control its software updates get, there's another interesting trend we think we've spotted for the company's products. The cheaper a phone is (up to a point), the better battery life it has. And conversely, the more expensive it is, the less impressive the battery life (although it's still generally decent even at the high end).

The Redmi Note 10 Pro thus, unsurprisingly, manages to impress. We'd call its battery life incredibly good for this day and age, although we'd probably not go so far as to say it's outstanding. It is less impressive than what we saw in the Redmi Note 9 Pro last year, for example, and we're assuming this has to do with the screen - both its high refresh rate (100% of our usage was with the setting at 120 Hz), as well as the fact that it doesn't seem to be a very efficient AMOLED - going by the fact that you can't have an actually always-on Always-On Display.

Battery life: screen on time

So with this our screen on time numbers for the Redmi Note 10 Pro are about one hour lower than they were for the Redmi Note 9 Pro, with very similar usage. You may take that to be a problem, but here's the thing - we went from easily hitting 8 hours of SoT with at least 20% battery capacity to spare, to easily hitting 7 hours of SoT with at least 20% capacity to spare. That's still better than what most flagships can attain, so it's definitely nothing to scoff at. And as two of the screenshots above can attest, we did manage to go over 8 hours a couple of times, one of those with ample milliamp hours left to spare. But those were exceptions.

While we weren't mind-blown by the battery life, we were nevertheless impressed, and we think most people will be able to get a full day out of this phone's battery regardless of how intensively they use it. We never had to resort to a midday top-up, that's for sure. On the other hand, the battery was never able to last us two days, and we didn't feel like chancing it and finding out whether it would last for at least a day and a half. It very well might, for a lot of people, depending on specific usage.

Speaking of that, our usage, as usual, involves about 12-16 hours off the charger with mostly Wi-Fi connectivity, about an hour or two on mobile data, Bluetooth always on and connected to headphones and speakers for an hour or so of music playback and an hour or two of calls, and location on with GPS navigation through Waze or Google Maps for around half an hour each day. That's the context for the numbers you can see in the screenshots above.

Charging isn't the fastest around, but it's fast enough for this class of device, taking the battery from zero to 100% takes around 80 minutes. That's marginally more time than for the Redmi Note 9 Pro and the Poco X3 NFC, but it's still better than what a lot of competitors offer in similarly priced devices (cough... Samsung... cough). Also, if the phone easily lasts you all day and you charge it through the night, the speed is kind of irrelevant. That said, we'd obviously like to see Xiaomi mid-rangers break past 33W in the future.