Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro review

The usual quad-camera on the back

The Redmi Note 11 Pro has your typical mid-range four-camera setup on the back. There is a high-res 108MP primary, an 8MP ultrawide, a 2MP macro, and a 2MP depth camera. A single LED flash is also around this quarter, while a single 16MP sits within the screen's perforation and takes care of your selfies.

The Redmi Note 11 Pro camera arrangement is a mixture of the Redmi Note 10 Pro and the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G.

The primary camera is the same across all three - it uses a 108MP Samsung ISOCELL HM2 1/1.52" sensor with 0.7µm pixels and 24mm f/1.9 lens. The color filter is Nona-Bayer, meaning 9 sensor pixels are combined into one 2.1*µm, and the output resolution is 12MP. PDAF is available. Night Mode is available, too.

The ultrawide camera relies on an 8MP Sony IMX355 sensor behind a 16mm f/2.2 lens. Some units may come with an 8MP OmniVision OV8856 sensor instead of Sony's IMX355. Either way, the focus is fixed at infinity. Oddly, there is Night Mode here, unlike on the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G's ultrawide cam.

The macro camera packs a 2MP GalaxyCore GC02M1 sensor behind an f/2.4 lens. The focus is fixed at about 4cm away.

The fourth and final camera on the back is a 2MP OmniVision OV02B1 depth sensor.

The selfie camera utilizes a 16MP SK Hynix Hi-1634Q 1/3" sensor with 1.0µm pixels and Quad-Bayer filter. This one has f/2.4 lens, and the focus is fixed.

Camera app

The camera app is a rather straightforward implementation, though it does have its quirks. First, basic operation for changing modes works with side swipes (on the black bezel!), and you can also tap on the modes you can see to switch to those directly. Up and down swipes don't work for switching between the front and rear cameras; only the toggle next to the shutter release does that.

You can add, remove, and rearrange modes in the main rolodex by going to the More tab and navigating to the edit button, and you can access that from the settings menu as well. The unused modes will still be in that More tab, but you can switch to a (less intuitive) pull-out pane that's summoned from a line next to the shutter release.

The hamburger menu at the far end is where you'll find additional options, including the Super Macro mode (why here and not a mode in the rolodex?), plus the icon to access the settings. Next to that hamburger menu, you have a flash mode switch, an HDR switch, an AI toggle, shortcut to Google Lens, and a magic wand with beauty effects and filters.

On the near end, you have the camera zoom switch that operates in one of two fashions. The first one is simply tapping on one of the three dots that represent the ultra-wide, primary, and 2x digital options. Or you can tap on the active magnification and slide sideways to reveal even more zoom levels - 2x and 10x, plus a slider for intermediate magnifications.

Camera app

There's a nicely capable Pro mode, where you can tweak the shooting parameters yourself. You can use the primary, the ultrawide and even the macro cameras here. You get to pick one of 4 white balance presets or dial in the light temperature with a slider, there's a manual focusing slider (with peaking as an option, particularly useful for the macro), and shutter speed (1/4000s to 30s/15s/0.25s for main/ultrawide/macro) and ISO control with range depending on which camera you're using. A tiny live histogram is available, and a toggle for zebras can be found in the hamburger menu.

As expected, there's a host of extra modes, including Long Exposure with its own set of different presets - moving crowd, neon trails, oil painting, light painting, starry sky, and star trails.

Night mode is available for the main and the ultrawide cameras. There is no Auto Night mode as on previous Xiaomi models.

Photo quality

The 12MP default photos from the main camera are good for this class. They offer plenty of resolved detail, the white balance is spot-on, and the colors are accurate. The noise is kept nicely low, while the dynamic range is high but not over the top, and that's why the contrast across the photos is just right.

The images are noticeably over-sharpened, though, something that was handled incredibly well on the previous Note 10 Pro model.

Still, these photos are much better than the ones we got from the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G with its identical 108MP camera. It seems the processing is different on the two Redmi Note 11 Pro models, and the 4G version has the better one.

Main camera, 12MP

There is a 2x zoom shortcut on the viewfinder, but it does not offer lossless zoom. The digital zoom has no special processing whatsoever, it does a simple crop and upscale, and the photos have poor detail. That is if you pixel peep them, of course.

The 2x mode is not without uses cases, as it provides an easier way of zooming instead of doing it yourself within the Gallery's image editor. And since all social networks and IMs clients will downsize the photos, nobody will probably notice the digital zoom anyway.

Main cam 2x zoom, 12MP

There is a 108MP mode, and it saves good high-resolution photos instead of basic upscales. The samples we took offer a good amount of resolved detail, balanced sharpness, and accurate colors. The dynamic range and contrast are as good as on the default images.

Various artefacts are noticeable across the photos, and obviously, the per-pixel detail isn't what you can expect from real 108MP photos. But there is a very good use for these 108MP images.

Main camera, 108MP

First, if you crop their center and then resize it to 12MP, you will get much better 2x zoom. In fact, this is what lossless zoom could have looked on the Note 11 Pro, if it had the processing power to make it on the go - which it doesn't, obviously.

12MP 2x zoom via crop and resize from 108MP

Or you can manually resize the 108MP photos down to 12MP; you'd get outstanding results because they are less processed. There is more detail in these images than on the default ones, there is no excessive sharpening, and overall, they look much more natural and truer to life.

While the 108MP mode is a clever way to bypass the image processing, one photo occupies about 20MB or more and then you will need to resize each one of these manually.

180MP-to-12MP resize

The 8MP ultrawide photos are alright for this class, though we've seen better. The center of the images is sharp enough and with a good amount of resolved detail (for this type of cameras), while the distortion correction around the corners comes at the price of added softness. The noise is handled mostly well, too.

But while the detail will do fine for most, the images suffer from abusive HDR processing, which leads to low contrast and yet the dynamic range wasn't improved in a meaningful way (highlights are still blown, while shadows look unnatural). The colors are washed out occasionally.

Ultrawide camera, 8MP

The 2MP macro camera offers acceptable closeup photos. They are not that sharp, but the resolved detail will do for Instagram and similar social networks. The colors are punchy, the contrast is good, and the noise levels are low most of the time.

It takes time to get used to the fixed focus, and it's still not guaranteed you will get a sharp photo with accurate focus. We are missing the telemacro camera from the Note 10 Pro and its autofocus quite dearly.

Macro camera, 2MP

The Redmi Note 11 Pro shoots great portrait photos - the subjects are proficiently separated from the background, well exposed and detailed. The contrast and colors are great. The simulated blur looks nice, and we did like it.

Portraits, 12MP

The selfies from the 16MP camera are likable even if not that detailed - the colors are accurate, the contrast is great, the noise is low, and the subject is well exposed.

The resolved detail is not impressive as this is a Quad-Bayer camera, but instead of 4MP photos, it saves 16MP ones. But these do look nice on the phone's display, as well as when posted on social networks, which is plenty enough for its purposes.

Selfies, 16MP

Portrait selfies are available, too. The separation is so-so - your subject should be fine if their haircut is not that complex. There is a noticeable drop in the sharpness here, but other than that - the background blur is convincing, and if needed - you can use this mode to mask your surroundings.

Portrait selfies, 16MP

The 12MP low-light photos from the main camera are good for the class, though we've surely seen better. The detail in those is enough, even if some was smeared by the noise reduction. The color saturation is good, the contrast is high, and the exposure does a good job of taking a true-to-life photo.

We still feel these could have benefitted from better processing aimed at more sharpness and less smearing.

Sometimes, the Auto HDR, or the lack of it, may lead to an incredibly noise photo like the first one from the batch below.

Main camera, 12MP

Night Mode is available for the main camera, and we suggest using it at night. It is a conservative one that cleans noise better, prevents blown highlights, and reveals more detail in some shadows. It saves sharper images, too, though the sharpening may get a bit excessive at times.

Still, the Night Mode photos offer better color saturation and exposure, and with being also clearer of noise, we do suggest using this mode occasionally. It takes a second or two to shoot, so it's not much trouble.

Main cam Night Mode, 12MP

The low-light photos from the ultrawide camera are barely usable. We can see what's on them, and the colors are preserved well, but the noise reduction often smears most of the detail and leaves one nig smudgy mess.

Ultrawide camera, 8MP

Unlike the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G, the 4G model does offer Night Mode for the ultrawide camera. And if for whatever reason you want to use this camera at night, it is a must-use feature.

The Night Mode on the ultrawide camera helps for better exposure and hence - brighter photos. The color saturation stays true to life, there is noticeably more detail, and the photos are much sharper. The noise is handled way better here, and it won't get in the way. Finally, the dynamic range gets a boost with no clipped highlights and more detail in some shadows.

Sure, these photos are still noisy and soft, but they are way better than the default ones and very much usable.

Ultrawide cam Night Mode, 8MP

And here are photos of our usual posters taken with the Redmi Note 11 Pro. You can see how it stacks up against the competition. Feel free to browse around and pit it against other phones from our extensive database.

Redmi Note 11 Pro against the Redmi Note 10 Pro and the Realme 9 Pro+ in our Photo compare tool

Video quality

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro supports up to 1080p@30fps video capturing with its primary, ultrawide and selfie cameras. The 2MP macro camera is limited to 720p@30fps.

The Redmi Note 10 Pro and its Snapdragon 732G chipset offered 4K video capturing, while the Helio G96 has no support for such resolution and the new model sure feels like a big downgrade. And while some of our readers doubt the necessity of 4K video capturing on phones with 1080p screens - our experience shows that 4K videos look much better when shown at 1080p resolution, be it on the phone, tablets, PCs, TVs. Meanwhile, the 1080p clips are not always that good, and they look even worse when shown at full resolution.

Electronic stabilization is available across all cameras, except for the macro; it is always on and does a good job at stabilizing the picture when necessary.

The video bitrate is about 20Mbps, while audio is recorded in stereo at 192kbps bitrate.

The 1080p videos from the main camera are good - the resolved detail is enough, and we observed good sharpness. We liked the colors, the contrast is high, while the dynamic range is enough and not over the top.

The 1080p low-light videos are okay, too, but not that impressive. The detail is adequate, the colors are well preserved, and the noise isn't ruining the video. The dynamic range is rather low, and the footage is dark, but if needed - the camera will do an acceptable job at night.

We liked the videos coming from the ultrawide camera. These present enough detail for such type of camera, realistic colors and incredibly high dynamic range. The contrast is average, but that's because of the boosted dynamic range. For this class and this type of camera, we are happy with what we got.

Finally, here is the Redmi Note 11 Pro in our video tool so you can make your own comparisons.

Redmi Note 11 Pro against the Redmi Note 10 Pro and the Realme 9 Pro+ in our Video compare tool