Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro/Pro+ 5G review

MIUI 13 on top of Android 11

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G, like the rest of the Redmi Note 11 quartet, boots Android 11 with the most current MIUI 13 version. Most of the new MIUI features are under the hood, though they should make for a smoother, smarter, and more secure experience.

This version of MIUI 13 is based on Android 11, and it does not include any of the Android 12 features like the revamped widgets and their new widget page in the app drawer. There is no advanced Privacy Dashboard either with options like a protected clipboard, approximate location, updated Face Unlock algorithm. The updated File Manager and Clock app with Bedtime mode are nowhere to be found either.

Other notable missing features on Android 11 + MIUI 13 combo are the improved one-handed mode (iOS-style), and the improved camera app with zero shutter lag and motion photos.

Finally, the new live wallpapers showing microscopic stuff like how vitamin C and citric acid crystallize, as part of the Beauty of Science collaboration, are not available on the Redmi Note 11 series just yet.

Still, Xiaomi claims that MIUI has been reworked completely, even if you cannot tell that by the interface and its design alone - it looks and feels just like MIUI 12. But the new version reportedly focuses on much better resource distribution and should handle processor, RAM and storage usage better and smarter.

For example, MIUI 13 is supposed to keep track of the current use of the processor and RAM and suspend any currently unnecessary tasks to free resources and offer more fluid performance. Xiaomi promises a background process efficiency increase of up to 40% compared to the previous version.

Liquid storage is what sounds really cool and relevant for modern smartphones. Xiaomi says that in most phones the storage performance is halved in 36 months due to inefficient storage management. And this is where MIUI 13 comes - it offers 60% better defragmentation efficiency than MIUI 12 and different competitors. So the storage performance drop in 36 months should be merely 5%. This sounds impressive, so here is hoping this feature lives up to the hype.

The final optimization done within MIUI's core is power management - the new version's optimization should lead to a 10% drop in the power consumption compared to MIUI 12's.

There is also an improved Smart Sidebar for even more fluid multi-tasking with pop-up apps. And the privacy has been improved with a number of features some of which unique.

And now, let's take a closer look at MIUI 13 on the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G supports an Always-on display - unfortunately, it can never be always on. It can only appear for 10s after a tap. At least, there are a lot of AOD themes you can choose from. A few of those can also be customized.

Always-on display

Breathing light is called Notification effect in MIUI 13. It can work with or without Always-on Display. Basically, that's a fancier version of the notification LED that uses the edges of the display - they flash with colors upon new notifications.

One more thing, you can choose the lockscreen clock style, too.

Notification light • Notification light • Notification light • Lockscreen clock style

You unlock the screen via the side-mounted fingerprint scanner. The reader is easy to set up, blazing-fast, and the accuracy is superb. You can set the unlock method to Touch or Press - the Press will spare you accidental misreads of your palm (that eventually lead to PIN input) if you are using the phone without a case. A 2D Face Unlock is available, too, but it is far less secure than the fingerprint option.

Biometrics

The homescreens are business as usual - they are populated with shortcuts, folders, and widgets. The leftmost pane, if enabled, is Google's Discover.

MIUI 13

MIUI 13 offers an app drawer, and it automatically organizes your apps into categories. The first is All, meaning it contains all apps. Then follow Communication, Entertainment, Photography, Tools, New, and Business. You can edit these categories or even disable them altogether.

You can disable the app drawer entirely if that's not your thing.

App drawer

Just like in MIUI 12, MIUI 13 offers an independent Notification shade and Control Center. You summon them like on the iPhones - pull down from the left part of the screen for the Notification Center, pull down from the right for the Control Center.

If you are not fond of this iPhone-ish split - you can disable the Control Center, and the shade will revert to its normal looks and operation.

Notifications • Toggles • Settings

The task switcher is familiar, too, if you've ever used a Xiaomi. It shows all of your recent apps in two columns. Tap-and-hold on any card for the split-screen and pop-up shortcuts (where available), or just swipe it left or right to close it.

There is a Floating Windows button on top of everything. You can put a compatible app in a floating state, but you only have one floating window at a time.

Task switcher • Task Switcher • Task switcher • Split screen • Floating window • Floating window

Themes have always been a huge part of MIUI, and they are available on MIUI 13, too. You can download new ones from the Themes store, and they can change wallpapers, ringtones, system icons, and even the always-on display style.

Themes

MIUI comes with its proprietary multimedia apps - Gallery, Music, Mi Video (with streaming options), FM radio. There is also an MIUI File Manager. And, of course, a Mi Remote app that uses the integrated IR blaster.

Gallery • Music • Video • FM Radio • File Manager • Mi Remote

Protective Mark is a new feature within the Gallery. It adds a text of your choosing across an entire photo as a watermark. Handy for when you are taking a photo of your ID to share with someone.

Protective watermark

MIUI also offers a Security app. It can scan your phone for malware, manage your blacklist, manage or restrict your data usage, configure battery behavior, and free up some RAM. It can also manage the permissions of your installed apps, define the battery behavior of selected apps, and apply restrictions only to certain apps.

Security

And speaking of memory, MIUI 13 offers Memory Extension option that's active by default (you can disable it if you like). It reserves of 3GB of the internal storage that serves as RAM extension. Less important memory blocks should come here.

RAM Extension

The Smart Sidebar is quite familiar - a small visible mark on the edge of the screen that expands into a menu anytime you swipe on it. You launch apps in pop-up windows from here. Of course, you can customize the actions for this menu. If you are within a multimedia app (like YouTube, Mi Video, Gallery, etc.) you will get the Video toolbox next to the shortcuts - it contains a Dolby Atmos switch, plus shortcuts for Screenshot, Record screen, Cast, and Play Video with the screen off. And, oh yes, the last one works on YouTube, no Premium subscription needed!

Smart Sidebar • Smart Sidebar • Pop-up apps • Video toolbox

Other interesting MIUI 13 improvements you may not notice at first include a better screenshot editor, a brand-new battery page with performance mode, and an option for the camera app to shoot videos with the screen turned off.

When you take a screenshot, you will notice a modern-looking interface with brushes, erasers, text and selection tools, among others.

The Battery page offers four battery modes - two power-saving types, Balanced (default), and a new Performance option that may give a small performance boost for a while but then lead to throttling. Here, you can also check the battery temperature. Note that Performance Mode is not available for all phones, but it is present only on the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G.

Finally, even if not new per se, the Camera app offers an option to Shoot with screen off. If you toggle this feature on, the screen will be turned off after three minutes of inactivity.

Camera options • Screenshot editor • Battery page and options

Some MIUI ROMs include ads in the default apps, it is a well-known thing. On our review units, the Redmi Note 11 Pro doesn't have any ads, but the Redmi Note 11, the Redmi Note 11S and the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G version do come with baked-in ad "recommendations".

You can disable those even if it's a bit tedious to do it because you have to do it for every system app that has them. For example, if you are annoyed by the app scanner's ads, just hit the settings gear, and disable recommendations. Ads in the File Manager - Settings->About should do it. Themes - go to Settings and disable Recommendations. It's not ideal, sure, but at least you can get rid of them all.

Ads • Ads • Disable ads • Disable ads

MIUI 13 has a lot of under the hood improvements that promise a smoother and faster experience right now, as well as for the next couple of years due to many optimizations. The interface is pretty much MIUI 12 with a couple of tweaks here and there. So, if you didn't expect a groundbreaking redesign, you will feel right at home with MIUI 13. We don't expect Android 12 to change that either.

Performance and benchmarks

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G employs the Snapdragon 695 5G chipset. This is a completely revamped chipset since the Snapdragon 690, and it is also newer and more powerful compared to the Note 10 Pro's Snapdragon 732G chip.

This new Snapdragon 695 5G is based on a more modern 6nm manufacturing process by TSMC, it supports mmWave 5G connectivity, and it has more modern CPU (A78) and GPU.

The octa-core processor of the SD695 has two Kryo 660 Gold (Cortex-A78) cores clocked at 2.2 GHz, and six Kryo 660 Silver (Cortex-A55) ones, working at 1.8 GHz.

The Note 11 Pro 5G and its SD695 chip offer a newer Adreno 619 GPU (vs. Adreno 618 on the Note 10 Pro). We don't expect a significant improvement, if any, as far as graphics performance is concerned.

The Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G is available with either 6GB or 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM. The storage options are 64GB, 128GB and 256GB, and the storage is of the UFS 2.2 kind.

Finally, the SD695 chip supports dual 5G, Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.1, NFC, GPS. Some of the competing MediaTek chips come with Wi-Fi 6 support, so there is some room for improvement.

Let's run some tests now.

The Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G CPU offers a 15% performance boost compared to the Redmi Note 10 Pro. It is also faster than the non-5G Redmi Note 11 Pro (and its Helio G96 chip).

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  2832
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  2801
• OnePlus Nord 2
  2792
• Realme 9 Pro+
  2335
• Poco X3 GT
  2310
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  2063
• Realme 9 Pro
  2020
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  1780
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro
  1729
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10
  1599
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10S
  1576

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Realme 9 Pro+
  814
• OnePlus Nord 2
  814
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  787
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  771
• Realme 9 Pro
  694
• Poco X3 GT
  693
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  688
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  569
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10
  534
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro
  511
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10S
  502

Unfortunately, the new Adreno 619 does not offer any performance increase over the Adreno 618 within the Redmi Note 10 Pro. It is noticeably faster than the dual-core Mali-G57 inside the Redmi Note 11 Pro's Helio G96 chip.

The Adreno 619 is no chart-topper, though. There are many phones in this price bracket that offer faster graphics performance.

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Poco X3 GT
  38
• OnePlus Nord 2
  38
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  28
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  28
• Realme 9 Pro+
  27
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  17
• Realme 9 Pro
  16
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  16
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro
  12
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10
  7.9

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Poco X3 GT
  68
• OnePlus Nord 2
  57
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  49
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  49
• Realme 9 Pro+
  41
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  34
• Realme 9 Pro
  29
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro
  22
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10
  15

GFX Manhattan ES 3.0 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Poco X3 GT
  97
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  69
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  68
• OnePlus Nord 2
  59
• Realme 9 Pro+
  56
• Realme 9 Pro
  41
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  41
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro
  34
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10
  21

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• OnePlus Nord 2
  4224
• Poco X3 GT
  3991
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  2491
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  2477
• Realme 9 Pro+
  2296
• Realme 9 Pro
  1211
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  1204
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10
  482

The AnTuTu tests put the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G around the Realme 9 Pro, which has the same Snapdragon 695 chipset, but below many new phones from within the same price segment.

AnTuTu 8

Higher is better

• OnePlus Nord 2
  512164
• Poco X3 GT
  506800
• Realme 9 Pro+
  495096
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  429675
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro
  295442
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  288914
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro
  261309
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10
  218788

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• OnePlus Nord 2
  598022
• Poco X3 GT
  578505
• Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G NE
  527663
• Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
  506432
• Realme 9 Pro+
  416031
• Realme 9 Pro
  401894
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
  382902
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 10S
  330909
• Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro
  319093

Finally, we ran the CPU Throttling and 3D Mark Stress test, and we found the Note 11 Pro to be offering great stability. It managed to keep 75% of its CPU performance under peak usage for an hour, and 99.5% of the GPU performance when using the GPU at 100%. These are some excellent numbers.

CPU stress • GPU stress

Here is the deal - the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G is a snappy smartphone, as fast as the previous Note 10 Pro model. We were disappointed that there was no significant upgrade, especially in the graphics department. This alone will probably make many Note 10 Pro owners skip this Note 11 generation.

The biggest letdown is the more expensive price tag, which has put the Note 11 Pro 5G side by side with much faster smartphones like the Galaxy A52s, the Nord 2, or even Xiaomi's own 11 Lite 5G NE. And we feel the Redmi has little chance against these right now.