Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro review

Display

The Redmi Note 12 Pro employs a 6.67-inch Flow AMOLED screen of extended 1080p resolution (395ppi). It has a small perforation to make way for the selfie camera and Gorilla Glass 5 protection. According to the official specs, the OLED should be the same as on the Redmi Note 12 Pro+.

The OLED screen supports 10-bit color depth, which means it can display over a billion colors. There is also support for 120Hz refresh rate, 240Hz touch response, and 1920Hz PWM dimming to minimize eye strain in low-light conditions.

The screen is certified for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision content, supports DCI-P3 color space, and has a listed peak brightness of 1,000 nits.

Compared to the same size OLED on the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G, this one has more colors and Dolby Vision support.

Xiaomi promises 900nits of maximum brightness, and we can confirm them - we measured 890 nits of maximum automatic brightness thanks to the Sunlight Boost. The typical maximum brightness you can achieve when manually using the brightness slider is 490 nits.

Finally, the minimum brightness at point white was 2.1nits, in line with most of the OLED panels nowadays.

One thing we are not happy about is the inconsistent brightness scrubber - the first 85% or so of the bar are responsible for about 200nits, and the last small part corresponds to the other 290 nits. This means the manual control is terrible if you decide to rely on it.

Color accuracy

The MIUI display color options have three different models - Vivid (default, DCI-P3), Saturated (DCI-P3 with saturation boost), and Standard (sRGB). You can fine-tune the color temperature for each mode. There is also a custom mode, where you can select the color gamut and fine tune colors, saturation, hue, contrast, gamma.

The Vivid (default) option reproduces DCI-P3 mostly faithfully, excluding the slightly bluish white and gray hues (fixable by selecting Warm Color temperature). The Standard option corresponds to sRGB and offers accurate rendering, including the white and gray colors.

Color settings

Refresh rate

The Redmi Note 12 Pro's OLED panel supports up to 120Hz refresh rate, and there are two modes in Settings - Custom (choose between 120Hz or 60Hz), and Default (automatic switching behavior).

Exploring the matter further, we found out that the screen supports four fixed refresh rates per its specifications - 30Hz, 60Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz.

Refresh rate options

Just like on many other MIUI-powered phones, the Custom 120Hz and the Default (auto) offer the same behavior - the system uses 120Hz for the phone's UI and most apps (games included), at least while the user is interacting with the display or there is motion on screen. Then, once it sees a static picture for a couple of seconds, the system drops the refresh rate down to 60Hz to save power. 60Hz is always used for the camera app, video playback and streaming.

The screen can use the 30Hz mode, too, but the only occasion we saw it in action was for the Always-on Display and the Notification Light.

Theoretically, the screen should be able to switch to 90Hz refresh rate, but we didn't find an app to trigger this refresh step.

Streaming and HDR

The Redmi Note 12 Pro comes with Widevine L1 DRM support, and Full HD streaming with HDR10 and Dolby Vision support is available across popular platforms, Netflix included.

Netflix

Battery life

The Redmi Note 12 Pro is powered by a 5,000mAh battery, the same as the Pro+ and the previous Redmi Note 11 models.

The Redmi Note 12 Pro managed a solid Active Use Score of over 12 hours. It posted outstanding Screen-on-Times - it offers around an hour more on web and video than the Pro+ version. Since both devices are virtually identical, excluding the charging speed and the main camera, we cannot think of any reason for this peculiarity rather than the display itself. We noticed that there is a difference in the maximum brightness, which could be a hint that Xiaomi sources the panels from different manufacturers, and this could be a possible explanation.

The standby consumption is average on the new Note 12 models, in stark contrast to the frugal on the previous Note 11 devices. This could be a modem or MIUI 14 thing.

Anyway, the Redmi Note 12 Pro offers solid battery numbers across the board, and we don't think anyone will be left wanting more.

Charging speed

The Redmi Note 12 Pro supports 67W Mi Fast Charging for its 5,000mAh battery. The phone comes bundled with that charger and an appropriate USB cable, which is nice considering the current eco-friendly trend.

Five minutes on that charger will replenish 19% of the dead battery, which is quite enough to last you for a few hours. We captured 44% charge in just 15 minutes, while a total of 30 minutes on the charger refilled 78% of the battery.

A full charge took 55 minutes, which is not bad at all.

Speaker loudness and quality

The Redmi Note 12 Pro+ features a hybrid stereo speaker setup. This means that one of the speakers is placed at the top of the phone and has two outlets - top-facing and front-facing for earpiece purposes. The second speaker is at the bottom of the phone.

The Redmi Note 12 Pro supports the Dolby Atmos enhancement, and it's turned on by default. We experimented with listening to music with and without Dolby Atmos, and we found the experience better when the Dolby Atmos was active. This way, the speakers offer better audio quality with crisper sound. Turning the Dolby Atmos enhancement will make for an arguably richer sound, but the bass and the high frequencies are a bit muted.

Finally, the Redmi Note 12 Pro scored a Good mark on our loudness test. We would rate its sound quality as Good, too, as the vocals are good, there is bass, and the Dolby Atmos helps for better presented high frequencies.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.