Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ hands-on review

Software

The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G ships with MIUI 14 running on top of Android 13. This is disappointing as Xiaomi has already announced and started rolling out its next-generation HyperOS running on Android 14 on other devices.

The company is using the oldest trick in the book here; launching a phone with an outdated version of Android lets companies get away with shipping fewer updates in the future. Xiaomi is promising three major Android updates for this device, which means they will stop with Android 16 rather than Android 17 had the phone shipped with Android 14 out of the box. The HyperOS update for this device is expected to arrive at an indeterminate time.

The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G along with its siblings in the Redmi Note 13 series will be the last Xiaomi device being launched with MIUI, so this feels more like an exit interview than a review. Then again, HyperOS isn't dissimilar to MIUI in terms of appearance so much of what is said here will apply to the next major update.

MIUI 14

MIUI has always been a bit of an acquired taste. Modeled largely after iOS, the design bears more than just a passing resemblance and while much of the competition who did the same has moved on, Xiaomi has only doubled down over the years. This includes borrowing some questionable ideas such as separate notification and control centers, an overly nested Settings app, an objectively worse share sheet, and the need to force every app icon to be square by default. The end result is about as far removed from Android as one can get.

What MIUI has always had over iOS and even most Android skins earlier on is an incredible level of customizability. So many aspects of the user experience can be tweaked till they are to your satisfaction that often there is very little room to complain as there is almost always a setting somewhere to change the thing that's bothering you. This especially makes things like the undefeatable image sharpening for video so frustrating as it's not just user-hostile but also not in the spirit of the OS. It also makes the Settings app design more frustrating because there is an incredible amount of options there that can be tweaked but they are often buried so many levels below (similar to iOS) where most users will never dare to venture.

Bloatware and notification spam

But while Xiaomi giveth, it also taketh away. As customizable as the OS is, one of the complaints has always been the sheer number of unnecessary apps and services that come pre-installed, many of which cannot be removed or disabled. Is there a good reason for the phone to come with two SMS apps, two file managers, two app stores, two gallery apps, and two browsers? Not really. The Redmi phones are especially offensive in the amount of bloatware they come with; we counted 18 third-party apps, many of which were games, that came pre-installed on the phone aside from those by Xiaomi and Google. It seems Xiaomi has forgotten what its phones retail for these days as we do not expect or like to see this level of trash on expensive devices.

Mind you, this is separate from the ads that still plague many of the first-party apps on Redmi devices in markets like India, and you have to go out of your way to disable them on each of these apps. Again, not what you expect on a premium device.

Then there are the never-ending notifications. The best piece of advice one can give to a new Xiaomi smartphone user is to immediately head into the settings and disable notifications for every single first-party app (or at least ones that will let you) otherwise they will not stop spamming you. The App Vault feature in particular is an ungodly abomination that will relentlessly spam you with information that you neither subscribed nor care for.

The software remains a contentious issue for Xiaomi phones. It's like a supercharged version of iOS with the best and worst aspects of Android, the extreme customizability but also the ability to cram in an insane amount of garbage under the guise of features to the point where it's user-hostile. Some of the choices here are especially insulting considering the cost of these devices. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter how often this gets brought up as the company has always turned a blind eye to feedback about its software that affects its bottom line, user experience be damned.

Performance

The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G runs on a MediaTek Dimensity 7200-Ultra, which seems to be a custom variant of the Dimensity 7200 for this device. However, there don't seem to be any differences on paper concerning the core configuration and clock speeds. The customizations may largely be limited to the ISP and how it interacts with the camera.

The phone also has LPDDR5 memory that goes up to 12GB and UFS 3.1 storage up to 512GB. Our review unit here featured 12GB memory and 256GB storage. There is no support for memory expansion.

The performance of the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G was really impressive. The phone feels very responsive and the scrolling performance is extremely fluid. This is usually the roadblock that a lot of phones can't get over even when they claim to be premium and have fancy hardware but Xiaomi has nailed this aspect of the user experience. This is a performant phone and a joy to use for everyday tasks.

Unfortunately, we were unable to run some of our usual benchmarks as our review unit prevented them from connecting to the internet, which then prevented them from downloading additional data that allowed them to run. We had to limit testing to benchmarks that were operational. We wish manufacturers would stop inventing new and creative ways of interfering with the testing process and let the device stand for itself. We may update the results if these benchmarks ever become operational.

In the benchmarks we could run, you can see the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G is not very competitive, losing out to year old devices such as the OnePlus 11R and the Nord 3 by quite a margin. But this is one of those things where benchmarks don't tell the whole story and as mentioned previously, this phone performs marvelously in everyday use.