Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Snapdragon) review: Dragon fire

Upgraded camera

The Redmi Note 3 boasts a refreshed 16 megapixel camera on the back with phase detection autofocus, f2.0 aperture and a two-tone dual LED flash.

The camera interface is fairly simple and features toggles for the HDR mode, the flash and the video camera.

The camera interface is unchanged from MIUI v7

It has three panes - the default one shows the viewfinder with a virtual shutter, flash trigger and front camera key. A pull down from the top of the screen gets you a choice of 12 filters with live previews. A slide from the bottom displays the advanced modes such as Panorama, Beautify, Timer, Scenes, and Manual as well as the camera settings.

The Manual Mode offers you manual settings for white balance and ISO. The Face Detection switch is within the additional settings.

We're quite pleased with the camera performance of the Redmi Note 3 Snapdragon edition. The camera resolves a lot of detail with very little noise to be seen. The white balance is good too, although colors are a bit too dull.

Camera samples

The camera focused quickly and accurately and very few of the shots we took turned out blurry.

Turn the HDR mode on and the photos come to live. Not only are the mids and highlights cranked up, but the colors become more saturated.

HDR off • HDR on • HDR off • HDR on

Panorama shots are available too. You can capture both landscape and portrait panoramic photos with a 180 degree field of view. Shooting is easy but the stitching takes a while to complete. The end result is rather disappointing though - the resolution is about 1720x808px and the image quality is quite poor.

Panorama shots are disappointingrom the Play Store.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 features a 5MP front-facing camera for high-res selfies. The images come out soft with average detail, but will do for Facebook or similar social networks.

Selfie camera in action

You can take a look at how the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S65) stacks up against similarly equipped smartphones in our Photo Compare Tool.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650) in our photo compare tool

1080p video recording

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 camcorder has the same UI as the still camera. It supports slow-mo (the result is a 720p@16fps video) and time-lapse videos with customizable snapping interval.

Camcorder UI

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 is capable or recording up to 1080p@30fps. The bitrate of the video recordings is uninspiring at about 15 Mbps, while audio is captured at 128 Kbps with 2 channels (stereo).

The resolved detail in the videos is average. The colors and contrast are better than the still photos and the framerate is smooth and consistent at 30fps. The dynamic range is about average.

And here is a 1080p video we've uploaded on YouTube.

You can also download the 1080p video sample (8s, 14.6MB) taken straight off the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (Snapdragon).

Here the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 enters our video comparison tool. There are plenty of 1080p camcorders you can compare it against.

You can check out our Video Compare Tool to see how the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650) fares against the competition when it comes to video capturing.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 (S650) in our video compare tool