Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 review

Display

The Redmi Note 8 has a bit smaller display than the Redmi Note 8 Pro's but gets to keep the same notch, resolution, and protection. Indeed, the Note 8 packs a 6.3" IPS LCD panel of 1080p resolution behind a Gorilla Glass 5.

Because of the smaller panel size the Note 8 has a higher pixel density than the Note 8 Pro - 409ppi vs. 395ppi. One exciting bit is the support for HDR10 - a rarity among the mobile LCD screens.

Some units, probably not the global models, may come with pre-applied screen protectors, but we can't be sure as ours lacked such thing.

Xiaomi promises 1500:1 contrast ratio for the Note 8 screen, and we can confirm this. We measured a maximum brightness of 473 nits and combined with the deep blacks we got 1521:1 contrast.

The screen can be brighter though if you leave it on Automatic Brightness - it can light up as high as 630 nits in bright ambient light.

Xiaomi offers three different Contrast settings. With the Automatic contrast set to on, the screen output seems to be tuned for accuracy in the sRGB color space, and we measured an average deltaE of 5.4. Only in this mode, you can choose the color saturation (default, warm, cool) and the Delta E of 3.8 was measured with the Default preset. Choosing warm will diminish the noticeable blue tint but won't improve the overall accuracy by much.

The Standard Contrast setting is accurately tuned to the sRGB color space, and we recorded an average deltaE of 1.9 for color accuracy, meaning it's an excellent one.

Finally, the Increased Contrast makes the colors pop at the expense of reproduction accuracy.

Battery life

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 is powered by a 4,000mAh Li-ion battery. It supports Qualcomm's 18W Quick Charge, but the provided charger is only 10W. It fills 30% of the entirely depleted battery in 30 mins, while a full charge requires about 2 hours and 15 mins.

The Redmi Note 8 posted an excellent endurance rating of 108 hours and great scores across the board. The screen-on times are excellent - we measured 16 hours runtime in our web browsing test and north of 14 hours in our video playback test. The standby performance was on par with the Redmi Note 7 and overall - a great one.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.

Speaker loudness

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 has a single bottom-firing speaker.

It scored an Excellent mark in our loudness test, and you can easily tell the speaker is among the loudest today. As far as the output quality is concerned - it is good but not great. There is enough bass, and the mid-tones are fine, but we found the speaker lacking in the high tones big time.

Audio quality

When it comes to testing the audio output quality as delivered via the jack, the Redmi Note 8 is a tale of two parts. It did splendidly when connected to an active external amplifier, reproducing our test track perfectly and at high volume.

Yet, when headphones came into play, stereo separation suffered quite a lot, and a fair amount of intermodulation distortion crept in, and frequency response got slightly shaky, making the overall clarity rather mediocre. Loudness dropped a bit too, but remained nicely high.

Redmi Note 8 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.