Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro long-term review

Conclusion

The Redmi Note 8 Pro is a testament to how far mid-range smartphones have come in the past few years. It wasn't very long ago that if you bought such a device, you'd have to pretty much compromise on every aspect of the user experience, owing to the price and the cuts that were made to achieve it.

While this phone is definitely not devoid of compromises, we found them to be a lot less than we were expecting, and that's refreshing to see considering how much a Redmi Note 8 Pro costs. You can pretty much buy 2 to 3 of these for the price of a 'flagship killer', and 4 to 6 of them for that of a premium (or dare we say "Ultra") flagship. And while it doesn't do anything exactly as good as any of those, in a lot of areas, it's not far behind.

While everyone was crying about how flagships (and even 'flagship killers') have gotten more and more expensive over the past few years, the mid-rangers have become very, very good. Their materials might not always track those of more expensive phones 100%, but they are getting closer, and the build quality is pretty much on par.

The MIUI 11 software experience is no different on the Redmi Note 8 Pro than on a flagship Xiaomi device, while battery life is outstanding - to the point of tying the Huawei P30 Pro for the best we've ever seen in a long-term review. While performance and especially smoothness may not be flagship-grade all the time, it's amazingly quite close most of the time. There are some random stutters and lags, but nothing you can't live without.

In fact, the most annoying thing about performance and smoothness is that because it's pretty much on par with more expensive phones for 70-80% of the time, you get very much used to that, so when a stutter appears it's that much more startling. Good problems to have, these. Also, on the point of smoothness, a higher refresh rate display would definitely have helped with that perception. Alas, the Redmi Note 8 Pro is probably the last of its kind - the last upper mid-ranger from the Chinese company that stuck with 60Hz.

That's exciting for the future, one in which hopefully 90Hz will be the new bare minimum and 120Hz the standard, but we can't really knock the Redmi Note 8 Pro here for missing this. It came out only a few months ago, but at that time it was pretty much unfathomable for a device this cheap to up the refresh rate past 60Hz. Things have changed in the meantime, but if it remains on sale after its successor hits, then it's likely to become even cheaper, and thus will be an even better buy.

The Redmi Note 8 Pro is one of those phones that will probably be good enough for most people most of the time. There's nothing that it can do better than a flagship, but were you really expecting that, considering its price? Then again, if you're coming from an older mid-ranger or a lower-end phone, you'll be impressed with what it can offer you in terms of camera, battery life, performance, and even look and feel. Performance (most of the time), battery life, as well as the design and build might even impress you if you've used a higher-end model in the past.

The screen has an adequate resolution, and while the panel itself isn't impressive and perfect, it doesn't have any huge glaring problems, so it will do the job. It's big too, so watching stuff on it is a nice experience. The speaker is good if nothing to write home about, and there's a 3.5mm headphone jack too. The fingerprint sensor is amazing, even if it's a bit too close to the cameras, but at least its location is perfect for your index finger to reach. The cameras are an area where the Note 8 Pro falls short, but only compared to more expensive devices.

Overall, if you're not going into this with unrealistic expectations, the Redmi Note 8 Pro will be a phone that you'll enjoy using every day. That is, of course, if the lack of interband LTE carrier aggregation on all bands doesn't directly affect you (or for some reason you don't care about that).

While we've missed having a flagship instead of the Redmi for some of our photo sessions, and we've been annoyed by the random stutters in the UI from time to time, otherwise it was easy to forget that the phone we were holding was as affordable as this actually is. Really punching above its weight, that's for sure. To answer the question at the beginning of this review, yes, the Redmi Note 8 Pro is definitely a Pro - among mid-rangers.