A few months back, Xiaomi announced their new budget phablet, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2. The Redmi Note 2 is the successor of the popular Redmi Note which was announced last year. The device comes with impressive specs and features a 5.5 inch Full HD display which is an upgrade from HD display on the Redmi Note. The device is powered by the flagship Helio X10 Octa-core chipset which is clocked at 2.0Ghz and features 2GB RAM.
The phone also comes with 16GB internal storage which is expandable via micro SD card. Here is the detailed review of the phone.
Related Reading: Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 Unboxing
Design and Build:
Two main issues with Redmi Note were that the device was glossy and heavy. Xiaomi has improved these two aspects with the Redmi Note 2. Design wise, the Redmi Note 2 follows the same design principles of the Redmi Note with the three capacitive buttons, 5.5 inch display and removable back cover. The Redmi Note 2 is a lot slimmer and lighter than the original Note and feels solid in hands. The rear panel also sports a matte finish which feels premium, especially with gray variant. The camera unit has been given a chrome finish along with the power and volume keys. The rear panel also has the Mi logo along with the speaker.
The 3.5mm audio jack is on the top while the micro USB charging slot is at the bottom. The front panel has the three capacitive buttons and they are backlit. Even though the Redmi Note 2 is a 5.5 inch device, it feels pretty good in hands, thanks to the slim and lightweight design. Overall, Redmi Note 2 has impressive design and build quality.
Display:
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 comes with a 5.5 inch Full HD display (1920 X 1080p), which is an upgrade from 720p display on the Redmi Note. The display is pretty vibrant and colourful. It has great viewing angles and is very overall pretty sharp. The touch response is very smooth.
Overall, the display provides a great experience for gaming and watching movies.
Software:
Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop with MIUI 7 out of the box. The latest version of MIUI 7 adds some great features. One of the strong points of this device is the features that MIUI offers when compared to stock Android, even though the Android version is not the latest. So if you love customizing your phone with themes and wallpapers, you will definitely love the MIUI experience.
MIUI offers tons of customizations, features and also tweaks which is seldom available on stock Android. It has a custom home screen, notification center, settings and more which do not even have any resemblance to stock Android.
The apps are all arranged in multiple home screens instead of the app drawer found on core Android UI. The notification center of the device is really useful and comes with options to customize the quick toggles.
One of the strong points of MIUI is the amount of options available to personalize the device in the form of lock styles, home screens, icons, themes, wallpapers, fonts and more. All these can be managed from the Themes app which comes pre-loaded on the phone.
The phone also comes with the Security app and it offers lots of added features like Cleaner, Data usage monitor, virus monitor, call blocking and more. Xiaomi has also included a ‘Lite Mode’ which is a simplified tiled interface which makes the phone UI simple and easy to use.
Performance:
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 is powered by a 2.2Ghz Helio X10 Octa core 64 bit processor from Mediatek which is also a flagship from the company. This is coupled with 2GB of RAM and 16GB internal storage. The overall performance of the device was very good and we hardly had any issues or noticed any lags. The UI was responsive to almost all tasks and the response was flawless.
Redmi Note 2 handles tasks very well and the phone also does multitasking pretty well, even with multiple apps running in the background, you get almost 700MB of RAM.
The gaming experience of the device was also pretty good and we played heavy graphic rich games and the device handled it pretty well, even though there was an increase in temperature to almost 44 degrees.
The phone comes with 16GB internal storage out of which close to 10.5GB is available to the user in the first boot. You can also expand the storage via micro SD card, but similar to the previous version you cannot install apps on the SD card. The call quality on the phone was very good and the speaker performance was average. The phone comes with dual SIM card support along with 4G LTE.
Camera:
Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 comes with 13MP rear camera with LED flash and a 5MP front camera for selfies and video calls similar to the Redmi Note. The camera interface is exactly the same found on all Xiaomi devices and comes with good set of options including Panorama, HDR, filters, slow motion and more. The interface is fairly easy to use and comes with all the bells and whistles you would need on a smartphone camera.
Coming to the photo quality, the Redmi Note 2 photos offer plenty of detail with great colors and sharpness. Comparing this with previous generation device, there is some improvement all round and this is easily one of the best cameras in the budget category. The overall quality of photos taken in daylight was good.
Talking about low light performance, extreme low light photos were noisy, but there is decent amount of details when there was adequate light. The flash also works pretty well. Overall, we would say this is easily one of the best cameras in the budget/ mid-range. The phone also comes with LED flash which lights up the object and provides decent clarity.
The video recording is at 1080p and the sample was pretty good for a budget camera. Here are some of the samples taken with the device.
Battery Life:
The Redmi Note 2 comes with 3060mAh battery and similar to the previous generation, the battery life also was pretty good. We tested the battery performance of the device in multiple criteria and we achieved more than a day of battery life on the device with the screen on time (SOT) close to 4.05 hours.
MIUI also offers additional options to increase the battery life. There is ultra power saving mode in the battery. If you are a moderate user, you can easily get more than a day of usage on the battery.
Verdict:
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 is a worthy upgrade and successor for the popular Redmi Note in all ways. But the major issue is the availability, as of now the device is limited to China and the possibility of this device releasing in India is very bleak as Xiaomi has patent issues with Ericsson and cannot sell Mediatek devices. But you can always import the device to India or other countries. You can pick the device from Everbuying.net and they ship to almost all countries.
With great design and build, good display, great performance, and camera along with above average battery life, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 is definitely a great device in this price point. If you love MIUI, then this device will not disappoint you.
Will it support 120fps slowmo at 720p?