Redmi Note 8 Pro review - Four cameras where one would do - Android

The Redmi Note 8 Pro adopts the new premium-looking 8 series styling, and comes with four cameras and a new chipset. On paper it all sounds pretty great for the price, but how does it stack up in practice? Find out in our Redmi Note 8 Pro review.

What’s new since the Note 7 Pro?

Cameras: The main thing is the quad-camera system on the Note 8 Pro, which, to be honest, isn’t as exciting as it may at first sound. One is a depth sensor, another a macro shooter, and then there’s a wide-angle and regular lens. The Note 7 Pro only had a standard lens and a depth sensor, so it’s still a nice upgrade. We’ll dive into the cameras a little deeper later. The new selfie camera also gets bumped up to 20MP from 13MP on last year’s model.

Battery: There’s a battery bump here too, from 4,000mAh in the Note 7 Pro to 4,500mAh in the Note 8 Pro. The Note 8 Pro battery is pretty good, with all-day battery life definitely possible and an 18W charger in the box.

Chipset: Where the Note 7 Pro used the Qualcomm Snapdragon 675, the Note 8 Pro switches to the MediaTek Helio G90T chipset. It handles gaming very well and the Note 8 Pro certainly doesn’t feel like it suffers in the performance department. You might be disappointed to know there’s no Snapdragon action here, but you really shouldn’t worry.

Design: The Note 8 Pro adopts the new design styling of the 8 series, and pairs Gorilla Glass 5 on the front and back with a polycarbonate frame. I actually like the plastic trim here, as it doesn’t feel cheap, helps keep costs down, and should provide slightly better impact resistance than metal. Regardless, the Note 8 Pro is pretty hefty at 200g.

How’s the Note 8 Pro’s screen?

The Redmi Note 8 Pro display is an IPS LCD, which is a bit of a shame considering you can get OLED panels at this price point. Nevertheless, while it isn’t fantastic it’s still pretty good for an LCD. It gets super bright and looks fine, with a relatively subdued color palette and good contrast. If you like your displays super-saturated this won’t be to your liking, but I don’t mind it.

There’s a nice dark mode on the Note 8 Pro, and despite using an LCD panel, the contrast levels are sufficient for it to not look gray. The resolution is sufficient for me, but the panel is a little cool out of the box. You can adjust the display to make it cooler or warmer and there’s a color wheel for subtle adjustments. You’ve also got several contrast options, so it’s pretty easy to tweak to your liking.

What’s the Redmi Note 8 Pro battery like?

The Redmi Note 8 Pro battery is pretty good if you’re not using the highest screen brightness settings all the time. It comes with an 18W charger and it also supports USB-PD and Quick Charge 4.0. In my testing, Xiaomi’s claims of a full charge in two hours were spot on. That’s not great, but it’s not terrible. A 35% charge is possible in half an hour of charging, and an hour’s worth of charging will get you to 65%.

My worst battery results came on days spent mostly outside, on cellular data, taking lots of photos and with high screen brightness. Those days would get me between three to four hours of screen-on time. On regular days spent half inside and half outside with settings to match, I was averaging between four and six hours. My best days delivered in excess of eight hours because I was inside connected to Wi-Fi all day with low screen brightness.

See Also: Phones with the best battery life  |  Fastest charging phones

Does it have a headphone jack?

Yes it does, and it’s really good. The Note 8 Pro scored very well in our audio testing for headphones. Even if you don’t rely on wired headphones all the time, the Note 8 Pro has you covered on the wireless front too. The presence of AptX, AptX HD, AptX Adaptive, AAC, and LDAC give you plenty of Bluetooth codec options. As with wired audio, the Note 8 Pro scored very well against the competition when it comes to Bluetooth. 

The Note 8 Pro scored very well in our audio testing for headphones, both wired and wireless.

The only real audio let-down here is the mono bottom-firing speaker, which, while okay, isn’t loud or crisp enough for my liking. This isn’t exactly make-or-break, but it’s good to know if you prefer speakers over headphones.

Beyond the 3.5mm jack, the Note 8 Pro also has an IR blaster and FM radio, plus it has NFC for Google Pay. There’s still no official IP rating here, but the Note 8 Pro is supposedly splash resistant. You should be okay if you get caught in the rain.

What’s it like for gaming?

It’s great. The 12nm Helio G90T is really capable on the gaming front. In our testing, the Note 8 Pro slightly outperformed the Redmi K20, which runs the Snapdragon 730 mobile platform. MediaTek was going after the Snapdragon 730 with the G90T and from what I’ve seen it has succeeded.

MediaTek was going after the Snapdragon 730 with the G90T and from what I've seen it has succeeded.

The Note 8 Pro has a LiquidCool vapor chamber for heat dissipation. Regardless of whether I was gaming or running benchmarks, I never noticed the chassis getting warm to the touch. Combine this with HyperEngine game optimizations — which switch to a combination of Wi-Fi and cellular data if your Wi-Fi signal gets weak — and you shouldn’t notice any hiccups or lost frames while gaming. The Note 8 Pro can also connect to both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi networks simultaneously.

It won’t be an easy task for MediaTek (or me for that matter) to convince you that the G90T is up to snuff for gamers. I’d suggest heading to a store where you can try it out for yourself. I wouldn’t consider myself a die-hard mobile gamer, but from what I saw during my Note 8 Pro review period, Qualcomm silicon isn’t everything. The G90T certainly does a good job on the Note 8 Pro.