Introduction
Xiaomi makes a ton of mid-rangers, but the Redmi Note 9 Pro has consistently stood out in the past few months, attracting consistently high interest. So we got curious about it and decided to do this long-term review to figure out whether it also manages to stand out in what it offers in day-to-day use in a sea of similar devices at multiple price points.
This is actually one of the main issues with mid-rangers for most people - there are just too many of them. The amount of available choice is staggering - much higher than in the high-end segment of the market. It makes the "which one is worth buying" question get an even more complicated answer than if we're just talking top of the line models.
Because there are simply too many mid-rangers out there, it's not feasible for us to long-term review a lot of them. Also, as the adage goes, most products in any category are just not that interesting.
However, the Redmi Note 9 Pro must have done something to stand out, judging on the amount of attention it has consistently gotten.
So let's find out if the Redmi Note 9 Pro is a phone that's worth its salt. We have long-term reviewed its predecessor, the Redmi Note 8 Pro, last year, and were impressed with what it brought to the table for the money, and are eager to find out if the Redmi Note 9 Pro lives up to that.
Note that Xiaomi's incredibly confusing naming scheme strikes again. The phone we have here is called Redmi Note 9 Pro in Europe, but the same device is sold in India as the Redmi Note 9 Pro Max. The phone called Redmi Note 9 Pro in India is known in Europe as the Redmi Note 9S. And none of these is the recently announced Redmi Note 9 Pro 5G. See, we told you it was confusing.
Design, handling
Unlike many of its competitors at this price point, the Redmi Note 9 Pro has glass on both the front and the back. This makes for a more premium feel than if it would have gone with plastic on the rear - or so people say. This reviewer happens to think that the type of plastic used matters, as some are intrinsically more 'cheap-feeling' than others, but we digress.
Speaking of plastic, the frame is made out of that material, and its ever so slight softness to the touch compared to metal does sort of ruin the 'premium' impression somewhat. This is, of course, a moot point if you, like most people, use a case.
The frame doesn't seamlessly curve into the front glass like you see in most flagships, which is one of the subtle hallmarks of a cheaper phone. This may or may not bother you. We'd wager it's one thing most people wouldn't even notice if it wasn't specifically pointed out to them.
One benefit of the plastic frame is that no visible antenna lines are going through it. The square-ish camera bump on the rear is definitely quite unique among 2020 phones (although it's not like we haven't seen it before), without coming off as particularly great or off-putting. It's just... there, and because it's centered, the phone doesn't wobble when placed on a desk, and you're typing on it. Then again, if you tap anywhere near the top corners, the wobble gets real.
The Redmi Note 9 Pro is a big phone, there's no doubt about that, and it's rather heavy as well. This, combined with the fact that the screen is flat, and the lack of substantial frame curvature, means that handling it won't feel 100% comfortable all the time even if you have big hands like this reviewer. There's something about the size, weight, and frame to glass angles that makes it feel less great in hand than other devices (which, in fairness, are all more expensive). One thing's for sure: you'll never forget you're holding this device. You will also never be confused as to whether it is in your pocket or not. It definitely makes its presence felt at all times.
We're usually okay with big-screen phones, and this is one of those, but handling would have been a lot better in day to day use if it was just a tad smaller and lighter. We're not sure why mid-rangers, even 4G ones, have adopted this "go big or go home" attitude lately - surely they can't blame 5G antennas requiring a lot of inner space, so what is it then? Perhaps an attempt by the manufacturers to make these models feel on par with flagships on the first impression? We don't know, but it's something to note about this Redmi Note (pardon the easy pun).
It's also interesting to see that, on average, mid-rangers tend to have bigger batteries than top-of-the-line handsets from the same company. We're not complaining about the added capacity, just wondering whether that's being cynically used as an additional unique selling point. Except it would disappear if flagships would just get similar battery sizes, so that seems, to some extent, like it could be an artificial differentiation. Not that Xiaomi was ever a stranger to this concept.
Biometrics
Because the screen is an LCD, the fingerprint sensor isn't integrated into it like it could be if an OLED would be used, so it's off to the side - part and parcel of the power button.
For us, it's just a bit higher up than where our thumb would naturally rest when holding the phone with the right hand. If your hands are smaller than ours, this may be even more than just a slight niggle for you.
Additionally, because the volume rocker is above the power button, which is already quite high up, adjusting volume while on a phone call always feels unnatural and requires some finger and hand placement gymnastics.
Anyway, the fingerprint sensor can be set to respond either to a touch or a press, and we found the latter variant more enticing. It makes it feel like we're just pressing the power button to wake the phone up, but the biometric authentication also takes place.
When this works as intended, it's incredibly seamless. We'd wager possibly the most seamless way to do fingerprint unlocking. However, while the sensor is incredibly fast, accuracy could be better. We assume it's not the sensor per se at fault here, but how narrow the button is.
Biometrics settings
This means you need to take extra care when you enroll your prints so that you cover as much area of the finger as possible. Otherwise, a slight variation in how you touch or press the button may result in unsuccessful authentication. Face unlock is an alternative, of course, except that for most Android phones these days, it only uses the selfie camera and is thus less secure than the fingerprint sensor. It is blazing fast, though, and it does check for your eyes being open, even though there's no mention of this in Settings (we tested).
Speaker, Bluetooth, vibration
There's just one downward-firing speaker, and it's profoundly average - average in volume output and average in quality. It will do the job just fine, but prolonged video watching sessions in noisy environments is not fun. And even when there isn't a lot of noise around you, you'll still have to cup it with your hand to make the sound come your way - and be careful not to muffle the speaker by accident.
It goes without saying that we would have preferred a dual setup, even of the hybrid variety that uses the earpiece as the other channel. There's a 3.5m headphone jack, though, which could come in handy if you happen to have a pair of wired headphones lying around.
Since we're on the topic of sound, we'll quickly mention that Bluetooth is incredibly unreliable in reconnecting to previously paired audio accessories. As in, nine times out of ten, it doesn't do so automatically, forcing us to go into the Bluetooth section in Settings and manually select the device we're trying to connect to. This behavior is also seen in Xiaomi's Poco F2 Pro, but interestingly not in the Mi 10 Pro. Make of that what you will, we're assuming there may be more attention to (such) detail paid for the most expensive flagships or something like that. If you don't use Bluetooth for this purpose a lot, you won't notice, but we do, and having to manually select an accessory almost every time, multiple times a day, wasn't a great user experience.
The vibration motor is exactly as bad as you'd expect it to be at this price point. While it's a different situation when we talk about flagships or even some flagship killers, mid-rangers unfortunately still have it bad in this regard, which is understandable if you consider the price point and how some compromises are required to reach it. This is definitely one of those things that have been compromised, but we can't single out the Redmi Note 9 Pro here. Most mid-rangers fare the same, with only odd exceptions having vibration motors that punch above their weight.
Display
Not only does the Redmi Note 9 Pro not have an OLED screen, opting for LCD, but it's not a high refresh rate either. We're not trying to bash the phone here; these specs were perfectly adequate for the price point just a few months ago. Right now, though, not so much. It's interesting to live in a world where the Poco X3 can do 120Hz with an identically sized panel for a very similar price, coming from the same company.
It's also understandably not the best LCD out there. For the Android world, that award probably goes to the Mi 10T Pro at the moment. That said, it's perfectly usable and doesn't have any huge, glaring issues, aside from the aforementioned 60 Hz refresh rate and the inevitable shading around the chin and the punch-hole selfie camera. We say "inevitable" because it is an LCD, and due to the way the screen is lit, this is bound to happen to some extent - especially at a price point where the manufacturer clearly can't pay more for panels that almost hide this completely.
Brightness is nowhere near close to the brightest OLEDs out there but gets high enough to make the screen decently discernible even on a sunny day. When you're in direct sunlight, things get harder to see, but not impossible. It also gets incredibly dim, making using it at night in pitch darkness a treat for your eyes. It's actually so dark on the lowest setting that we found ourselves manually adjusting the brightness to a tad more when in pitch black settings. It's the first phone we've ever had to do that on, so the lowest brightness setting is respectably low.
On this topic, auto brightness works decently, but we felt it was better in MIUI 11 than in MIUI 12. The system seems to prefer dimming the screen so that even when you have a soft source of light around you, it takes the screen to the dimmest setting in which it's basically unreadable.
Additionally, on bright sunny days, unless the sun is directly hitting the screen, the auto-brightness gets very shy in turning itself up to the max or close, so more often than not, you'll get a dimmer screen than you'd want. Hopefully, this can be improved in subsequent updates. Weirdly enough, manual adjustments don't seem to always "hold" for the same amount of ambient lighting either.
The screen quality is good, although whites seem to be way too blueish by default, which is a disease we unfortunately still aren't rid of in the mobile world. If you dislike this as much as we do, you can just switch the color temperature to Warm in Settings. We left the default Auto color scheme because it should adjust things based on the current ambient lighting. That said, it's either too subtle or doesn't really do anything because we've never seen any noticeable changes in white balance throughout our use. There's a profile named just that, while Standard is probably the most accurate for fans of that saturated look if you're into that.
Display settings
Another disadvantage of having an LCD screen is the chin, which is significantly larger than it would've been for an OLED, that is, if we're talking in percentage points. It's fine in absolute numbers and could even prove useful for such a huge phone as a small point where you can hold it without triggering any on-screen action. But, it is there, and it's always going to be obvious that there's no symmetry between it and the top or side bezels.
We probably shouldn't even mention this, but the screen is flat because mid-rangers with curved panels aren't really a thing (aside from a couple of oddballs), and neither are curved LCDs. A lot of people will be happy with this, so we won't comment further. Suffice to say, it would be interesting to see a decently priced mid-ranger with a curved OLED, but that's probably not going to happen anytime soon thanks to price constraints.
Overall, the Redmi Note 9 Pro's display is good, if not the best LCD out there. It will get the job done really well for most people, with minor inconveniences here and there - most of which can be overlooked because of the price. On the other hand, the lack of a high refresh rate looks really bad compared to the Poco X3 because it is priced very, very close.
Note that because we have an LCD screen here, there's no Always On Display functionality. You do, however, get a small notification LED that's part of the earpiece grille. It's white only and does the job admirably, considering its inherent lack of customization options.
Notification light settings
Performance, smoothness
The Redmi Note 9 Pro uses the Snapdragon 720G, which is really close on paper to both the 730 and the 732. As far as real-world use goes outside of gaming, for all intents and purposes, one could consider these three so similar to be practically indistinguishable.
The branding of these chipsets is slightly misleading, though, in our book, because the difference in performance (and especially smoothness) between these and the 8-series is much higher than the one-digit increment might have you believe. These are still Qualcomm's best performing 4G mid-range SoCs, that's for sure, but don't think that because 7 is so close to 8, there's anything similar going on with how things feel when you use a phone with a 720/730/732 compared to an 865. They are worlds apart.
Then again, so is the pricing of devices using these chips, and that more than the branding should be your guide in assessing the delta you're getting. Some of MediaTek's 5G midrange chipsets perform better, but unfortunately, seeing any of those outside of phones meant for the Chinese market is still incredibly rare.
The Redmi Note 9 Pro's Snapdragon 720G is fine in day to day use, but it will never feel on par with a flagship chipset, not even for a split second. It's slower at everything, every single interaction takes a bit longer, and smoothness is barely decent. This - remember - compared to the Snapdragon 865, Kirin 990/9000, and not anything else. So we can't award the Note 9 Pro anything here. It's interesting, perhaps, to also compare things to last year's Redmi Note 8 Pro, which we also long-term reviewed.
That phone's Helio G90T chipset got close to offering something that felt like flagship performance and smoothness most of the time, but with very noticeable hiccups from time to time that ruined the illusion. The Snapdragon 720G in its successor, on the other hand, is much more consistent in both performance and smoothness, except it's consistently slower feeling than the G90T in its peak times.
We're not basing any of this on benchmarks; by the way, if you're interested in those, many results are floating around. Like in all long-term reviews, we're talking about how things feel to us subjectively because spec sheets and synthetic benchmarks can't really reveal these things. Smoothness-wise, the Redmi Note 9 Pro is less smooth than the Note 8 Pro usually is and more smooth than when the Note 8 Pro has its slowdown moments.
Keeping the price point in mind, though, these are very good results, and we're looking forward to seeing Redmi Note phones with Dimensity chipsets outside of China soon, as we have a hunch that those will be much improved in the performance and smoothness department.
Battery life
Battery life on the Redmi Note 9 Pro has been nothing short of outstanding, which is not really surprising to us given the huge battery and non-flagship chipset. Even so, we were impressed. This will surely be a two-day phone for most people, and even for the most demanding use cases, it should last you through a day with no worries.
We consistently managed to get around 8 hours of screen on time in a day, with ample battery capacity reserves to spare. That's unmatched by any top of the line smartphone we've had for a long-term review, so the Redmi Note 9 Pro gets the unofficial long-term review battery champ crown, for now at least. You can see some samples of our screen-on times below.
Battery usage stats
As usual, our use case involves around 12-17 hours off the charger in a day, with mostly Wi-Fi connectivity, about an hour or two of mobile data, location and Bluetooth always on, around 30 minutes of GPS navigation, about an hour or two of music listening through Bluetooth and an hour or two of phone calls.
MIUI 12 finally arrives
We finally received the update to MIUI 12 very recently, after many months since its initial launch. We can't possibly ascertain why it took this long for Xiaomi to update the Redmi Note 9 Pro, which is definitely among its best selling phones of 2020, to the latest iteration of its software skin. But, alas, it's here now, so the wait is over.
Note that our review unit is on European software, and other versions of the Redmi Note 9 Pro may well have received the update to MIUI 12 sooner than it did. That said, it still baffles us that the Redmi Note 8 Pro, this phone's predecessor, got to taste MIUI 12 before it, but this often happens with Xiaomi phones.
MIUI 12 update
On the topic of updates, in general, this sort of gives you an idea of what to expect. Updates do happen, but erratically and not on any logical schedule we can think of. So we are assuming that the Redmi Note 9 Pro will eventually get Android 11, but we can't possibly venture a guess as to when. And the same goes for MIUI 13, which could get unveiled pretty soon, based on recent rumors.
When it comes to security updates, Xiaomi is among the worst at keeping these in check, and that applies to its expensive flagships as much as its affordable mid-rangers. We currently have the October 2020 security patch level on our unit, which came with the MIUI 12 update in mid-November.
Current software and security patch
Perhaps seeing the monthly security updates be monthly is too much to ask for a mid-ranger like this one, although other companies seem to be pulling off a much better job. Then again, the Poco F2 Pro we long-term reviewed earlier this year had it even worse in that regard, so we're just left very confused by these shenanigans.
We've already talked about MIUI 12 extensively in our long-term reviews of the Mi 10 Pro and Poco F2 Pro. We will try to keep this section lighter since the software is identical between the three, with the only differences being the bugs we encountered. So let's uncharacteristically start with those.
Bugs, gestures, animations, Recent apps, DND
First, we want to say that we're disappointed with how badly the gesture navigation system works in MIUI 12. It used to work much better in MIUI 11, whereas in the latest version, you sometimes need to swipe multiple times from the bottom to 'convince' the phone to go home. Likewise, entering the multitasking view by swiping up and pausing can often be a tricky affair.
It's all a big shame, this, for Xiaomi's gesture navigation system is normally great, uncomplicated, and very easy to get used to. You swipe up to go to the home screen, swipe up and pause to reach the Recents menu, and slide in from the left or right sides in the lower two-thirds of the screen to go back. And if you want to trigger an app's hamburger menu, just swipe from the side in the top third of the screen.
For now, in MIUI 12 on our review unit, the gesture implementation is so bad that we're wondering whether the update we got might be a "beta stable" release and not a "stable" one. Oh, and in case you were wondering, there's no way to tell which type of update you received. "Beta stable" builds usually go out at random to a small number of units before "stable" ones get a wider rollout. This makes sense because it can catch show-stopping bugs before they affect many users, but the fact that you can't tell what you have is quite frustrating.
If you get a European Redmi Note 9 Pro and are offered the update to MIUI 12.0.1.0, and you love using gestures to get around, perhaps hold off until a subsequent release hopefully fixes all these issues. It's hard to describe how frustrating the phone has been to use ever since this update brought along this bug, and another one with it - the power button doesn't always respond upon the first press when the screen is on, say when you'd want to turn it off and lock the phone.
Additionally, the animations are all way too long, and the usual trick to make them shorter through Developer Settings doesn't work anymore. It's still there, but some animations don't get shortened at all. This means that every time you unlock the device, there's about two seconds before you can actually use the phone while the animation does its thing.
A similar amount of time is wasted every time you go into Recent apps when the windows needlessly jump around while they are populated. To add insult to injury, the quick way of switching to the previous app found in MIUI 11 is gone (we mean swiping from the sides as if to go back but then holding the swipe for a second or so). So now, because of that and the pointlessly elongated animation for bringing up the multitasking view, there literally is no way to quickly switch between apps.
Recent apps
Speaking of the Recents menu, it's typical Xiaomi fare with two apps side-by-side in a vertically scrolling list, with a few options up top. That could be counted as unique, and it is. Still, we can't really figure out why Xiaomi thinks this setup is superior to what everyone else is doing: a horizontally scrolling list. We've used a lot of Xiaomi phones recently, so we're used to this idiosyncrasy, but if you're switching from any other brand, you may be in for an adjustment period.
Next up, something that has been with MIUI for a long time and still hasn't been fixed. It's a pretty complicated thing to explain, so bear with us here.
DND settings
If you have a scheduled Do Not Disturb mode (say, for when you're sleeping), and it's set to allow phone calls to 'break through' and actually alert you, and outside of DND, the phone is set to vibrate - if all of these conditions are met - when you get a call inside the DND hours, nothing happens. You are not alerted to it in any way. Not through vibration (and yes, Vibrate when Silent is set to On), not through a ringtone, nothing. We've missed many calls because of this 'particularity' of MIUI and aren't happy at all with what we can only assume is a bug.
Launcher, dark theme
MIUI 12 is an improvement upon MIUI 11 in many ways, the design included, but it's not such a huge departure that you won't recognize it.
The launcher that ships with our European Redmi Note 9 Pro has an app drawer, and the app seems mostly modeled after the Poco Launcher that's available in the Play Store to install on any device you want. It has some customization settings, which we'd call the bare minimum, but nothing too fancy. That's perfectly fine in our book because apps such as Nova Launcher with their billion possible options in their Settings can feel daunting to normal users.
However, we have found that the launcher itself is less polished than we expected based on our previous experiences with Xiaomi phones. There's a weird issue with placing in-app shortcuts on the home screen - that just doesn't work. For those of you who don't know what these are, they show up as options when you long-press any app's icon. For example, in the Play Store case, you can normally get a direct shortcut to the My Apps section on your home screen this way. The My Apps shortcut does show up as an option when you long-press the Play Store icon, but it can't be dragged to the home screen as it should be.
Launcher: Home screen, app drawer, Google Feed
Also, you can choose to have the Google Feed to the left of your leftmost homescreen, which is a welcome addition in our book, but you do lose the possibility of having Xiaomi's App Vault reside there. It's Google or bust. Speaking of, both the Phone and Messages apps built-in are Google's, as Xiaomi has given up on developing its own apps for these purposes in some regions, the EU included. That's a welcome debloating in our book, and it makes for more seamless switching between some phones - if you happen to come from an Android One device, for example, you'll feel right at home when it comes to these two essential apps.
Home screen settings
The dark theme is perfectly adequate and does the job nicely. That said, you should keep in mind that this is an LCD screen, so the battery life improvements you'd see from running Dark Mode on an OLED won't be present here. Then again, we have always had Dark Mode on, and you can see what amazing longevity we've gotten even so if you peek at the Battery life section of this review.
Dark mode settings
You can schedule the dark theme if you so wish, dim your wallpaper when it's on, and a nice touch in MIUI 12 is that you can force enable Dark Mode for apps that don't have native support for it yet. This is opt-in, and obviously, things may look funny from time to time, but for the most part, it works wonders if you enjoy the darker look and have to use apps that still didn't get the dark theme memo (we're looking at you, Facebook).
Settings, notifications, ads
The Settings menu is big and convoluted, but navigating it shouldn't be an issue for most. There's obviously a useful Search field, too, helping you get where you want to go faster. We wouldn't call this the cleanest Settings iteration out there, not by a long stretch, but it's not the worst either, especially when it comes to the inner logic of how things are sorted and what section goes where.
Settings
The notification pane is typical Xiaomi, design, and icons-wise. While we appreciate easy access to the manual auto-brightness adjustment slider, you still can't just tap on it where you want it to be - you need to slide your finger across it for any change to register. This hasn't been fixed in MIUI 12, unfortunately.
Notification area, Quick Settings
Speaking of notifications, to get those to work for wearable devices, you'll have to jump through the usual (for Xiaomi devices) hoops in Settings, stopping the automatic "battery optimization" and allowing the companion app to auto-start. Otherwise, you will miss out on receiving notifications on your smartwatch or smart band. We don't have a Xiaomi smart band or smartwatch around to test, but would have been interested to see if those get a pass and don't require such complications as we had to employ for both a Garmin and a Wear OS smartwatch.
One of the novelties in MIUI 12 is a new Control Center, which is thankfully opt-in. If you enable this, you'll have a different notification shade and Control Center, with no more Quick Settings tiles above your notifications. You reach the notifications by swiping down on the left side of the screen, and the Control Center if you do the same on the right side. Once you see the Control Center, you will instantly recognize how the similar function in iOS was used as its inspiration. Make of that what you wish, we chose to stick with the normal Android way of dealing with notifications and Quick Settings in the same view, but the new Control Center could definitely be of more use to some of you. It's there and works well if you want it - and can get over the iOS similarities.
Control center is opt-in
As usual for long-term reviews of Xiaomi or Redmi devices, we have to note that our European model only has ads inside some of the built-in apps. We have never seen ads in the notification area or on the lock screen - nothing intrusive.
The most annoying bit is the ad that shows up during the post-installation security scan of an app, but there's a gear icon in the top right corner that you can tap to disable this scan, which also means you'll never see such ads again when you install new apps. If you stick to the Play Store and don't install obviously scammy looking things, there's no need for any sort of security scan. Your phone isn't a Windows computer; you don't need an antivirus unless you keep installing sketchy things off third-party websites. In which case, maybe constantly seeing that ad isn't such a bad compromise after all.
Aside from this one ad instance that we promptly turned off, we can live with the ads inside the built-in apps, first of all, because a lot of third party apps have ads too, and second because, truth be told, we don't usually use a manufacturer's own duplicate apps all that much.
We prefer Google's options because they usually work better, but also for simplicity's sake, given how often we switch devices in a year.
All this said, we are aware that ads are much more prevalent in MIUI in other regions, which could very well be a huge downside for some people. We simply haven't had that specific user experience, but we understand that may be one of the cons of Xiaomi devices in these particular markets.
Overall, MIUI 12 is definitely an improvement compared to MIUI 11. Its design feels fresher and more modern, the animations are much improved (although too slow at the moment on this phone), but the changes aren't big enough that you'd feel there's a learning curve involved in updating from MIUI 11. Everything is still familiar, but with many small improvements here and there, which add up to a better user experience in MIUI 12 compared to its predecessor.
Because the Redmi Note 9 Pro's vibration motor is cheap and not very good (perhaps understandably at this price point), the subtle 'nudges' that are there in a lot of places in MIUI 12 on the Mi 10 Pro and even the Poco F2 Pro are simply not to be found in this variation of the software. The sole exception is the gentle vibration when you reach the beginning or end of a list. We can't say we disagree with what Xiaomi has done, as having those 'nudges' everywhere like on the Mi 10 Pro would have felt bad given the quality of the vibration motor here.
Camera
A quad rear setup with two (almost) useless sensors, a high-res pixel binning main cam, and an ultrawide is pretty much the default setting for any mid-ranger in 2020, it seems. And the Redmi Note 9 Pro doesn't disappoint, even if it's starting to feel disappointing to see the macro and depth cams on dozens of devices nowadays. We understand they're cheap, but we would have much preferred Xiaomi to maybe pay for autofocus on the ultrawide instead, and stick to two rear cams. You know, those you'll actually use.
Anyway, ranting aside, the Redmi Note 9 Pro has what looks like a pretty standard setup for its price range (especially when we compare it to other Chinese phones). A 64 MP main camera, an 8 MP ultrawide on the back, and a 16 MP selfie snapper housed inside the hole-punch on the front.
If you remember how much this phone costs, you probably shouldn't expect the world of its camera setup, for that seems to consistently be one of the hardest things to pull off on a budget. That said, the Redmi Note 9 Pro's shots don't disappoint, for the price range it's in. Especially in good ambient lighting conditions, you can get very usable results, and even at night images from the main sensor are half decent if you use Night Mode.
A note on that: Xiaomi's Night Mode right now is among the best out there, and definitely the best at restoring highlights. The results obviously depend on the camera hardware used, but the algorithms seem to be shared between phones, which is a very good thing. This means that, with a steady hand and some patience, the Redmi Note 9 Pro's Night Mode shots do punch above what you might have expected for the price.
Let's start with daytime shots from the main sensor. The 16 MP pixel binned images that Auto mode gives you are good, with reasonable amounts of detail, accurate colors (that are 'punchified' just a tad to make things more appealing looking), and good dynamic range. Sharpening is present and a bit on the heavy side, but walks the line well between nice looking and going overboard. Noise is generally rather low, rearing its ugly head only sometimes in areas of uniform color. Handling of foliage is definitely lacking, but we say that generally - when you remember how cheap this phone is, it's actually decent.
Daytime samples from the main camera
As usual for pixel binning cameras, we chose not to shoot in the full resolution mode, as these sensors are not designed to be used in that way, and Auto mode with its 16 MP shots will give you the best results.
The ultrawide camera is quite wide at 119-degrees field-of-view, and during daytime it produces pleasant images with decent detail levels and contrast, and good dynamic range. The distortion correction around the corners does a good, if not stellar job, but there is an obvious quality delta when going from the main cam to this one, and a lot of times the colors aren't matched.
Daytime samples from the ultrawide
Although there isn't a dedicated telephoto camera, you get a 2x option in the viewfinder, which crops from the main sensor. We shot a few of these to let you know that the results are definitely passable in broad daylight, although the quality is understandably lower than what you'd get at 1x. Still, if you absolutely have to zoom, you can, and with results that aren't always horrible - if you can live with a huge amount of oversharpening.
Daytime 2x samples
The macro snapper is among the best of the dedicated macro cams out there, although the need for it to exist would have certainly been negated had the ultrawide had autofocus, since then that snapper could have been used for the same purpose, and it's higher resolution. We do appreciate the 5 MP resolution, though, as it's better than the 2 MP macro sensors that are everywhere nowadays. The shots are detailed and sharp, and there isn't much noise to speak of. Autofocus comes real handy too, but the colors could be livelier-looking.
Macro samples
At night the main camera in Auto mode is rather inconsistent, sometimes taking decent shots, sometimes ones that border on unusable. Then again, remember the price of this device when you look at these. The detail levels are barely okay, and noise creeps in a lot, but color saturation is good.
Nighttime samples from the main camera
When you can, use Night Mode. Yes, it requires a steady hand and waiting a few seconds for it to do its magic, but compared to the Auto shots - magic it is indeed. Its only downside is that somehow it seems to create even lower amounts of detail, but the exposure is much more balanced, and detail is restored to shadows while the highlights are reigned in.
Night Mode samples
If you don't absolutely have to, you should probably avoid using the ultrawide at night. It creates dark, underexposed, noisy images that look more like smeared oil paintings than renditions of actual reality. Detail levels are very low too, and there's no Night Mode for this camera either - possibly because not even those algorithms could fix the hardware problems here.
Nighttime ultrawide samples
We snapped a few 2x samples at night too, to give you an idea of what these are like. We expected them to be worse than 1x images, similarly to what we saw during the day, and sometimes that is indeed the case. But other times, 2x shots seem to come out better than Auto mode 1x snaps, bafflingly. If push comes to shove, you may be able to use one here and there for social media and the likes, depending on how big your tolerance for imperfection is.
Nighttime 2x zoom samples
Selfies are not very sharp, even during the day, but otherwise very usable, with good colors and contrast, and Auto HDR when needed. At night, things get understandably rougher, and you do need to have some ambient lighting around for any such capture to be even barely acceptable. Portrait mode shots are okay for the price, with rather convincing background blur and good enough subject isolation. Don't expect perfection, and you'll be fine - this could be the mantra of this selfie snapper.
Selfie samples, day and night, Portrait Mode off/on
Overall, the Redmi Note 9 Pro has adequately competent cameras for the price, with the main rear sensor being the standout in good lighting conditions, when, for most people, we'd wager it would be hard to tell that its shots came from a phone this cheap (if viewed on the screen or on social media sites).
Nighttime shots, though, are only good if Night Mode is used, and even then they're very, very far from what the best phone cameras can produce right now. While the ultrawide is nice to have, it's also not among the best ones out there, by any stretch of the imagination, and you'll never be confused about that fact either.
Conclusion
The Redmi Note 9 Pro is a very good mid-ranger with a great value proposition, which has one huge problem. And that is the fact that the Poco X3 exists. On paper, at least, the Poco X3 is everything the Redmi Note 9 Pro is, and then some - and all of this for a very similar, and at times (and in some markets) identical price.
That makes the Redmi Note 9 Pro a hard sell despite its glass back, and otherwise good impression it made on us during our time with it. Don't get us wrong here - this is a good phone, but if you can get the Poco X3 for a similar price, we can't think of a reason not to pick that one. Which is strange and funny to think of - Xiaomi is so far ahead of the competition in the 'value for money' segment that it's now started to compete with itself, letting its different sub-brands battle it out.
Anyway, if we were to sum up our thoughts about the Redmi Note 9 Pro while ignoring the fact that the Poco X3 exists, we'd say it delivers more than what you'd expect when you see its price point. This, in fact, has been consistently true of cheap Xiaomi devices, and arguably it could be viewed as one of the biggest reasons for the company's success.
So if 5G isn't coming to your neck of the woods anytime soon, and you want a 4G phone that has one of the 'premium mid-range' chipsets from Qualcomm, this is it (remember, we're ignoring the Poco X3 right now). It has a good screen, if LCD and 60Hz, excellent battery life, a good set of cameras for the price, a decent if not outstanding speaker, a headphone jack, and software that looks nice, modern and airy, and mostly stays out of your way.
We're not mentioning the bugs we encountered here, because we're assuming they may have already been fixed by the time you read this, or will very soon. If you want to dive deep into those, the Software section has them laid out.
Overall, the value proposition here is great. This is definitely not a phone that's 4-5x worse than a flagship, in spite of the fact that its price is that much lower. If you think flagship killers have become too expensive in 2020 too, then the Redmi Note 9 Pro sits in a tier below those, in price, but also in what it can do for you. And yet, for a lot of people, that's probably just fine.
If you're a die hard power user and want the fastest and smoothest and greatest experience out there, this is clearly not the phone for you. But it might be the perfect phone for an older (or young) relative, someone who isn't actually doing a lot on their phone outside of calls and messaging and casual scrolling through social networking apps.
For most of those things most of the time, the fact that the Redmi Note 9 Pro is slower than a more expensive model is unlikely to be felt. And it's logical based on the price that it would be slower, but we are impressed to see how far budget Android handsets have come in recent years. It's a very long way to go from barely usable to probably fine for a lot of people most times, while keeping the asking price at a very affordable level.
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