Redmi Note 9 Review After A Month By GadgetByte

So after the success of the Redmi Note, 9 pro and pro max Xiaomi has added an even more affordable device to its lineup, which is the Redmi Note 9. It is the true successor to last year's Redmi, note 8, which is still a very decent budget phone and here in Nepal the note 9 directly competes against Samsung's galaxy m21, as it is priced exactly the same at 22999. So can the Redmi Note 9 ruffle some feathers in this price point against the reigning champ? Do I recommend this phone against the galaxy m21? Let's find that out in this review. So in terms of design, this phone borrows its looks from its pro sibling, as it has a similar camera layout and the overall shiny looks similarly the Redmi Note.9 brings some curves at the back for a better grip. However, as it is with every glossy phone, this one is prone to smudges too, and I had to clean it up way too often, surprisingly, the build material here is plastic. This time and if you recall, Xiaomi had gone with a much more premium glass bag on its predecessor, the note 8.

So if you ask me, I prefer the hand feel of the more expensive Redmi Note 9 pro better than this one. The standard note 9 also does not provide a side mount to fingerprint sensor and a rather features a traditional one at the bottom of the rear cameras and about the performance. It is as fast and accurate. As expected, all the buttons have been placed on the right side of the phone, but disappointingly aren't tactile enough, and they were even unresponsive at times getting to the display. The Redmi Note 9 retains a punch hole cutout for the front-facing camera, but here it has been shifted to the left side compared to the one in the center, like the note 9 pro, yet I don't mind this change at all, and it looks equally pleasing.

Having said that, the 6.5 inches IPS display with FHD plus resolution is just about average, although you won't notice this inferiority when browsing through regular apps like Facebook, Instagram and such, but it is when watching videos on YouTube that you can differentiate the quality compared to say the galaxy m21 with its AMOLED panel, for instance. Here you can see how the color tone of my face is abnormally cooler, while the comparatively warmer tone on the m21 is way better than this. Brightness is surprisingly sufficient for both indoors and sunny outdoors, which is great. The display has been protected by keening's gorilla, glass 5. However, I am a little disappointed with the quality of the panel itself, as it is inferior to the note 9 pro and its direct competitor, the galaxy m21 coming to the internals.

Well, we've always come to expect stellar performance from Xiaomi phones and this one's powered by the new gaming focused hello g85 chipset from media tech being the first phone to feature this chipset. I was really excited to test out the gaming capabilities of this device. However, my excitement was really short-lived. As the Redmi Note, 9 showed pretty average results in my gaming tests, I tried out PUBG mobile under smooth graphics and ultra frame rates and got a weirdly inconsistent performance, so I tweaked the settings to HD graphics and high frame rates instead, which worked well, but at an expense of frame rates. In comparison, the galaxy m21 with its Enos 9611 is much more optimized, and I could easily play the game under HD, graphics and ultra frame rates with no hiccups Call of Duty.

Mobile is maxed out at medium graphics and high frame rates, whereas the galaxy m21 lets you play under high graphics too. Moreover, the touch response on the Redmi Note 9 isn't great either. Therefore, I have been a little let down by Xiaomi on the gaming promises of this phone. However, regular day-to-day tests are well handled by the onboard soc multitasking is swift and using everyday apps like Facebook, Instagram resulted in no trouble of any sort. Mini runs good enough, too, with swift transitions and good resource management.

It also offers you tons of optimization and battery saving features that I have always liked. However, I still think the hello g85 is not as optimized as its snapdragon counterpart as at times there's a bit of lag and choppy animation, while navigating through the UI one more thing. Most of you guys may already be familiar with the inbuilt cleaner, app on this device first pointed out by b-bomb in their review of the Poco m2 pro. This app requires permission for location, microphone, contacts etc. , which is pretty weird for a service that should only require storage usage rights.

What's even more worrisome for the Indian audience is that the cleaner app sends its data to cleaner master servers, which is one of the 59 Chinese apps that is banned by the Indian government. Similarly, the Redmi Note 9 also comes with tons of bloatware pre-installed, including some outlandish games like bubble story, crazy, juicer, etc. Moving on to the cameras, the phone comes with a quad camera setup. You get a 48 megapixel primary sensor alongside an 8 megapixel wide angle, lens a 2 megapixel depth sensor and a 2 megapixel macro lens with autofocus, and you guys must be tired of hearing this. I am tired of saying this again and again that a mediocre, 2, megapixel macro lens on a phone solely to justify its quad camera setup is plainly ridiculous.

The macro images from the Redmi Note 9, are void of any innovation and the images look washed out with low details and are pretty much useless. Let's talk about the primary 48 megapixel lens now, even though it is good for the price, I would only rate it as average when comparing it against Samsung's galaxy m21, you can see how the note 9 lacks in terms of colors and details, while looking a bit hazy as well just check out this image of a leaf. I took the one from the m21 has more details, saturation and vibrancy, whereas note 9's short, looks washed out with poor dynamic range, portraits, on the other hand, look decent with good enough edge detection, but bringing the m21 into the mix. You will instantly notice how the background exposure isn't done properly on the note 9, with inconsistent both effect at times. Likewise, the quality of the image degrades as you move to an environment with lesser light and the nighttime images are grainy with very little details.

Photos from the 8 megapixel ultra-wide angle lens are nothing to write home about either as they tend to have limited dynamic range details and colors in comparison. M21's wide-angle images are much better with a wider field of view too. What's left? Oh, yes, the videos well here the maximum resolution, the Redmi Note 9 can go, is 1080p at 30 fps that too, without any kind of stabilization, the recordings are wobbly but, more importantly, its colors and dynamic range are way worse compared to m21 the front camera shares a contrasting story for the first time in our camera test, as the selfies are very good, even though the images from the m21 have their pleasing reddish tone to them. Photos from the note 9 are a visual tweet as well. Portrait selfies are handled through software and therefore the edge detection is not that good, but gets the job done.

However, like regular selfies, it struggles when there is a light source directly at the back and therefore gets overexposed. Here too, the galaxy m21 seems to do a better job. I am going to quickly dismiss the vlogging capabilities of the Remy. Note.9 from the selfie camera, as it is just terrible summing up Redmi Note, 9's cameras are only average, as the galaxy m21 easily wins out against it. My big concern is for an average non-tech buyer who might charge the Redmi Note 9 and the cosplayer Redmi Note 9 pros cameras as equals because of a similar 48 megapixel quad camera setup.

But that's far from the truth, talking about the battery the 5 000 William hour cell on the Redmi Note 9 gives great endurance, which is further supported by the efficient energy management that I talked about earlier during my usage, I used it as my secondary phone with a NCL sim and got about 7 hours of screen on time, which comprised watching videos for two hours or more about an hour of gaming and chatting on WhatsApp and messenger for two hours or so. You also get a fast 22.5 watt charger inside the box, which isn't that fast. It takes the phone from zero to ninety percent in under two hours. Although filling up the final ten percent took me more than 30 minutes getting to the extras. The speakers on the Redmi Note 9 are average too and like with every Xiaomi phones.

This one gets an IR blaster as well in terms of call quality and network signal strength. I have zero complaints. To conclude the Redmi Note.9 is a pretty average offering considering how last year's Redmi Note.8 was a great value proposition, discounting the design and battery. I don't see any significant changes. The Redmi Note 9 brings over the Redmi Note 8 and that's not even the biggest issue.

The phone faces. Samsung's galaxy m21 is a much better phone at the same price. You might have picked up how the galaxy m21 outclasses the Redmi Note 9 in aspects like display performance and cameras, which are like the three prime pillars of a great budget smartphone. Also, I want to go a little off-topic here to point out how the post lockdown smartphone market has resulted in a price hike and some off-putting releases. We saw Samsung release the galaxy m11 and the galaxy a21s, which fell into this category and sadly Xiaomi's Redmi.

Note 9 follows the same bandwagon, so that was our full review of the Redmi Note 9. If you had a choice which one would you choose, the galaxy m21 or the Redmi Note 9 do let us know in the comments below till then I'm ratio Adhara, and thank you so much for watching.

Source : GadgetByte