Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Unboxing and Review: Before you Buy! By Fisayo Fosudo

Hey what’s up guys it’s Fisayo here and welcome to the Unboxing and Review of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8. This is one of the 2 devices recently launched by Xiaomi, the second is the Redmi Note 8 Pro for which my unboxing and review will be dropping for in the next few hours so make sure you’re subscribed and you have notifications turned on. I’ll leave a link in the description for when it drops. That being said this video is all about the Redmi Note 8 and my experience using it for a few days now, as always I’ll share my pros and cons with using this device and as I always do, I’ll leave time stamps in the description and pinned comment of this video so you’ll get to skip to parts so you want to quickly get information about. Alright that’s’ that without further ado, let’s get to the video. Inside the box of the Redmi Note 8, there’s a gift box and inside that gift box, the first thing we see is the sim ejector tool, we get a quite thick user guide, warranty card, and then we get a black case which looks quite sleek and nice.

So that’s that for the gift box and underneath it is where we get the Redmi Note 8 itself with a loose wrap plastic, taking that off as you can see, right upfront on the sticker, you get to see all the features of the Redmi Note 8, 48MP Quad Cameras, 6.3 inch Dot Drop Display, Gorilla Glass on the Front and the Back, now hold on for a second… Gorilla Glass on the front and the back now keep in mind, this is just about 65 thousand Naira (64,970). It comes with a 4,000 man battery and it supports 18W fast charge. To digress, just like the way the IPhone 11 has a regular 5W charger and the 11 Pro and Pro Max come with 18W chargers in the box, the regular Note 8 has a 10W charger in the box and the Note 8 Pro has an 18W charger but both the Note 8 and Note 8 Pro support 18W fast charging. Snapdragon 665, Octacore processor which is an upgrade to the Snapdragon 660 and according to reviews, this is much faster. Alright, we’ll put the phone aside but for what’s in the rest of the box, we get the charging brick.

Usb c cable, and some gum, I don’t know… basically nothing else in the box, you know, It’s totally cool to think that there’s no headphones in these boxes but Xiaomi sells their own accessories so it’s a good play for them. Taking the plastic off the front of the Note 8 shows you the 6.3 inch gorilla glass display and it looks very good on its first day of school. On the back, we’ve also got gorilla glass 5 as well which is already showing signs of smudges even when I hadn’t used it for as long as I want to. It does look reflective, feel thick and it kind of reminds me of the Redmi Note 7 which I made a 2 month review about. That note 7, the predecessor to this device also has Gorilla Glass 5 on both the front and the back.

As far as color options for the Note 8, you get Neptune Blue, Moonlight white and space black which is what we have here. The upper part of the back of the Note 8 houses four cameras, from top to bottom, we’ve got the 8MP ultra wide angle camera, then the 48MP primary camera which is actually a 4 in 1 - 12MP super pixel camera and the 2 cameras below them are both 2MP macro lenses each which help for taking macro shots and macro video recording. The only thing is that when taking photos in macro mode, blocking the upper lenses don’t do anything so it means you are having or going to be getting only 2MP macro shots from this device. Ehmmm…moving on. Still on the upper part, the flash rests on the side of the cameras alongside the 48MP camera inscription leading up to the flash and then we’ve got the fingerprint reader.

On the lower part of the back we’ve got the Redmi logo and some certifications. On the front of the Note 8, we’ve got the 13 MP selfie camera, above it is the earpiece for phone calls and there’s a notification LED right there to the left. I also notice that there’s quite some noticeable bleed on the edges of the device. On the bottom of the front, we’ve got the Redmi branding right there which you may or may not be a fan of and still some more noticeable screen bleeding On the right side of the Note 8, we’ve got the volume rockers and power button, the bottom side of the device is where we’ve got a headphone jack, microphone port, reversible charging capable USB C port and speaker grille. On the left side is where we get the slot for the dual sim and memory card which makes storage expandable by 256GB at no cost of an extra sim.

We’ve got another microphone up at the top of this device as well so it records stereo audio and we’ve also got an infrared sensor remote for controlling supported appliances. In terms of setting up the device. It took over 3 minutes to fully set up without putting the fingerprint and a major part was loading into MIUI 10.3 based on Android 9 of course. My first impressions on the build quality was mainly on the fingerprint magnet that it is. The Redmi Note 8 has a Gorilla Glass 5 Screen on the front, as I mentioned earlier and this takes a leaf from its predecessor, the Redmi Note 7.

I even made a drop, scratch and bend test for the Redmi Note 7 which I think you should check out. Seeing that they’re both similar in terms of what you get, I can go ahead and say this would be a sturdy build and it would last the time you have it for. The device itself protrudes with the camera bump, the case that it comes with helps to smoothen things out a little and the case also has the clip that opens and protects the charging port. The Redmi Note 8 also carries some weight at 188 grams according to my measurement, it was 190 on the site and bumping the case on it takes it up further by 207 grams This device has a 6.3 inch display, it’s LED and it has a screen resolution of 2340 by 1080, essentially FHD at 19.5:9 aspect ratio. And a PPI of over 400 (409) I watched quite a couple of videos with this device and it was pretty decent and sharp, quite bright as well and of course.

It views or streams YouTube videos in 1080p. My only gripe with this device is that in white screens or bright screens it bleeds like a vignette is around the display. It’s not a major thing but it’s there. Overall, in terms of day to day use, the device’s colors felt familiar and I got used to it. The Redmi Note 8 also has night mode right in the display settings, it affects the native apps, gallery, settings, dialer, messages, wait.. to doesn’t work in messages.

I don’t know if this was intentional but dark mode doesn’t work in the messages app, dark mode even works in the PlayStore. For those who are fans of gestures, you also get gesture controls and can interchange the buttons on the home row….. and you can hide the notch too… don’t do that. You also get to create a second space on your phone, I mentioned this in the note 7 review earlier. Second space is basically like having a work and a home phone and 2 different passwords for each.

So for instance my main space is a long L and my second space is a short L or you could use 2 different fingers to unlock your phone and get into 2 separate spaces. So for instance I could use my right finger to unlock my main space and left finger to unlock my second space. You could also create dual versions of apps like Facebook and more games. Speaking of day to day use, if you’re consuming media on this device, you’ll pretty much be fine as it’s very familiar. There’s nothing fancy like stereo speakers but the speakers on here are pretty loud, downward facing and with all downward facing speakers, they can easily be blocked when you’re holding it in this horizontal position.

In terms of how it sounds, here’s a quick demo of both the speaker and microphone. From what I could tell it sounded quite nice and loud while the microphone quality was decent as well. Nothing major about it but what are your thoughts about how they sound? Let me know in the comments below. Now moving on, the specs of the Redmi Note 8 brings with it some interesting elements. I mentioned earlier that we get the Snapdragon 665 which is an Octa-core processor and its companion in terms of the GPU is the Adreno 610 Graphics Processor with Qualcomm’s 3rd Gen.

AI Engine. With the Note 8, you get a minimum of 3G of RAM, a maximum of 4GB of RAM then you also get a minimum 32GB storage and a maximum of 128GB of storage. My model here is 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage which is still expandable with a memory card up to 256GB like I mentioned earlier and this exact model on Jumia right now costs 64,970 Naira only. For more on the specs I’ll leave a link to NaijaAndroidArena where you can check out the detailed specs and more in terms of comparison. And Oh, if you were wondering, the Glo band 28(700) wasn’t listed in the specs but Glo now supports the Band 3(1800) which is listed so an upgraded Glo SIM would do just fine.

Overall browsing experience in terms of network speeds were similar to the Note 8 Pro, the elder brother of this guy. Using social media apps ran smoothly and I didn’t notice any crashes at all but of course in usual Xiaomi tradition, you get ads popping in frequent places. Gameplay did run smoothly on the Redmi Note 8 in terms of gaming graphics, I’d say it’s above average. My 1 hour gaming session barely had much of an effect on the battery by less than 20% and I did experience some slight heating but it went away as soon as I stopped. In terms of charging speed, the default charger in the box brought this guy up from 0 - 30% in 30 minutes and it took another 30 minutes to get to 58% so that’s 1 hour to get to 58% from 0 and then it took about 2 hours to get full.

About the gaming again, the Note 8 Pro, the higher version has got a heat sync pipe to Cool things down and a dedicated gaming Processor which is the first device to utilize it so I look forward to how that would work out. The Note 8 seems fine but if you’re going for gaming you may want to consider the elder brother, the Note 8 Pro In terms of touch sensitivity, the Note 8 was pretty fast with responses, multitasking was smooth and apps did load quite accurately making the experience smooth. During my use as well, I also try to utilize the screen record feature. This feature doesn’t exist in the notification / Control panel you need to use an app. Thankfully they provide the default app which you can use and it’s just there in the tools folder and even clips you’ve recorded in the screen recorder app.

Screenshots are however up in the notifications and can also be utilized for scroll shots as well. The fingerprint scanner is not the fastest in the world but it does work and face unlock was a little quicker but Xiaomi does warn that it’s not as secure since it’s not an Infrared scanner or something of the sort. The Bluetooth sensor on the Note 8 is 4.2 compared to Bluetooth 5.0 on the Redmi Note 8 Pro. Also, there’s literally a feature where If you ever feel there’s dust inside your device, you can trigger Clean speaker and it makes this sound while vibrating the internal part to clear what’s inside. Call quality was also okay as well as all the normal phone features are normal phone features.

For those who may not know XIaomi is now in Nigeria so if you ever have an issue you can reach out to them directly. Alright, it’s Camera time and for a 65,000 Naira smartphone, 5 cameras is a pretty interesting start. I already mentioned the camera specs earlier but to re-iterate, on the front of the device we get a 13MP f2.0 aperture lens and on the back of the device, we get a 48MP f1.75 wide sensor, 8MP f2.2 ultra wide sensor and 2 macro sensors which are both f2.4 in aperture. Resolutions in terms of pictures reach up to 8,000 by 6,000 and it records up to 4K at 30fps. In the camera app, from left to right, you get slow motion mode which you can shoot at 120fps from and a maximum 240fps, Short video which shoots only 15 seconds at all zoom levels.

You also get video and photo mode at ultra wide, normal and 2x. Next to that is the 48MP camera sensor. Which is dubbed Ultra HD here. Basically the main difference that you notice on the compare is that image sizes of your regular shots would be at 3,000 by 4,000 while 48MP shots would go up to double that at 6,000 by 8,000. Next to the 48MP is Portrait Mode, Night Mode and Panorama and Pro Mode.

As far as photos, I’d say that the portrait mode on this device is actually fast and it produces some good results. It’s not perfect and it also can be soft but it compensates for it somehow by software sharpness. Normal shots were decent but when compared to 48MP shots they weren’t any where as sharp. Selfie Portraits were soft as well and this is all by default because Xiaomi cranks up the beauty filter of your device right out the box. HDR shots also did look nice as well and in terms of the hierarchy of the wide normal and zoom, I think it’s pretty good but wide shots aren’t usually as sharp as the 1x and the 2x also takes the same fate.

I’d say that 48MP shots preserve alot of information and detail too. Just like what we had on the Note 7 The dual 2MP Macro lenses here nice but a 2MP camera would get you images with 1600 by 1200 in size and they’re not as high quality as the other cameras on here. In comparison, the normal lens in this shot only gets this close while the macro lens can go close. In alot of light it would thrive but the image size and quality is low. In good lighting or say you’re outdoors and there’s alot of lit skyline, night mode would show alot of detail and crank up the sharpness.

Even on a small desk there’s a noticeable difference. Also the I tried to test the shots of the plant, of course flash brought out the true image but night mode still tries to bring out some elements despite how dark it was in the room. Video recording quality on the Note 8 is quite of a mixed bag for me. It records 4K 30 FPS, it does 1080p slow motion at 120 fps and it also does 1080 video at 60fps. Which all sound great on paper but when I tested video on here.

I noticed alot of skipped frames and it wasn’t just once. The Note 8 Pro tries to soften this effect with what looks like some stabilization but it’s not existent on the Note 8. That’s It for this video guys. What do you think of the Redmi Note 8?, for me, it’s a good follow up to the Note 7 at this price point. They share that Gorilla Glass sturdiness and this is upgraded in a few areas but are they worth it to you? Let me know in the comments below and is there anything I didn’t mention that you wanted me to have touched on? Please let me know, let’s have chat in the comments, do drop a like if you enjoyed this video & hit the subscribe button and turn on notifications for all the new videos coming.

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Source : Fisayo Fosudo