Redmi Note 7 Pro review: Spectacular images with 48MP camera, battery life hard to resist

Redmi Note 7 Pro

Price: Rs 13,999 (4/64GB), Rs 16,999 (6/128GB)
Rating: *****

Specs: Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 octa core (2.0Ghz), 4/6gb ram, 64/128GB emmc 5.1 storage (expandable, up to 256GB cards with hybrid slot), dual rear camera (48mp f1.79 + 5mp depth), 13mp f2.0 front camera, 6.3-inch dot notch display (2340 x 1080 pixels, 19.5:9 aspect), bt5.0, WiFi ac dual band, USB type c with Quickcharge 4.0, IR blaster, 3.5mm audio out, 4,000mAh battery, 186 grams

Pros: All-New Glass Design With Gorilla Glass 5 Front + Back, powerful processor, excellent 48MP Camera, large 1080p screen with tiny 'Dot Notch', 4k @ 30fps video With eis, fast face unlock & fingerprint, hydrophobic P2i coating resists light splashes

Cons: Plastic frame, no dedicated micro SD slot (it has a hybrid slot), supports QC4.0 charging but a standard charger is supplied


The Redmi Note 7 Pro (RN7Pro for short) comes from a long line of mid-range smartphones that are used to market dominance. It's no surprise then, that the RN7Pro takes the same magic formula and tweaks it to include all the latest features. They've made the switch from metal to glass for a couple of important reasons: it looks more premium & glass is very tolerant of radio signals. This is not plastic that looks like glass by the way - it's real Gorilla Glass 5, both front and back. And therein lies the first big difference between the RN7Pro and the immediate competition. There are three colours available but the Neptune Blue and Nebula Red look particularly alluring with their multi-layer gradient glass coating.

The screen's bigger too - with a tiny notch that houses the 13MP front camera. Xiaomi calls it the Dot Notch display and while it doesn't have the black levels of an OLED, it does offer FHD+ resolution, vibrant colour, high contrast and excellent viewing angles. This display would not be out of place on a Rs 20k phone. There are slim bezels on three sides and you can always make adjustments such as removing the on-screen button (using gestures), adjusting display colour temperature or hiding the notch completely.

The next highlight is the octa core Snapdragon 675 processor which makes it the performance king in this price class again. This may be a mid-range chip but it performs like an 800 series flagship processor (actual performance is very close to that of a Snapdragon 835). It's a great example of premium features making their way to mid-tier price points.


Finally, the 48MP camera is a revelation for this price class. We've been accustomed to ignore the number of megapixels in a phone camera because more pixels don't necessarily give you better results. It's the size of those pixels that really matters, with larger pixels being more sensitive to light and therefore offering better results. This is a new kind of sensor that turning that notion upside down. RN7Pro uses a ½-inch Sony IMX586 sensor (that's a really large sensor for a phone, even by flagship standards) with 0.8 micron size pixels. The sensor, under most circumstances, combines four adjacent pixels into one 'super' pixel with a 1.6 micron pixel size - this gives you a 12MP image, which is still a large size. The results are spectacular, blowing away phones that cost twice as much. It even offers a night mode where it quickly captures 7 images and combines them to create a brighter photo with low noise. This is beyond impressive for this price class. Of course, you can choose to capture 48MP images but it works best outdoors when there's lots of light. In this mode, images can be up to 20MB in size. Plus, there's the usual plethora of modes - studio lighting, AI scene recognition, beauty, HDR, manual operation, slow-mo, time lapse and 4k video @30fps with electronic image stabilisation (EIS).

A common misconception is that Xiaomi creates an artificial shortage of their newer and popular devices as a marketing tactic. It's easy to see why this misconception exists because the phone goes out of stock in less than a few seconds. But the reality is, they're selling these phones in the lakhs and people just can't get enough. At the time of writing, we also received word that Xiaomi has just set up their 7th manufacturing facility in India and their combined capacity is to produce 3 phones per second. The company just can't make them fast enough to satisfy the demand.


Wrapping up, the RN7Pro has impressed us a great deal by offering much higher quality and performance than we're used to at this price. If we were to nitpick, we could complain about the 5 or 6 pre-loaded apps (though they can be uninstalled), the fact that miui displays ads (you do get control to turn off ads - but it's enabled by default), that the frame is not metal but plastic, that the bezel size is unequal on the top/sides and that a QC 4.0 charger is not bundled in the box. But the overall combination of design, performance, camera and battery life is hard to resist. There's not much direct competition and the next best option with the Snapdragon 675 is Vivo V15 Pro (Rs 28,990). For the extra money, you get a full view amoled display, 32MP pop-up front camera, in-display fingerprint scanner & triple camera.