Amoled screen with 90 Hz refresh rate, the chipset made in a 6-nanometer process, four cameras where the main camera is 50 megapixels and a battery of 5000 mAh with included quick charger. Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 can truly be proud of all this, at a price tag of SEK 2,700. It almost sounds like a top model for a quarter of the price, but in reality, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 is rather a mobile that only just manages to get approved for the price tag.
The design is unglamorous. In the picture, it looks like they have taken inspiration from the Iphones of recent years with more angular shapes, but in the hand, both sides and back are rounded enough that it should be difficult to see any similarities. The phone fits well in the hand without sharp edges. It’s not a small phone, but not exactly big and heavy either. Everything except the screen is made of plastic. This means that you do not have to worry so much that something other than the screen breaks if you drop the phone, but Xiaomi at least sends with a transparent rubber shell as well which gives the screen a little raised edges for protection. When it comes to durability, Xiaomi also states that the phone is waterproof according to IP52. It is not enough to protect if you drop it in water, or even expose it to a downpour, but some protection against rain and wet hands is given anyway.
The fingerprint reader is located on the on / off button on the side and is easy to reach. However, I think it is a bit slow in response. Just “a little slow in response” may also be an alternative heading for this text, because it is a good description of the phone as a whole.
Slower than expected
It is surprising that the phone feels so tough, and the subjective experience is confirmed by the mediocre results in our performance tests. The Snapdragon 680 platform that drives the phone is admittedly one of Qualcomm’s cheaper, and it lacks 5g, but it is nevertheless completely new and made in a 6-nanometer process. Maybe it’s also the working memory of 4 gigabytes, which is less than in most models also in this price tag, that haunts? Apart from the fact that it sometimes hacks when you scroll and apps take time to start, it sometimes feels like the phone simply does not have time to feel my pressure on the screen and I have to do it again to do what I should.
In any case, the screen does not disappoint me. Compared to an LCD display, a screen has a really black black and does not change color and brightness when you hold them at different angles, two effects that are usually particularly clear on screens in cheaper mobiles. That we find oled screens even in such cheap mobiles is no longer completely unusual but still just as nice. The screen speed of 90 hertz also lives up to its promise. That is, the screen does not feel as fast as on a mobile with a 120 Hz screen, but you still clearly notice the difference from a phone with a 60 Hz screen that was standard until a couple of years ago. Especially when you scroll a text you read, for example, you notice that the text does not become blurred in the same way as you scroll.
The screen is also bright, and can also handle direct sunlight well. You solve this in much the same way as Samsung by screwing up the contrasts in the image, but you make it a little less subtle. The main thing is that it works. On the other hand, the light sensor that senses the ambient light is a bit capricious and sometimes has to turn down the screen brightness to very dark.
Not always on
I do not have a function for always on-display, that is, a small part of the screen is always on and shows the clock and the like. Admittedly, there is a function called just “always on display”, but you can not set it to anything other than that it turns off after 10 seconds, which in my opinion is the exact opposite of always on.
When it comes to cameras, experience has taught us that neither the number of cameras nor its megapixel numbers is a particularly good measure of how good cameras the mobile has, and Redmi Note 11 adds to that experience. The Redmi Note mobiles can usually be a way for Xiaomi to take its more ambitious mobile cameras to a phone with a lower price tag, but here it feels more like they have tried to create the illusion of this by giving the camera island a prominent design.
If you just start the mobile camera and take a picture in daylight, you get a 12-megapixel image with decent color reproduction, but not much contrast is needed for parts of the image to be overexposed or underexposed. If you enlarge the image to 100 percent on a computer screen, it looks quite grainy. And so these are the mobile cameras from their best side. As soon as we subtract a little light, the images quickly become more blurred and grainy, and dark photography, the camera is immediately useless. One of the points of a 50-megapixel camera that delivers 12-megapixel images is usually that you can choose to take high-resolution images with more detail but less light sensitivity. And of course I can shoot in 50 megapixels here too, but the images do not get sharper, just bigger, as if they have only been enlarged digitally. The same happens if you select the zoom mode. The extra information that the sensor can provide does not seem to be used for zoom and the images only look digitally enlarged. Zooming in more than twice is not recommended.
What I said about the main camera in terms of difficulties with contrasts, noise and more applies even more to the wide-angle camera, and as usual, the last two cameras, the macro camera and the depth sensor, add no value.
Old Android
Redmi Note 11 has Xiaomi’s user interface MIUI 13, but not on the latest Android version, but here it is Android 11 that applies. Xiaomi’s user interface changes most things without feeling as well thought out as Samsung’s, and you get more duplicates of features like browsers or cloud backup than actual features that add something. The virus check that is done when you install an app also throws up advertising, but it is still possible to turn it off. Now it may sound like I dislike Xiaomi’s user interface, but I do not. It’s different, but never gets in the way of what I want done, and offers many options to configure things like how the phone is controlled or whether all apps should be placed on the home screens.
On the plus side, a really good battery life must be added. The combination of large battery and amoled screen is not uncommon, so I do not know what Xiaomi does that makes a difference, but almost 16 hours of screen time in our battery test is not common.
Xiaomi Redmi Note is not directly bad for 2700 kronor, but it is a bit slow which makes me wonder how tough you experience it after two years and lots of installed apps. And the cameras are really nothing to brag about.
On the other hand
Erik Mörner: I completely agree with what Elias writes. The screen here for the main benefits and the affordable price tag makes it possible to accept the poor camera and poor performance. However, it is clear that a little more money on another phone will give you significantly more.
Questions and answers
How’s the speaker sound? The phone has stereo speakers, but the sound in them is a bit jarring and they are not balanced. For watching movies at a slightly lower volume, I think they are enough.
Is it a heavy mobile? Quite the opposite, especially with regard to screen size.
How is the vibrator feedback? A little crisp, not as soft and comfortable as on most newer mobiles, even in this price range.
An alternative
Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro: The Pro model with the same name is a completely different phone that is admittedly more than a thousand bucks more expensive, but also significantly better at living up to expectations.
Camera example
Even under optimal conditions, the Redmi Note 11 struggles to take good pictures.
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