For today’s video, we have the new Redmi Note 12 4G, powered by the Snapdragon 685 chipset. I am being very specific with the name because there exists a 5G variant, and another Redmi Note 12 5G for the China market. They’re all different from each other, in some way.
With a price of RM799, is the Redmi Note 12 4G continuing the tradition of being a good budget phone? Let’s find out.
Design
We’ll start off as usual, with the design. I mean, it’s nothing special – really. Nothing caught my eye in particular except for the color.
This is closer to being a turquoise color and that matte finish diffuses the light and makes it look even nicer. However, it does catch a lot of fingerprints.
Cameras
We have a total of 3 cameras here but only two of them can be used to take pictures. No idea why Xiaomi still includes the 2MP macro camera – but here it is.
To have a look at all of the pictures taken with the Redmi Note 12 4G, watch our video at the top of this review.
Performance
For the performance, this is rather straightforward. We have done a dedicated gaming test video with this phone so check that out too. In short, this phone is running the Snapdragon 685 chipset and it truly depends on what game you’re playing. It can handle PUBG, COD Mobile, and Mobile Legends to a certain extent – but it will struggle to run games like Genshin Impact even at the lowest graphical settings.
As we’ve shown, constantly dips below 30fps and I just don’t think you’ll have a good time. Again, I don’t have anything against this phone because it is considered an entry-ish level smartphone after all.
Screen
The screen though, is a different story. This is a 6.67-inch AMOLED screen with the standard resolution of 2400×1080 pixels and can go up to 120Hz refresh rate too.
I do have to highlight that Xiaomi locked it down to 60Hz out of the box, so you’ll have to head into the settings menu to change it to 120Hz yourself.
Either way, the screen does look nice and from our tests – the colorimeter reports 98.80% of sRGB and 91.55% of DCI-P3 color gamut coverage with low maximum and average ΔE numbers too. That’s fantastic!
The brightness is also nothing to scoff at. It can reach a maximum of around 730 nits and you’ll definitely have zero issues using this phone under direct sunlight.
Battery life
Battery life is also very simple here. We have a 5,000mAh battery and with this Snapdragon 685 chipset, we can get about 12.5 hours in our standardized test. Honestly, I was expecting a bit more but this is fine.
Charging speed
The phone also comes with a 33W charger inside the box and can charge from 15% to completion in slightly less than an hour. That’s actually faster than what I expected. The temperature only reaches 39°C maximum – and that’s very safe.
Actually has 25W of fast charging via USB-PD. We used our Ugreen charger and it can charge this phone from 15% to completion in about the same time actually – slightly less an hour. The temperature is also reaching 39°C maximum – and this is good news.
That means you don’t need to bring Xiaomi’s own proprietary charger and cable if you want to get the same charging speed.
Software – MIUI 14
The software is pretty much the same as other Xiaomi phones that we have reviewed recently too. It’s running on MIUI 14 on top of Android 13 and everything remains the same so I’m not going to talk about it here. Watch our review of the Xiaomi 13 instead.
Few more things to mention
And a few more things to mention – this phone uses a USB 2.0 port at the bottom.
It does have a triple card slot. Two nano SIM card slots, and a single microSD card. That’s actually really good too.
Oh – let’s not forget about the one important feature – an audio jack. The Redmi Note 12 4G actually has it.
Should you buy the Redmi Note 12 4G?
So, after going through all that – did the Redmi Note 12 4G live up to the tradition of being a good budget smartphone? I’ll say yes. For the price of RM799, this is a good phone and I can recommend it to everyone who is seeking a phone at this price point.
There are certainly some drawbacks – particularly MIUI – but I can look past it just because of the price.
Where to buy? (Affiliate links)
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