Xiaomi has been making smartphones for quite some time already – but they started off with a custom ROM called MIUI. Over the years, they’ve evolved into a smartphone company and became what it is today. Though over the years, Xiaomi still continues their renowned lineup of budget smartphones – the Redmi series. As 2017 was the year where longer displays emerged, Xiaomi hopped onto the bandwagon with their latest Redmi 5 Plus – and we got our hands on one for review!
Thanks to GearBest for provisioning us with the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus for review!
Unboxing
Alright, let’s talk about the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus’s packaging – specifically on how GearBest ships the items. For me, the Redmi 5 Plus was wrapped within an air cushion envelope, and had zero damage to the box of the Redmi 5 Plus. That’s something worth mentioning, as GearBest did not skimp out on their packaging.
The Redmi 5 Plus, as the name implies, comes with a very red box with rather thin fonts written at the front. It’s simple and clean, while still highlighting some of the important specs of the phone at the bottom of the packaging. It’s very minimalist in style, and I like it.
Opening up the box reveals quite a minimal amount of accessories that’s packed together with the Redmi 5 Plus. You get a micro USB cable and a charger that has a Type A plug since it’s from China after all. Other than that, there’s also an included TPU case. It’s a rather thin one with no texture on it. More on that later.
By the way, Xiaomi is kind enough to pre-install a matte screen protector onto the Redmi 5 Plus for you. However, there’s no earphones included.
[nextpage title=”Design”]
The entire design of the Redmi 5 Plus is rather simple. Have you looked at the other smartphones with an 18:9 FullView display? The OPPO F5 and the ASUS ZenFone Max Plus (M1), just to name a few. Whenever a smartphone dons the FullView display, its design just… becomes rather bland and generic. The Redmi 5 Plus is no exception either.
Just like other smartphones with a FullView display, the sensors are stuffed at the top whereas the bottom chin is left unused although tiny. The top and bottom chins are of the same size by the way, so the phone is symmetrical.
Xiaomi also decided to move all of the buttons to the right side of the phone, and it has the volume rocker right above the power button. Pretty simple when it comes to design.
One major design issue with the Redmi 5 Plus, in my opinion, is the camera protrusion. It has only one single camera without OIS at the rear and yet it has a significant protrusion. You might be thinking – doesn’t the included TPU case solve this issue? I thought about that too. Unfortunately, the included TPU case is just too thin – and it makes the camera protrusion flat.
If the camera protrusion is flat, that means the lens will have its full area in contact with the table. That’s a real issue, as you can get the lens scratched much more easily.
Another complaint is the non-textured TPU case that Xiaomi included. As stated before, TPU cases with no ordered grain texture will definitely cause severe scratches onto the phone itself if any debris is to get in between the phone and the case itself. Just one grain of salt is enough to give you a bad day, by the way.
At least the included TPU does provide enough grip and protection with a lip around the screen, albeit a thin one.
Also, the TPU case also accentuates the volume and power buttons while protecting the Redmi 5 Plus itself. This is worth mentioning as we’ve seen smartphones with included cases that hinders the accessibility of the buttons.
[nextpage title=”Connectivity & Speaker”]
Booting up the Redmi 5 Plus, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that it actually supports 5GHz WiFi band. Though it’s only 802.11n WiFi, it’s better than nothing.
Physically, the Redmi 5 Plus might look like it has the bare minimum when it comes to connectivity – but following the Redmi series’s tradition, it has an IR blaster. The IR blaster is a forgotten feature that not many people know about. I started using the IR blaster a lot more during my days with the Honor 8.
The IR blaster converts your smartphone into a remote control – literally. You can control anything from air conditioners to speakers, televisions, and even DSLR cameras. The Mi Remote app does get the job done, but it’s not perfect. Hence, you can also use third party remote apps like Peel.
Other than that, the Redmi 5 Plus has an audio jack at the top. At the bottom, there are two grills – one for the microphone, and another for the speaker that sounds fairly okay – better than the ASUS ZenFone Max Plus (M1) for sure. In between these two grills is the micro USB port.
Xiaomi still opted for a SIM1 + SIM2/micro SD combo slot type of tray, which is disappointing. ASUS made the transition last year for their Max series of smartphones, and I hope to see that Xiaomi makes the same transition soon.
[nextpage title=”Display”]
Ever since we reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S8+, other smartphone manufacturers jumped into the bandwagon of longer displays. The 18:9 aspect ratio display is then dubbed as the FullView display. Xiaomi is generous enough to include a 5.99-inch 1080p resolution panel into the Redmi 5 Plus. It has rounded corners, too.
Xiaomi is kind enough to pre-install a matte screen protector for the Redmi 5 Plus for you. Your screen is already protected from the get-go. However, just like any other matte screen protector, it’ll make your screen quality horrible. That’s an inherent issue with matte film screen protectors by the way, not Xiaomi’s.
We did a quick comparison on the screen quality with and without the screen protector, and the difference is stark. One thing I do appreciate is that Xiaomi did not skip the oleophobic coating. Even though I did remove the matte screen protector, my finger can glide on the screen smoothly thanks to the oleophobic coating. Huawei on the other hand, skipped out the oleophobic coating on the P10 entirely.
The screen’s colors are fairly alright – sharp across the entire panel. While viewing white backgrounds, however, the screen has a slight blue tint. Nothing major, and our human eyes easily ignores it if there are no other reference white points.
[nextpage title=”Camera”]
The Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus comes with a rather basic camera setup. Unlike many other smartphones that are hopping onto the dual-camera system bandwagon – which you can learn more about them here, Xiaomi opted for a single camera for both the front and the back.
If you’re already interested to buy the Redmi 5 Plus anyway, then check out the deal right here. USD $225 for the blue color version.
Equipped with a 12MP rear-facing camera and a 5MP selfie camera, the cameras on the Redmi 5 Plus just don’t sound all that impressive. But then again, the pictures speak for themselves. Check out the sample images below.
For the full image alongside with all the metadata, check out our Flickr album here.
Rear camera
I’m rather surprised by how well the camera performs here. Take a look at those spiky trees. In HDR mode, the picture still remains sharp, and the colors are actually very good. Sure, at full crop, the images are noisy.
In direct sunlight, for some reason, that image is overexposed. That’s why I turned on HDR to take another picture, and see what’s going on with the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus’s camera.
In low-light condition, it’s usable, I’d say. Could’ve been better, but definitely better than many smartphones out there in the market.
With that said, it’s quite okay for social media usage regardless of the lighting condition.
Selfie camera
As for the selfie camera, the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus is definitely underperforming here. It’s better than the ASUS ZenFone Max Plus (M1) that we reviewed here as the Redmi 5 Plus’s colors are better – but still noisy.
Camera UI
The camera UI is surprisingly intuitive. It has only a few buttons to fiddle around with, which is good for many people.
The manual mode is rather lacking when it comes to flexibility. There’s only an option to change the ISO – which can go to a 100 at its lowest – and white balance control. There’s no manual focus or manual shutter speed!
However, I have to say – Xiaomi’s camera app is one of the most intuitive one out there but it comes at a price – and that price is options. Many of the options and flexibility are taken away in favor of simplicity.
I wonder why this feeling is so familiar… perhaps it’s Apple’s mantra?
They do have some fun features, though. Like age detection.
[nextpage title=”Software”]
The Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus comes with the latest MIUI 9 pre-installed. From what I can tell, MIUI 9 has toned down a lot in terms of animation, and everything feels snappy.
It’s a surprise that even after so many years, MIUI is still following the design concept that they first started off with.
From the lockscreen itself, you can scroll to the left and access Mi Remote from there. That’s a real quick and easy way to get things done, as the Redmi 5 Plus does have an IR blaster. Why not make use of it, no?
Bloatware is minimal as there are a few MIUI apps and that’s it. You can also download themes from MIUI’s own themes library to pimp your aesthetics. Though, you can’t download third party icon packs and use it with their default launcher, though.
[nextpage title=”Performance”]
When it comes to performance, the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus is equipped with the specs below:
- 5.99-inch 2160×1080 IPS LCD display
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset (made with FinFET technology)
- 8x Cortex-A53 octa-core @ 2.0GHz
- Adreno 506 graphics
- 4GB RAM
- 64GB storage
- 4,000mAh battery
As you can see, the specs for the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus is pretty similar to the a few other smartphones that we’ve reviewed here. There’s the ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom and also the the OPPO R9s uses the same chipset, just to name a few. Take a look at the benchmarks.
Albeit that the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus is using a Snapdragon 625 chipset, when placed in comparison with the ZenFone 4, it can really go head-on as its performance is just top-notch. All thanks to MIUI 9’s optimization, perhaps?
Gaming on the other hand, decent enough. Remember, the limitation is that the Redmi 5 Plus is still using a Snapdragon 625 chipset – and it’s one generation behind from Qualcomm’s latest offering.
It’s still a good performer, as I can still play games like Shadow Fight 3 smoothly. It also manages to scale the game properly to fill all 2160×1080 pixels too.
[nextpage title=”Battery & Charger”]
Here’s where the Snapdragon 625 really shines. Ever since I first laid my hands on a smartphone that uses this magical chipset, I was in awe. Its battery efficiency is the best that I’ve seen, and it is still very efficient when compared to other chipsets in the market today. Thanks to FinFET, the battery life is extended even more!
For the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus, it has a larger display – and hence the screen itself will suck up more juice and the GPU will have to do a little more work to as there are more pixels to manage. With that said, the Redmi 5 Plus’s 4,000mAh battery manage to score nearly 12 hours in our test – which is just fantastic!
Charger
As for the charger, however, the Redmi 5 Plus comes with a charger that outputs 5V 2A – a standard in today’s smartphone world. Though, since our unit of the Redmi 5 Plus is from GearBest and sent directly from China, we got a type-A wall plug instead. Since we’re in Malaysia, we’ll have to use an adapter – obviously.
Charging the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus from a measly 10% of battery life to a 100% takes around 2.20 hours – which is about 2 hours and 12 minutes. The linearity stops once the 75% mark is reached, though.
And hey – at least it only took about 1 hour and 15 minutes to reach 75%. That’s actually quite fast, in my opinion.
[nextpage title=”Wrapping up the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus review”]
Let’s just end the review by saying this – the Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus had a limit on what is there to be included, so that its final price won’t exceed the fixed limit. They’ve done it, but included a Snapdragon 625 chipset, a 4,000mAh battery, a 1080p FullView display, 4GB RAM, and 64GB of storage.
To me, that’s an impressive feat to pull off properly. MIUI 9 cuts down a lot of the excessive animation and it looks amazingly proper not. It’s not tacky as it used to be.
The cameras on the other hand, is another story to be told. They’re noisy, sure – but good enough for social media usages. At least Xiaomi got the white balance very nicely done. Xiaomi opted for only one single camera and locked down its flexibility, so there really aren’t much options to play around with.
Is it worth the price of USD $200 over at GearBest? I think it is, considering that it’ll be ~RM1k in Malaysia. It’s a really affordable smartphone, and I highly recommend it.
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