The Redmi Note 6 Pro: A Review of the Chinese Flagship

As I held the Redmi Note 6 Pro in my hands, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. With its sleek design and impressive specs, this Chinese flagship phone promised to deliver a superior mobile experience. But did it live up to the hype?

The camera is undoubtedly one of the standout features of the Redmi Note 6 Pro. With its dual-pixel phase detection autofocus, the phone's rear camera delivers stunning results in both daylight and low-light conditions. I was impressed by the massive difference in quality between the rear camera and the front selfie camera, which, while decent, struggles to keep up with the rear camera's performance.

One of my biggest pet peeves is the notch on the display. While it may seem like a minor issue, it can be frustrating when trying to navigate through menus or notifications. To mitigate this, the phone requires users to swipe down from the top to view all their notifications and things. It's a small compromise, but one that I wish wasn't necessary.

In terms of performance, the Redmi Note 6 Pro is a beast. Powered by the Snapdragon 636 processor, the phone delivers impressive performance and battery life. I found myself getting around ten hours of screen time with moderate use, which is almost three full days of usage if you're careful. The phone also supports fast charging, which is always a welcome feature.

However, there are some compromises to be made when it comes to the display. While the brightness rate may not differ significantly from its predecessor, the smaller earpiece can make calls sound slightly less clear than expected. I noticed this particularly when making calls on a quieter line.

Moving on to other features, the phone's AI capabilities are surprisingly robust. The front selfie camera delivers great results, even in low-light conditions, and the phone's face detection software is impressive. However, the rear camera sometimes struggles with focus, especially in certain apps like the stock camera app. This is a minor quibble, but one that I wish was addressed.

One of my biggest complaints about the Redmi Note 6 Pro is the bloatware that comes pre-installed. While it may not be an issue for everyone, I found myself frustrated by the sheer number of apps that came with the phone, none of which I needed or wanted to use. It's a shame, really, as this could have been a great opportunity for Xiaomi to showcase its software prowess.

In conclusion, the Redmi Note 6 Pro is a fantastic phone that offers an impressive list of features at a price that won't break the bank. While it may not be perfect – and there are some compromises to be made when it comes to the display and camera performance – it's a solid choice for anyone in the market for a new smartphone. Just be aware of the bloatware that comes with it, and you'll be golden.

But if you're looking to upgrade from the Redmi Note 5, I would say think twice before making the jump. The two phones share many similarities, including specs and camera performance. In fact, some features are identical between the two phones, which makes the Note 6 Pro feel more like a minor refresh rather than a full-fledged upgrade.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. If you're looking for a fantastic phone that won't dent your wallet, then the Redmi Note 6 Pro is definitely worth considering. Just be aware of its quirks and limitations, and you'll be golden.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enChris here and I have with me the Redmi Note 6 Prowhich you may mistakenly believe to bean upgrade over the Redmi note 5 the AIversion which is from China but it'sreally not it's just a case of Xiaomiadding a 19 by 9 aspect ratio screenwith a notchand now giving us an improvedfront-facing selfie cam with a secondary2 megapixel camera for your bokeh effectand that is really the only change apartfrom aesthetics to the housing of it a tweakto the design so looking out the lenseson the back of both of these devices thesame exact setup so we have thatsecondary 5 megapixel camera then wehave the main 12 megapixel one which Ibelieve will be the same Samsung that'son there now that has 1.4 micrometersize pixels it does have phase detectionbut it's dual pixel face detectionautofocus which tends to work reallyquick I mean that's something that'sused in flagship phones now when youlook at the chin of the two devices hereyou can see that it is a little bitsmaller on the redmi note 6 pro so thisone you can see has more rounded curvededges to to the glass which I can't sayI'm too fond of I prefer the way it's onthe ribbon note 5 so along the bottomwe've got a microphone and a loudspeakerthis is where the loudspeaker is there'sno secondary loudspeaker and yes theyshould have put type-c I mentioned thatbefore with the cable but it seems thatXiaomi is still using up their microUSBstock so one other change you can seehere they've moved the headphone jacknow to the top which I agree with thisdecision a decision I mean I like it onthe top now some people may disagreethat you want to have the cables on thebottom together and you can see thesecondary mic location slightlydifferent there as well and then we dohave IR transmitters at the top now thevolume buttons and the power buttonthey're made out of metal they feelexactly the same there is a slightchange here too with the way they haverounded the case around so it's morecontinuous so the case goes around likethat and it just to me it does actuallylook slightly better but marginally sowhen you take a look at the two deviceshere we do have a big difference withthe front now so they've used adifferent screen this is now 19by 9 aspect ratio we go to 20 megapixelfront-facing camera right here which isnew then the secondary 2 megapixel onewhich has helped with the AI featuresthat it has on the camera too so getyour blurred background so that's theone that captures the background thiswill be the main one to get all thedetail of course we've got a smallerearpiece on here the call quality so farwhen I've been testing it now I'venoticed that it doesn't sound quite asgood to me as the larger a piece you geton the note 5 but it's very minimal it'salmost hard to distinguish but it justsounds a little flatter to me and now Iwill check the weight - so it's 181grams which is 1 gram less than theredmi note 5 I thought there would beidentical so when you look at the phoneyea the bezels left and right they'renot the slimmest and the chin and thebottom is slimmer than redmi note 5 as Ipointed out but again still not theslimmest but you have to remember thisis about 170 970 us this phone here somy version is the 3 gigabytes of RAMmodel and you get about 21 gigabytesfree with the 32 gigabytes of storageit's MMC files back I will show you thespeed to that in just a minute but Iwanted to point out a couple of thingshere so Android 8.1 the security patchlevel as well as from July ISM knitsit's not too bad it's getting a littledated now and if we go to system updatethere is nothing coming through yet sono me UI 10 stable for this particularmodel just yet but I believe it'll becoming through very soon so I'm justgoing to go into what's called the setmenu here and point out the details ofthe camera so exactly the same as thatredmi note 5 here we have a Samsung mainsensor on the back the axillary isanother Samsung 5 megapixels the frontmain camera is again another Samsung youcan see there and the auxilary sensor isan omni vision that's that 2 megapixelone just use for the blurred backgroundsso we do have full screen gesture modeof course with this phone here with therecent phones we've got from the redmiseries and that is just activatedthrough the settings and i also wantedto point out that here is where you'llfind the hide the knotch seating that alot of people will probably want if youdon't like it like me personally so youcan disable it then it looks like aredmi note 5 butleave it on for the purposes of thisreview just so you can see it all thetime now with your notifications likeI've pointed out with the me 8 the me 8SC the poco phone that you're not gonnasee everything you're not gonna see yourbattery percent for example if you'reconnected up to 4G you need to swipedown for that basic information whileI'm course I'm on wireless at the momentso if I wasn't on wireless I went overto data now then you would actually see4G but your notifications you're notgoing to see them all so it's a littlebit of a pain in that regard there thatyou have to keep swiping down to seethings but you do actually get used toit now we've got full screen gestureswhich I'll just enable that right now soyou need to just swipe from the sidethat's going back you swipe up and holdthat to your recent apps and once I justget back out of this if you just swipeup then that will take you home so justgoing to launch chrome here and then goup again and you see you go home movingover to the screen now so I just wantedto point out the viewing angles first Imean they're typical for an IPS panel noproblems with that but why I have thiswhite image you can see not really IPSbleed but you get what I would call likeshadowing just around where the notchesnow currently this app has scaled to 18by 9 not the 19 by 9 aspect ratio butthe corners as well you see a little bitof a dark edge around there you canprobably see now that I've zoomed intoit you can see right there on thatcorner see how it's just a little darkerit's very minor but you get a bit moreof it around the knotch so when it comesto the brightness of both the ribbingnote5 pro and in this model here is itdifferent no they're actually about thesame 500 Lux that's what you're gonnaget the color accuracy of the screenwell the Blues may be a little bit offmore on the Ruby note 5 probe II do haveshow me zapped in there to correct thewhite balance to your own personalpreference there and the colors as wellbut overall this is a decent IPS panelhere with that resolution of 1080 by 20to 80 now I did of course test out theGPS and it's working fine it doesn'tlock on to all the satellites or willtake a lot longer to get them but theaccuracy is always around about 3 metersso no complaints with that therewhatsoever now the internal storagespeeds even though it is onlytwo gigabytes the speeds of this aregood its MMC 5.1 spec so at fast there'sno holdups with the storage nobottlenecks and the antutu score cameout to be pretty much exactly the sameas the redmi note 5 as expected eventhough that model has four gigabytes ofram they both have the Snapdragon 6-3six and 4G speeds well perfectly finehere no issues I found the reception'sfine I'm getting the same signalstrength as other mobile phones the samespeeds as well with the same SIM card sothat is all goodit does have LTE band 20 by the way samegoes for the wireless so he's testingout the wireless 5g just to try andgauge the maximum speeds so right herewas the closest to the router and thespeeds turned out to be very good andthen I did end up going right over tothe other side of the apartment wherethe speeds do drop off and that isexpected but it still maintains areasonable fast a hundred and fifty orso megabits per second so goodWireless range and speeds just to pointout to because I know a lot of peopleasked us can you run Joule 4G thesetting is right there under your SIMcards yes you can and as expectedWidevine support so this is for yourNetflix for example in Full HD no notgoing to be happening here it's justgoing to be standard definition becauseit's only security level three same goesfor a treble support that well it isgoing to support treble being Androideight and over we don't have access topartition a and B so a better life andcharge times now this is just anestimate here but you are looking atjust like the redmi note 5 more or lessexactly the same identical around nineto ten hours of screen on time if you'remostly on wireless now this is the testthat i do here it's rather demanding Ijust leave the screen on the whole timeit's configured to about 200 Lux as welland this is fine this is good betterI've really good better oh so it's gonnabe two days maybe in three days for somepeople charge time so on the stockcharger it's gonna take you two hoursand six minutes to fully charge that'swhat the 5 volt 2 amp one and then ifyou use a quick charge one Qualcommquick charge to respec that then lowersdown to approximately 1 hour and 55minutes so you're only shaving off about10 Maybe 15 minutes and going for the fastercharger so it's not even really worth itif you don't happen to have one so we dohave this why not Chazz I have pointedout many times here and it houses withinit the status LED in white only and itis very very hard to make out perhapsit's a fault with my unit but it's notvery bright which is a very minorcomplaint from me all right so I havetested out the 3.5 millimeter headphonejack and it is typical Xiaomi here andnothing to report on that the quality isreally good there's no interference isno static it's excellent sound outputfrom there 3.5 millimeter headphonejacks if in radio yes it does work ofcourse you just need to plug in it hitsit now voice calls out of that tinylittle earpiece at the top don't soundquite as good as the more traditionalwider one I think this has a slightlylarger speaker in there and they havecompensated compromise should I say withthe notch there a little so it doesn'tsound quite as good loudspeaker in thebottom it does sound okay it's not thebest you'll hear and it's only onespeaker but I'll give you sample of itnow actually no it does sound quitedecent when you factor in the price ofthis phone it's better than most of thissub $200 phones they're tiny a littlebit of distortion at 100% volume howeverokay I'm going to test out the faceunlock you know this is not idealconditions because I got a tripod acamera a microphone all in the way butlet's just give it a go and it should beable get my face now set it to theIndian region to get the face unlockinggear because I didn't see that optionwithout that so here we go I'm probablycompletely where you are to see that'snot that's way too hard for it to get myface like this but it's it addedsuccessfully how is that even possibleokay well it unlock now just looking atme oh that is that's crazy I think it'sunsecured super unsecure how did it readmy face properly from that distance Imean look at that image see that rightthere okay so not very secure I wouldsay face unlucky you probably hold aphoto of yourself and no unlock screenand yes I will demonstrate thefingerprint reader it is alwaysand always works it is really quick thisthing only takes about under a second orso so really quick no problems it'stypical show me with their fingerprintreaders they just always work well sothe phone performance is good I mean youprobably can't tell the difference Icould hand someone the four gigabyteversion of this and in the threegigabyte one tell the difference tell mewhich one is the four gigabyte andreally you can't see it now there is onething too that has just come through Idon't even know how but these apps justshowed out they weren't there when Ifirst started to record this now beenusing the phone for a day and they justshowed up I mean what got this sharechat thing Daley hunt and then Amazonand you see browser and phone P what thehell is that that's a bit dodgy theyjust suddenly installed themselves onthe phone I can't say I've had thishappen before now this was a sealed boxso this is the ROM unless I somehowokayed that without even knowing it toinstall that bloatware not good to seebut of course we are going to be able toremove this I hope that I can get rid ofmost of that rubbish there see that'sgonna go now but just not good to seethis so this is pub G on the lowsettings is what it recommends and Ithink that was just a bot there it isperfectly playable you can get killsgood framerate on these settings so wedon't unfortunately have the high framerate mode with this yet hopefullydevelopers will add that yeah I'mdefinitely playing against bods righthere you will notice that the notch ofcourse is blocking some things rightthere now if you do run it with the hidethe notch mode then it won't actuallyshow this because it's going to berunning in an 18 by 9 aspect but you canalso just flip it around too if you needto get close to that suffer from thefront-facing camera so you can probablyhear a little bit of wind noise now youdon't get any image stabilization withthe front-facing camera on 1080p eventhough it has enabled it clearly doesn'tseem to work because it shakes around alittle bit if I start to walk now I havenoticed that when you are in directsunlight that the changesand the exposure seems to be a lotbetter than previous generations ofxiaomi Mobile's that were really overexposing my face but remember in theother videos if you've seen them that myface would be completely white reallyreally white so that's not too bad theaudio quality as well I feel is it'sokay it's not too bad it has been in thepast really quite washed out with someof the phones so this is the stock appand you can shoot up to 1080p with theStarCAVE you get 4k with open camerawe'll give you a sample of that shortlybut I wanted to focus first on the 1080pfootage and you can see that theelectronic image stabilization enabledthis is working and it's doing areasonably good job now one thing that'smissing and don't know why it's not inthe settings is the focus so the focusnormally would be attempt to focus or mecontinue autofocus now you can see thatit is working pretty good but I havenoticed that times though that you can'tactually focus now that's quite rarebecause the sensor has that dual pixelphase detection autofocus you can seenow like okay there we go it seems to beworking no there we go this is theproblem I've been havingthat have noticed this just doesn't wantto work the focus which should not behappening here and if they had thatsetting we could at least set tap tofocus but let's take a look now at 4kfootage you can see that this quality isquite good the audio for the time beingis good and when I say for the timebeing because what happened with therebbe note 5 is some of the patches theover there updatesended up actually killing the audioquality adding noise cancellation to itso hopefully that is not going to happenhere because at the moment it's quitegood focus as well is working prettymuch perfect there as you'd expect withdual pixel face detection autofocus anda quick sample now what the selfie frontfacing camera that 20 megapixel one islike in low-light so I'm going to stepout away from the light even more I'vegot a few lights on the outside here wecan see it starts to get a little bitgrainy and choppy the main thing is itis not dropping any frames per secondwhich is good and the rear camera so youcan see massive difference now look atall that grain artifacts everywhere thisis low light very hard for this cameraof course any camera from a mobile phoneand these kind of conditionsyes the focus kind of goes all over theplace once we don't have good lifeokay so yes you guessed it if you readme note five a Iona the Chinese modelshould you upgrade definitely not thisis not an upgrade this is just arefreshed model really I don't even knowwhy it is called third read me six prothis should be called something like thereadme five knotch fission or somethingso we have a fantastic performance fromit from the snapdragon 636 great betterlife you're gonna get about ten hours ofscreen on time continual use otherwisetwo days maybe even three almostdepending on how heavy you use the phoneso the notch does have some compromisesas I showed so you need to swipe down tosee all your notifications and thingsthe screen is no better really then theroom in note fives it does have a betterwhite balance however out of the box butthey have the same brightness ratecamera is exactly the same I can't tellany difference whatsoever they using thesame exact sensor so there's nodifference there you go ao modes on thefront cameras AI on the rear the frontselfie yes as better so if you arelooking to buy one of these phones andyou don't have one of them you don'thave the redmi note 5 then by all meansgo for the redmi note 6 pro for thebitter selfie camps if that's what youwant and you don't mind the knotch sooverall it is a fantastic phone itoffers so much for the hundred andseventy price there really isn't much Ifound that I don't like about it apartfrom the step down slight step down andcool quality that is so the smallerearpiece you do notice it I notice itfrom what I've made calls on this oneand moving over that doesn't sound quiteas good now I'm being very picky withthat the other thing is the status LEDwhich is located right up in here youcan hardly even see it when it's on itsvery dull for some reason I don't knowwhy there is and the note speaker isokay now the other thing I did noticewith the camera that sometimes the focusisn't quite as good as it should beconsidering it as dual pixel facedetection autofocus it should worksomething a little bit better but that'sonly with the stock app it seemed towork much better with open camera youalso get 4k electronic imagestabilization and good audio qualitymy biggest complaint would have to bethe bloatware that's self installeditself on there for some reason I don'trememberokaying this I don't remember going intome store or anything like that it justsuddenly appeared I had about four orfiveapplications without any OTA update overtheir updates nothing it just camethrough so not good to see thathopefully show me and not changing theirtune and auto installing bloatwareputting more adverts and things likethat on the run that's not a good movebut besides that I mean for the priceyou can't go wrong with a phone likethis it all depends if you like they'renot sure or not this one is stillfantastic so please do check my reviewof the redmi note 5 thank you so muchfor watchingand I do hope to see you back in thechannel soon bye for now\n"