It’s a brand-new Note 9 through and through, but software and performance issues leave this Note in the dust, well behind the Pro and Pro Max.
Sheldon PintoJul 24,2020 12:28:07 IST
There’s just one too many Redmi Note smartphones this year. The Redmi Note 9 Pro gets you a good-looking budget smartphone with a capable camera and excellent battery life. The Redmi Note 9 Pro Max “maxes” things out by getting features that not every buyer in the budget segment may crave, like a 64 MP rear camera, a 32 MP selfie camera, and 33W fast charging. But it’s good to have them, if you are ready to pay a little more. And then, we have the phone that started it all, the one that’s supposed to get you more bang for your buck than any other smartphone in the budget segment, the basic Note 9.
Over the years, the standard Note model was based on the tried-and-tested Xiaomi formula of getting you the best possible hardware at a price near 10K. From the Note 5 on, Xiaomi expanded the Note range to a standard model and a new ‘Pro’ model that got you that extra hardware that made it all worthwhile. With the Note 8 Pro, Xiaomi hit it out of the park, getting buyers a monstrously powerful smartphone with a MediaTek G90T inside that was a gaming beast, got you a crazy-good camera and looked good too. And with the Snapdragon 720G, that tradition continues with the Note 9 Pro and the Note 9 Pro Max. So where does that leave the basic Note 9?
This year, Xiaomi went with gaming-grade MediaTek Helio G85 chipset, and the unit I reviewed comes with 6 GB RAM. A step (or two) down from the G90T, I expected a lot, but it just refuses to deliver. Thankfully, there’s other things going for this basic Note.
Let’s start with the things I liked about the new note 9:
What I liked the most about this phone is the battery life. With a 5,020 mAh unit inside and Xiaomi’s battery optimisations, the Note 9 easily lasted a good one and half day on a single charge and this includes a bit of gaming, photographs, lots of messaging, emails and the lot. Add an hour or two of gaming to the mix (which you probably won’t end up doing) and you can bring that figure down to a proper day (24 hours) with some battery life left to spare. This is quite impressive.
And just because it’s a budget smartphone does not mean that it should get a budget charger. This one goes with a fast-enough 22W charging on paper, which is actually a better deal than the more expensive Redmi Note 9 Pro that gets you an 18W charger in the box. While 22W charging may sound exciting, you have to remember that it has to power up a massive 5,020mAh battery. Long story short, the phone goes from 0-100 percent in about 2 hours and 20 minutes — which is not bad — but is about the same as the 18W charging speeds of the Note 9 Pro. Turns out that the phone needs a software update until it can take advantage of that 22W charger. So, until the update arrives, you will be charging this phone at 18W. The good thing is that once you have charged it up, battery anxiety will be the least of your worries.
It’s a budget phone that’s made entirely of plastic, but this Redmi Note surely impresses with design. That unibody polycarbonate shell literally holds the phone together, and it’s finished to perfection around the ports, corners and even around the display.
