Redmi Note 13 Pro+ Review: It is more expensive than ever before but comes with more features than ever before as well. Will it help Xiaomi make its presence felt in the premium mid-segment, taking on the likes of OnePlus’ Nord series?
It started out as the go-to option for anyone wanting a great phone for around Rs 10,000. Then, it moved up the price ladder and hovered around the Rs 15,000 zone. In 2023, the Redmi Note took a massive leap, and with the Redmi Note 12 Pro+ 5G actually got close to the Rs 30,000 price point, and this year, has actually gone past it with the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G, which starts at Rs 31,999, almost three times the price from which the series had started.
For that price, you get perhaps the best-specced and most elegantly designed Redmi Note ever. But is that going to be enough for the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G to carve a niche for itself in what is known as the premium mid-segment? Let us find out.
Table of ContentsRedmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G Design and Appearance: The Note gets a really premium design
Nothing reflects the progression of the Redmi Note from mainstream mid-segment to premium mid-segment waters as its design. We had found the design of the Redmi Note 12 Pro+ 5G to be a little too plain and routine for its increased price tag, but no similar accusation can be leveled against its successor.
The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G is hands down the most elegant Redmi device that we have seen in the Indian market, and that includes the very eye-catching Redmi K20 series. It is the first Redmi Note to come with a curved AMOLED display, surrounded by narrow and symmetrical bezels. The curve is obvious (the phone has a screen-to-body ratio of an impressive 93.35 percent) but is not intrusive – one can grip the straight-ish sides of the phone without fearing any accidental touches on that display. The back of the phone comes with a very distinct block design around the triple camera unit (two huge lenses and a tiny one), which comprises three blocks of subtle different color shades – color-blocking, as Xiaomi calls it.
The phone is available in three colors. Of these, Fusion Black and Fusion White come with glass backs, but the eye-catcher is the Fusion Purple, which brings a vegan leather back to the Redmi Note for the first time. Whether that light purple back with blocks of light blue and pastel green looks good or not depends on your taste – some might find it a little too subtle (you cannot really see the blocks from a distance)- but it certainly makes the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G stand out from run-of-the-mill mid-segment phones, and actually gives it a distinctly premium touch and feel (the textured vegan leather back is great to grip). We have seen vegan leather in this price segment from Realme and Motorola as well, but Redmi’s implementation of it is easily the most striking. It does pick up smudges but stays relatively scratch-free, which means we can use it without a case.
There are other premium touches. That curved display is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus, generally something seen in premium flagships, and also comes with an in-display fingerprint scanner. The phone also comes with IP68 dust and water protection, which is the same as seen on the iPhone 15 Pro series, and means that this is one Note you can actually take swimming (it can survive in 1.5 meters of water for about 30 minutes)!
All of this is packed into a frame that is 8.9-9 mm thin, 161.4 mm tall, and weighs in the vicinity of 200 grams (light for its size). There is plenty of premium-ness going around the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G, thanks to that back and curved display. Enough to make a lot of people who saw the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G with us assume that we were using a OnePlus or Samsung flagship! Redmi Note 13 Pro+ 5G Hardware: Great display, middling chip, speedy RAM and storage
Within that stylish design lies some very interesting hardware. The curved display itself is an impressive one, with a resolution of 1.5K (2712 x 1220) that hits the middle ground between 2K and FHD. It is a brilliant and bright display with HDR10+ and Dolby Vision and supports more than 68 billion colors with an impressive peak brightness of 1800 nits. The display also has a refresh rate of 120 Hz and can adjust between four refresh rates (30/60/90/120 Hz) as per the content being seen to optimize battery life. The fingerprint scanner in the display can also record your heart rate, although this functionality is buried inside the settings.
The phone is the first in the world to feature MediaTek’s Dimensity 7200-Ultra 5G processor, a very good mid-segment performer. It is backed by up to 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and up to 512 GB of UFS 3.1 storage – impressive at this price point.
The cameras on the back are a mix of the amazing and the relatively routine. The star of the show is the main camera, which Xiaomi calls a “true 200 megapixel” Samsung Isocell HP3 sensor with OIS, a large f/1.65 aperture, and up to 4x lossless zoom. Its support cast is, however, not as impressive – an 8-megapixel ultrawide, a 2-megapixel macro sensor (yeah, right!), and a 16-megapixel selfie snapper.
The phone also comes with dual speakers with support for Dolby Atmos, although there is no 3.5 mm audio jack for the first time in a Redmi Note in India. Connectivity options include 5G, Wi-Fi, GPS and infrared.
