Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro 16GB Review

Redmi Note 3 Pro or sometimes referred to as Redmi Note 3 Qualcomm or Snapdragon is probably one of Xiaomi's most successful models and one of the most sought after smartphones this year. It managed to push the company a step up in the smartphone market and cement its position as a manufacturer of feature-packed devices with very affordable prices. After the release of Redmi Note 3 Pro, every other Xiaomi device is frantically expected. The model is not new and there have been other significant smartphones by the brand released after it (check out our Xiaomi Mi 5 Standard Edition and Xiaomi Mi Max reviews). However, we have decided to make a review of this handset and see whether we could add something to what is already available as facts and first-hand impressions.

Specifications

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro sports a 5.5-inch IPS display with 178° viewing angles and a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels. It graces an aluminum-magnesium alloy body that houses a 690Wh/l high-density, 4000 mAh Li-Pol battery. The latter is said to provide up to 270 hours of standby time and arrives with a fast charger. As long as it concerns the performance, the model relies on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 MSM8956 chipset with a hexa-core CPU that includes 2x 1.8GHz Cortex-A72 cores and 4x 1.2GHz Cortex-A53 cores. They are coupled with a 550MHz Adreno 510 GPU and 2/3GB of double-channel, LPDDR3 RAM, clocked at 933MHz. The built-in memory measures 16/32GB and is of the eMMC 5.0 type. It can be expanded by placing a microSD card (with a capacity of up to 128GB) in the second slot of the hybrid SIM tray. Xiaomi has staked on a 16-megapixel Samsung S5K3P3 ISOCELL sensor for the primary camera of the Redmi Note 3 Pro. It is coupled with a dual-LED flash, a 78° wide-angle lens with 5 elements and an f/2.0 aperture, and phase detection AF. The secondary camera is based on a 5-megapixel OmniVision OV5670 CMOS BSI 2 sensor with an f/2.0 lens. The device supports a wide range of network bands from the 2G GSM, 2.5G CDMA, 3G TD-SCDMA and UMTS, and 4G FDD- and TDD-LTE spectrum as well as VoLTE, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, 802.11n @ 5GHz, Wi-Fi Direct, Hotspot and Display, Bluetooth 4.1, USB OTG, GPS, Glonass and Beidou. Besides all else, the model is equipped with a fingerprint sensor and an infrared emitter. It runs Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with MIUI V7 on top. For the full list of Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro 16GB specifications you can check the model's page.

What's in the box

Redmi Note 3 Pro is placed inside a typical Xiaomi box - white, with the MI logo on top, photo of the device and the model's name below it. On the back there's some information about the specifications. The smartphone is placed in the top level compartment of the rectangular box and under it are the user manual, a pin for the SIM tray, a two-pin wall charger (US NEMA-1 plug standard), and a USB cable. The charger has two flat pins and no grounding area. Unless you use it in the US, Canada and some Latin American countries, you will most probably need an adapter in order to use it elsewhere.

Design, build and controls

Redmi Note 3 Pro features a metal body made of magnesium alloy and inside it there's an aluminum frame placed for additional protection. Thus the device is lighter, yet more robust and its internal components are better protected against impacts. Only for the antenna areas are used plastic caps. Inside, the antenna brackets have been made by using laser sculpture molding thus releasing more space inside the device. Besides this improved assembly process, the manufacturer has adopted a 120-point ultra-fine double sided blasting for refined surface and texture. All rear edges and corners are rounded as to ensure comfortable one-handed operation and steady grip. The improved internals have released more space to fit in the large 4000 mAh battery of the device, while retaining a relatively thin waistline. Actually, the thickness of 8.65 mm is average for a smartphone with such a battery and display size. The weight of 166 grams is also average, while in terms of width and height, Redmi Note 3 Pro is very compact as the 76 x 150 mm width x height measurements are below average. The device has an excellent build, especially when you have in mind its cheap price. It is available in three colors: silver with a white front, gold, and dark gray with a black front. We are reviewing a silver with a white front unit. The layout of the controls is classic. The hybrid, dual-SIM tray is on the left, while the single volume button and the power one are placed on the right frame. They are made of metal, protrude very slightly and are very tactile. On the top frame you'll see the 3.5 mm jack, a microphone hole and an infrared emitter. The bottom frame is where the USB 2.0 port is located. On the back of the device, vertically across the center you'll find the camera, dual-tone horizontal LED flash, the fingerprint sensor, the MI logo towards the lower end, and at the bottom - the speaker grille. There's a small bulge below it, so it does not get entirely blocked, when the device lies on its back. Above the display on the front there are the earpiece, light/proximity sensor, and the selfies camera. Below the screen a capacitive navigation bar is positioned with the buttons ordered as follows: menu, home, back. These can be customized from the Settings menu.

Display

Redmi Note 3 Pro features a 5.5-inch IPS display with an FHD resolution (1080 x 1920) and 178° viewing angles. The screen is fully laminated blending the protective glass, touch screen sensors and display panel into one, to avoid the air gaps and provide better colors, more pure images, a thinner and lighter display unit. Xiaomi has also adopted a pixel-level dynamic contrast adjustment, which means that each pixel can adjust the brightness according to the ambient light. There is also a useful reading mode, which makes the screen colors warmer, so it is more comfortable for reading, especially at night. The bezels are thick and there's no way to avoid noticing that. The display of our review unit showed a very good peak brightness of 456 cd/sq.m. and consistent static contrast ratio of around 1200:1 in all brightness levels because the black luminance values decrease almost proportionally with the white ones. The temperature of the white point is around 8000K, which is OK for a smartphone display. In case you need to tweak the color saturation, temperature or contrast, you can do so from the corresponding section in the Settings > Display menu. The screen shows very slight deviations in the green, blue and red range of colors and is actually very close to the ideal sRGB color space. The panel has a classic striped pixel structure and provides very good viewing angles, but with a bit of loss in brightness (especially at the horizontal ones).

Brightness	White luminance	Black luminance	Contrast	Color temperature
100 %	455.851 cd/m2	0.367 cd/m2	1242 : 1	8058 K
75 %	348.259 cd/m2	0.284 cd/m2	1226 : 1	8048 K
50 %	240.075 cd/m2	0.198 cd/m2	1213 : 1	8041 K
25 %	132.035 cd/m2	0.109 cd/m2	1211 : 1	8043 K
0 %	17.432 cd/m2	0.015 cd/m2	1162 : 1	8129 K

OS, UI and software

The unit we have received had a Chinese version of MIUI 7 and more specifically the 7.3.6.0 LHOCNDD. However, we have installed a global stable ROM (international version) of MIUI 7. The latest official version of the software for this device is the 7.3.7.0 LHOMIDD. MIUI 8 has been announced only a few days ago, but for this model it is only available as a Chinese version (currently). The present version of MIUI 7 installed on the Redmi Note 3 Pro is based on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop. This is a deeply customized UI, so if you haven't had a Xiaomi device before, you'll definitely need some time with it in order to get used to the different looks and additional functions. For starters, the lock screen provides a shortcut only to the camera app and has an icon that lets you set up the Wallpaper carousel. All notifications and the music app (if it's on) also appear on the lock screen by swiping the display from the top downwards. This can be changed from the corresponding section in the Settings menu. Typically for a Xiaomi device you get access to plenty of themes and wallpapers. There are five themes and much more wallpapers available on the device itself and you can choose from many more online - for free. There are a total of three ways you can access them - the Widgets menu, the Themes app (arrives pre-installed by default), and the Themes and Wallpapers options from the Settings menu. Besides tapping the menu button you can also zoom in with two fingers on the home screen in order to open the Widgets menu. By default the left button on the capacitive navigation bar is the menu one. A short tap on it opens the Widgets and Wallpapers menu. It contains more than the usual options. The first one is a tool to re-arrange the icons on your home screen and the successive ones. You can move more than one app simultaneously. The Widgets options come second and are quite extensive. Besides the standard ones, they allow you to place as a widget on your home screen the toggle icons from the Quick Settings (DND mode, Airplane mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.), shortcuts to some of the Settings options - Display, Accessibility, Location, or a shortcut to the entire Cleaner section. The third function of this menu is to setup a wallpaper and the fourth is to choose the effect, with which the screens open and close. A swipe down from the top of the display opens the Notifications screen and a swipe to the left leads you to the Quick Settings. Among all, the latter includes a Mi Drop, Read mode, Guest mode, a toggle for disabling/enabling the navigation bar, Sync option and an icon to the Settings menu. By default, the notification icons in the tray are hidden (appearing as three dots "..."). To make them visible, you have to switch on this option from Settings > Notifications & status bar. A long press on the menu button opens the Task Manager. A long press on the home button opens the "Ok, Google" voice search. The back button functions only as such. There's an extensive list of customizing options for them under Settings > Buttons. The Volume menu does not look as usual, too. It is designed as a circle, which changes depending on the app you are. If you are somewhere in the system, you get the "Ringer" volume icon. If you have the music app or radio on, then you will see the "Media" volume icon. As per standard, long pressing the power button activates the Power off menu. The Settings menu in MIUI 7 is restructured with many of the functions brought up a level or two up, others are simply re-grouped. As usual, the first set of options is the connectivity one - SIM card management, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections, etc. Under Wi-Fi you will see the options for Wi-Fi Direct, wireless display, and advanced Wi-Fi settings, including ones for the WPS. The second section of settings is called Device and is the most extensive one, providing most of the customizations. First is the Notifications & status bar set of options, which allows you to switch on/off the notification icons in the status bar, toggle the shortcut positions in the Quick Settings, etc. Each app, which is set to provide notifications, has a separate set of notification settings as well. The Wallpapers and Themes options provide you with access to the wallpapers and themes, which are already downloaded in the device and many more, which are available for free download. The source is huge and all wallpapers and themes are grouped in categories. You can access the Wallpaper Carousel option from here and the lock screen only. Then the Text Size options follow, allowing you to change the font size from extra-small to extra, extra-large. The Display settings include options for switching to Read More and adjust the color temperature, saturation and contrast. The Sound & vibration menu is different as well. You have a separate section for the various types of volumes, system sounds, ringtones and vibration, etc. From here you also have access to the enhanced audio and headphones settings, available from the music app as well. The Lockscreen & password menu is separated from the Security group of options. It lets you manage the behaviour of the lock screen and the device, when it has a smart cover on it, but most importantly, it includes the options for creating and managing fingerprint IDs. The fingerprint sensor works fast and setting up an ID is quick and easy, indeed. Once you set up one or more IDs, you get access to Child Mode, which can be also accessed as a separate menu from the Settings. The DND mode is self-explanatory and is placed a level up, separate from the Sounds menu. It is followed by an interesting Lite Mode. It actually changes the UI to one with huge icons and text size, which is very simplified and made for people who are visually impaired or elderly, who need a simpler way to interact with the device. Then the Additional settings menu follows. It is feature-packed and includes some useful stuff such as the One-handed mode, which lets you decrease the size of the displayed content corresponding to a 4.5-, 4-, and 3.5-inch display. From here you can also manage the behaviour of the LED Notification Light, the Headphones & audio effects (accessible from the Sounds menu and the music app) as well as the Buttons, that is to say - the navigation bar. Besides switching the positions of the menu and back buttons, you can also choose the behaviour of all three buttons when tapped or long pressed. The Accounts group of settings includes a separate menu for the MI account, a second section for all other accounts on the phone, including the Google one, and options for syncing data between them. Finally, there's the System group of settings, which lets you manage the system and installed apps. For the system apps, you get a separate group of settings, with which you can manage its behaviour. You can also access them from the Settings icon placed at the top right corner of an open system app. MIUI 7 brings a lot of tools and pre-installed apps besides all the standard ones. This is even more true for the Chinese version of the ROM, but here we're discussing the global (international) one. The home screen contains a row of docked apps that includes the Dialer, Contacts, default Browser, and Messenger. Above them are the Camera, Gallery, Settings, Themes, Security, Play Store, Google apps folder and Tools folder. On the second desktop are placed a folder with More apps, Calendar, Notes, Weather, Music and Explorer apps. The More apps contains the Facebook app, WPS office and two keyboards - Fleksy and SwiftKey. Actually, when you initiate the device you have to choose which keyboard to be your default one - the Google, Fleksy or SwiftKey. The Google folder contains all the standard apps and the Tools one is where you'll find the Mi Account, Mail, Updater, Clock, Recorder, FM Radio, Calculator, Compass, Mi Remote, Downloads, Scanner, Report Bug. On the home screen you also get by default the Ok, Google search and the clock widget, which you can remove simply by pressing and holding on them and moving them to the trash icon that appears. You can also switch their places. Some of the most useful apps are the WPS office, which works with PDF files and all types of files from MS Office. The Notes app is very user-friendly and besides adding text and flags, you can also attach photos to each note. The Explorer is actually the File Manager. MI Remote is the app, which controls the device as a universal remote control. It lets you choose what type of appliance you want to operate (TV, set-top box, air conditioner, etc.), then choose the brand of the device and adjust the smartphone to it. The barcode scanner uses the rear camera to scan barcodes and displays them on a separate screen with an option to look for them on the internet. There's an extensive MI Bug Report app as well. The Security app includes six main features - Cleaner, which removes duplicate and unnecessary files to save storage, Data usage manager, Block list, Battery manager, Virus Scan, and app Permissions.

Networks, calls and connectivity

Unlike Redmi Note 3, the Pro (Snapdragon) version of the model supports, what Chinese manufacturers often refer to as "full netcom" support. In this case, the smartphone supports 2G GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), 2.5G CDMA 800 MHz, 3G TD-SCDMA (1880-1920 and 2010-2025 MHz) and UMTS (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz), 4G FDD-LTE (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1800, 1900, 2100, 2600 MHz) and 4G TDD-LTE (1900, 2300, 2500, 2600 MHz) networks as well as VoLTE. Call quality has been excellent at all times, reception and signal strength - steady. The connectivity options of Redmi Note 3 Pro do not end here. The handset also supports dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, 802.11n @ 5GHz, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wi-Fi Display, and Bluetooth 4.1. All these features function properly, including the USB OTG and IR blaster. The latter allows you to use the device as a universal remote control for various household appliances such as TVs, air conditioners and so on. The model also works with the three main satellite systems - GPS, Glonass and Beidou, and has managed to detect a good number of satellites from all three with excellent accuracy.

Performance

Hardware-wise, Redmi Note 3 Pro is based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 MSM8956 chipset. The same is found on the Xiaomi Mi Max. It includes a Hexagon DSP and a hexa-core CPU that consists of two 1.8GHz Cortex-A72 cores and four 1.2GHz Cortex-A53 cores. Graphics are handled by a 550MHz Adreno 510 GPU. Our review unit has 2GB of double-channel, LPDDR3 RAM, clocked at 933MHz, which aids the chispet's performance. This is not the latest RAM generation, but it does its job. The eMMC 5.0-type on-board storage measures 16GB and can be expanded with up to 128GB by a microSD card. If you need more storage, you have to sacrifice the second SIM card slot and use only the first one. There's a 3GB of RAM/32GB of storage variant of the model as well. Our Redmi Note 3 (Snapdragon) scored 74939 points in AnTuTu, which is very close to Xiaomi Mi Max's result and is an excellent result for a mid-range device. According to Geekbench 3 and PCMark, the model yields to the Mi Max as well, but only with a little, scoring 1433/3636 and 5110 points, respectively. The 3DMark scores of both devices are very close. Of 16GB built-in memory, the user-available one measures 10.89GB. It's not the fastest type of memory, but provides very good reading speeds. Writing ones are slower than those of the Mi Max, but in other parameters the Redmi Note 3 Pro is faster. Because of the more advanced system-on-chip, you'll find a bunch of sensors on board the device such as accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, step detector and counter, game rotation vector, tilt, gravity and orientation. The rear-mounted fingerprint sensor is pretty sensitive and fast in unlocking.

Cameras

The camera app's home screen has a big circular shutter button with shortcuts to making a video, the gallery, the HDR and flash options, as well as the switch to the front-facing camera. Swiping to the right opens the camera modes, which include a Manual mode (allows you to adjust the ISO and white balance), Panorama, Beauty, Straighten, etc. It also contains a shortcut to the Camera settings. A swipe from the home screen of the camera app opens the list of 12 filters. Once you take a photo, you can edit it by rotating, cropping, adding filters, adjusting the saturation, highlights and contrast, and doodling. When you switch to video the camera modes include time-lapse and slow-motion only.

Primary camera

Xiaomi has opted for a 16-megapixel Samsung S5K3P3 ISOCELL sensor for the primary camera of Redmi Note 3 Pro. This type of sensor has been used in other smartphones we have reviewed such as the Vernee Apollo Lite, Ulefone Future, and Gionee S8, so you can check the camera's performance on those models as well to get a better idea of its qualities. The different result in output image quality just proves that it is not only about the sensor, but also the optics (lens) department and the software optimization made by the manufacturer. In Redmi Note 3 Pro, the sensor is combined with a dual ISP, dual-tone LED flash, a 5-element, 78° wide-angle lens with an f/2.0 aperture, and phase detection autofocus. By default the camera can make FHD videos, but the Open Camera app allows you to take 4K videos with it, so we have posted a 4K video sample below as well.

Secondary camera

The secondary camera is based on a 5-megapixel OmniVision OV5670 PureCel CMOS BSI 2 sensor - the same one is found on all Redmi (Note) 3 devices. It is coupled with an f/2.0 lens and has a 1.12-micron pixel size and a 1/5" optical format. The output images are with a resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels.

Audio

Similar to all other media apps in MIUI 7, the music one has options for offline and online content (once you sign in to your MI account). Besides the standard settings for listening to music and arranging the audio files, it also provides access to the Headphones & audio effects settings, which we have also mentioned in a number of occasions. These settings allow you to set remote buttons for the headphones, switch on the MI Sound Enhancer for headphones as well as tweak the sound output with an equalizer, which provides a number of pre-set music profiles (rock, jazz, classical, etc.). Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro does not have any special audio equipment, but just like the Mi Max shows very good audio results. As usual, for the test we have used the RightMark Audio Analyzer software and the TASCAM US-2x2 audio interface. The model excels in frequency response and noise levels, and its only downside is the THD + Noise, where it scores average. The rest of the parameters and the overall result are very good. The device is equipped with a single rear-mounted speaker. The sound is muffled when the smartphone is placed on its back, but if you listen to music from the speaker with the display facing down, it actually does not sound bad.

Test	Value	RMAA rating
Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB	+0.08, -0.02	Excellent
Noise level, dB (A)	-96.8	Excellent
Dynamic range, dB (A)	92.2	Very good
THD, %	0.0083	Very good
THD + Noise, dB (A)	-78.1	Average
IMD + Noise, %	0.0099	Very good
Stereo crosstalk, dB	-83.8	Very good
IMD at 10 kHz, %	0.016	Very good
General performance		Very good

Battery

Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro arrives with extended battery life management options as part of MIUI 7. The Security app contains a whole Battery management section, which includes four parts. The first is called Battery Profiles with three pre-set ones - default, marathon, and sleep. You can edit their settings or create a profile of your own. The second part regards the Battery Saver and lets you choose at what battery percentage it should be activated automatically and to which battery profile the device should switch to. The third part is a Schedule profile switch. If you have a recurring daily pattern of phone usage you can take advantage of scheduling the exact hours in which various profiles should be activated and deactivated, so you get the most out of the battery. The fourth part is the standard Schedule power & off function. In addition, from the Battery section in the Settings menu you get additional options such as setting the type of the battery indicator, manage the battery usage by apps, and so on. Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro features a 690Wh/l high-density, 4000 mAh Li-Pol battery. It is non-removable and as mentioned above Xiaomi has redesigned the internals in order to fit in the larger accumulator. According to the specs, it is meant to provide up to 270 hours of standby time and arrives with a 5V/2A fast charger. The battery needed 2 hours and 27 minutes to charge in full from 0% to 100%. The first 70% needed 1 hour and 22 minutes, while additional 12 minutes were needed to reach 80%, followed by 13 minutes to 90%. After the battery reaches 90% of its capacity, the charging speed significantly drops and the final 10% of charge took 40 minutes to complete. During our test period, the battery of the model showed some serious stamina, which has been proved by the excellent PCMark Work battery life score - 11 hours and 14 minutes! Of course, the test has been performed in accordance with Futuremark's recommendation of calibrating the display's brightness to 200 cd/sq.m.

Final thoughts

Our in-depth review of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro, a.k.a. Redmi Note 3 (Qualcomm), only confirms that this smartphone still has one of the best features/price ratios in the market. It is not by chance that up to now this is one of the most researched and sought after devices. It has a solid, non-frills design, good display, serious battery life, good camera for a device of this class, very good performance and many software features that turn it into a useful everyday assistant, while you're on the go. Moreover, the combination of hardware and software coupled with its price tag of around $135, make it still a very desirable and worthy smartphone to have.