Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ Review: Balance is everything

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ is the most powerful Redmi Note 13 smartphone that the company announced. Well, at least as far as globally available phones are concerned. This smartphone stands in front of four other Redmi Note 13 smartphones. We’ve reviewed the Redmi Note 13 4G and Redmi Note 13 5G, which are technically inferior to this handset. Is the extra cash worth it? Should you get the more powerful variant instead? Well, those are the questions we’re here to help you answer, in our Redmi Note 13 Pro+ review.

In some ways, the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ managed to surprise me. Whenever I’m reviewing budget smartphones, I always have their price at the back of my mind. It’s an aspect that always has to be included in conclusions, that’s for sure. I have plenty to say about this handset, after around 14-15 days of use. So, let’s get to it. We’ll kick things off with the phone’s design, and go from there. You can easily jump to a specific category if you want, though.

Table of contents

Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ Review: Hardware / Design

If you’ve used larger modern smartphones in the last couple of years, the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ will both look and feel familiar. Xiaomi decided to create a glass + metal slab here, which is quite comfortable in the hand. It has a curved display on the front and a curved glass panel on the back. Those two are proportional and curve into an aluminum frame. The bezels are quite thin, and the display camera hole is included, and it’s centered.

You will notice that all physical buttons sit on the right-hand side of the phone. The power/lock key is placed under the volume up and down buttons. On the back, you’ll spot three cameras in a rather interesting arrangement. The two on the left are larger and are stacked vertically. The third camera sits right next to them. All of them are placed in the top-left corner of the phone, though. Xiaomi’s logo is present on the back too.

It’s ideal in terms of weight

The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ that we reviewed has a white backplate and a metallic silver frame. All global variants seem to combine glass and metal, while in China a variant with a vegan leather backplate is also available. We’re focusing on the unit we actually had the pleasure of using, though, of course. It is quite slippery in the hand, as expected, but also quite comfortable. The phone weighs 204.5 grams, which is not that heavy, especially compared to large flagships these days. There is some heft to the phone, but not that much. It does feel premium, and yet not overbearing, and it doesn’t cut into your hand/finger or anything like that.

This color variant also hides fingerprints effectively

The backplate is glossy, but considering we reviewed the white unit, fingerprints, and smudges were not much of an issue. This phone did a great job of repelling those. The same cannot be said for its frame, though. The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ is IP68 certified for water and dust resistance, by the way. That’s always nice to see on mid-range devices, as it does give you a piece of mind. Overall, Xiaomi did a really good job designing this handset.

A charger is included, as is a case

Considering that many companies don’t include a charger with their phones, you’ll be glad to hear that a charger is included here. Furthermore, you also get a case in the box as well. It’s a nice rubber case, nothing special, but it will get you going until you get something else. I can see people sticking with this case, though, it’s nice and soft, and it does offer a decent amount of protection without being thick. We got a dark gray case in the box, which is not see-through, and chances are the same one is included with other color variants too.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ Review: Display

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ comes with a 6.67-inch CrystalRes AMOLED display. That panel is curved, and it has a centered display camera hole on it. The bezels around it are very thin. The display offers a refresh rate of up to 120Hz, and it supports Dolby Vision. The resolution on offer here is 2712 x 1220, which equals 446 PPI. Needless to say, this display is very sharp. Its brightness goes up to 1,800 nits, and the Gorilla Glass Victus protects the panel. You may also be interested to hear that you’re getting a 1920Hz PWM dimming here, so your eyes are being protected in the process. Three TUV certifications are in motion as well, and the display does support HDR10+ content.

The display is vivid, sharp & comes with a screen protector

Looking at it on paper, this display could just as well be used on a flagship phone. Is it that good? Well, yes, it is. I really don’t have any complaints about this display, especially in this price bracket. You’re getting an excellent display with vivid colors, deep blacks, and very good viewing angles. The touch response has been good for me, aside from something I’ll talk about in the performance section. I’m sure that had more to do with the SoC than the display. While the display is curved, the curve itself is not too aggressive, which is good to see. A plastic screen protector also comes pre-installed, which is always nice to see. You can always remove it if you don’t want it there. I also realized that the display does get bright enough, even in direct sunlight. Not as bright as some flagship phones out there, but… more than bright enough, I’d say.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ Review: Performance

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ is fueled by the MediaTek Dimensity 7200 Ultra. That is one of MediaTek’s best mid-range CPUs, and it’s generally a good performer. It’s backed by the Mali-G610 MC4 GPU. The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ did really well in performance-related benchmarks. It hit 1,097 points in the single-core benchmark on Geekbench 6, and 2,707 in the multi-core test. The phone managed to achieve 3,333 points in the GPU test. When it comes to 3D Mark’s Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, the device had a best loop of 1,182 points. The lowest loop (out of 20) resulted in 1,176 points. The phone did great as it had a stability of 99.5% during this testing. These are not the best results in general, as this is a mid-range CPU, but they’re quite good. The chip also didn’t throttle or anything of the sort.

The performance was very good, only the first post-update day was odd

When it comes to real-life usage, the phone did a really nice job, though I did notice something a bit odd. During the first day, post-HyperOS update, the swipe up to go home gesture was a bit laggy. It was also late to register. That was odd, but it simply fixed itself. Perhaps the system was still sorting things out in the background, or something. In general, the performance was smooth, though I did notice a stutter here and there. It was so rare that it’s not even worth noting, but I did notice it more here than on the Redmi Note 13 Pro 5G. That phone is fueled by the Snapdragon 7s Gen 2, though, so… I don’t know. Either way, it wasn’t as noticeable.

It handled multitasking really well, and even gaming

The phone did a great job of jumping between apps, opening them, and doing everything else you’d generally do with your smartphone. It handled multimedia consumption like a champ, the same goes for image processing, browsing, taking pictures, and so on. Other than occasional stutters, the phone did great. Some of you are probably wondering about gaming. Well, this chip is capable enough to handle rather powerful games, even though it’s just a mid-range CPU. Did the phone manage to handle them? Well, yes, though when I ran Genshin Impact, the temperature did go over 100F after an hour or so. The phone was very warm, but not too hot to use or anything like that. I also didn’t notice any problems with the gameplay itself. Do note that the settings weren’t tuned up all the way up, though. I tried to do that, but the lag did follow. You have to keep in mind this is not a gaming phone, and yet it can handle basically any game.

Benchmarks

We’ve talked about benchmarking results in the previous chapter and the results themselves can be seen below, compared to some other devices… including thermals.

Geekbench 6

3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test

Best loop: 1,182
Lowest loop: 1,176
Stability: 99.5%

Temperature Genshin Impact

Video export test

Export time: 33.17 seconds

Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ Review: Battery

Xiaomi has included a 5,000mAh battery inside the Redmi Note 13 Pro+. That is a good battery size for this handset, that’s for sure. It didn’t exactly shine in our battery drain tests, it was about on par with its closest sibling, the Redmi Note 13 Pro 5G. It did worse than the HONOR Magic6 Lite, though, for example, but that’s understandable considering the mammoth battery size inside the HONOR Magic6 Lite. All that is nice and dandy, but what about actual usage?

The battery life was good, but not great

Well, the battery life was good for me, but not great. I was able to hit the 7-hour screen-on-time mark on several occasions, but when I pushed the phone a bit harder, it hit around 6 hours of screen-on-time. Gaming pushes it further down. So, will the battery life be enough for most of you? Well, yes, as long as you’re not gaming. For transparency’s sake, I did watch TikTok, YouTube, browser plenty, emailed, messaged people, and edited some images on the phone. I also conducted a couple of short calls, and had brief YouTube Music listening sessions. When I fired up some games, that did affect battery life. An hour of Genshin Impact pushed the phone down to 5+ hours of screen-on-time.

It can fully charge in only 25 minutes

If you’re wondering about charging, the phone can charge really fast. So even if you do end up needing a charge during the day, it’s not a problem at all. It supports 120W charging, and a charger does come included in the box. Do note that you’ll need to fire up ‘Boost Charge’ mode in order to reach full charging speed, otherwise the phone charges at 60-80W, which is still plenty fast. What is Boost Charge? Well, your screen needs to be off, essentially, which is not exactly a big deal. Plug it in, and at its full charging speed the phone can fully charge in only 25 minutes.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ Review: Camera

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ includes three cameras on the back and one on the front. A 200-megapixel main camera is used here. It has an f/1.7 aperture, 23mm lens, and it’s a 1/1.4-inch sensor. We’re looking at a 0.56um pixel size here, while omni-directional PDAF is supported, as is OIS. Samsung’s ISOCELL HP3 sensor is used here. The second camera is an 8-megapixel ultrawide unit with an f/2.2 aperture lens and a 120-degree FoV. The third camera is a 2-megapixel macro unit with an f/2.4 aperture.

The main camera is actually great considering the price

So, are the cameras any good? Well, first of all, do keep in mind that we’re looking at these cameras from the perspective of this phone’s price tag, and market position. This is a mid-range phone. That being said, the main camera does a very good job during the day. It offers plenty of detail, good contrast levels, and vivid colors. Also, you won’t really notice that much noise. The only complaint that I had was in regard to the dynamic range. It’s not bad, but it’s not great either. You’ll get a much better dynamic range on the Redmi Note 13 Pro+’s more expensive siblings, the Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 14 Ultra. That is to be expected, though.

There’s no telephoto camera, but 2x performance is admirable

Considering that this phone doesn’t have a telephoto camera, you need to use that main sensor for telephoto shots. 2x shots look almost as good as 1x ones, while you will see the difference at 3x, that’s for sure. At 4x, well, you’ll see a further drop in quality. By that, I mean less detail, more noise, and images that look more artificial than they should be looking. Either way, I wouldn’t go over 3x, while 2x is really good.

The ultrawide camera is good enough during the day

When it comes to ultrawide shots, they’re just fine. There’s nothing great to say about the performance during the day, but the shots do look good. There’s enough detail in them, whiel the colors are also good. The dynamic range is not the best, but then again the same can be said for the main camera too. What we did notice when it comes to the ultrawide shooter is that images can get overexposed, but that’s not surprising.

You’ll likely want to stay away from the macro shooter

When it comes to the macro camera, chances are you’d like to avoid it. You can get a useful shot when the lighting is great, but it’s a 2-megapixel camera after all… so, it’s not the best. For what it’s worth, though, it’s one of the best 2-megapixel macro shooters we’ve handled, and there are many of them out there, unfortunately.

The main camera does great in low-light too

What about low-light performance? Well, first and foremost, the phone will detect low-light scenes on its own, so you don’t really have to do anything but hit the shutter. That’s how it’s supposed to be. You’ll be glad to hear that low-light photos look very good. I was expecting much worse, to be perfectly honest. There’s plenty of detail in them, while the dynamic range is good, and so are the colors. What’s best is that you won’t really get any noise in those shots. Forget about using telephoto in low light, though, well, other than 2x, but you’ll see a drop in quality regardless.

Avoid using secondary camera in low-light situations

You can use ultrawide in low light but be warned that it’ll activate low light mode every time and that the difference in quality is quite noticeable. The images do end up being a bit noisy, and underexposed, but at least there’s enough detail in there. Using the macro camera in low light is not something you should even consider doing. It can offer usable results in great lighting only, it falls apart in low light.

Main camera samples:

Ultrawide camera samples:

Macro camera samples:

Colors sample controlled environment:

The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ does well when it comes to video recording

The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ can shoot 4K videos at 30 fps from the main camera. The ultrawide camera shoots 1080p at 30 fps max. The video content from the main camera actually looks really good, especially for a mid-range smartphone. There’s plenty of detail, and the colors are also very good. If you do end up using a zoom of any type, you’ll see a considerable drop in quality. What’s good is that the phone keeps up good video performance in low light too. You will see a bit of noise, but other than that, it’s all good.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ Review: Software

This handset comes with Android 14 out of the box, and Xiaomi’s MIUI 14 pre-installed. The thing is, the moment you fire up the phone, you’ll likely have a HyperOS update waiting for you. Xiaomi ditched MIUI in favor of HyperOS a while back, and the update started rolling out to the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ a while back. I used HyperOS throughout my review, so that’s the only iteration that I’ll be talking about here.

HyperOS is similar to MIUI 14, but also an improvement at the same time

First and foremost, HyperOS is very similar to MIUI 14, that’s for sure. Xiaomi did ditch the name, but it did not change the essence of its software. Plenty of changes were made under the hood, and HyperOS did feel very responsive and reliable, but when it comes to looks and feel, you can still see MIUI. I have to say that with every iteration of Xiaomi’s software, I do see improvements to the looks of the UI itself. It looks more and more modern, despite the fact there are still some iOS-inspired elements included here.

There are hints of iOS here, still

Let’s just go over those real quick. By default, your apps will be displayed on home screens, without an app drawer. Do note that you can easily change that, however. Also, your quick toggles are in a separate place from your notifications, by default. That’s another nod to iOS, but that’s also something you can easily change. There are a number of such details in HyperOS, but the vast majority of them are customizable, so… you can get away from that look and feel easily, you’ll just have to tinker a bit.

The animations are excellent, and Xiaomi gives you choices

The animations in HyperOS are excellent. Everything is fluid and nice, and you can choose between three styles of animations, depending on how fast you want them to be. The default style was a bit slow for me, so I chose ‘Fast’, which improved things drastically. The point is, you have options. When it comes to general customizations, there are themes to choose from. Do note that you cannot easily change the accent colors in HyperOS, though, the same was the case with MIUI 14 as well. You can download a specific theme, and apply only a specific part of it to try and mess with accent colors, but it’s not as simple as choosing colors. Do note that the system will, however, pick up your wallpaper colors by default. The only problem is the manual color changing of accent colors.

All the features you’d expect are here

The Wallpaper Carousel feature is available for the lock screen if you’d like the phone to change your wallpapers every time you go to the lock screen. You can heavily edit the look of your home screen, which is a new feature of HyperOS. Always On Display (AOD) feature is also available, and it’s customizable… and so on. There are plenty of features you’ll find in HyperOS, and everything works really well, actually. HyperOS felt more responsive and stable than MIUI 14, to me at least, and it did feel different after I’ve been using MIUI 14 on the Redmi Note 13 4G & 5G.

I don’t have much to complain about when it comes to HyperOS, which surprised me a bit

When it comes to straight-up negatives, I don’t really have many to share. Xiaomi’s software finally matured, and it works really, really well. I did have a stutter here and there, and it did freeze on me on one occasion for a couple of seconds, but other than that, nothing out of the ordinary happened. The notifications also arrived in a timely manner, and so on. I can easily recommend HyperOS, that’s for sure.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ Review: Audio

The Redmi Note 13 Pro+ does come with a set of stereo speakers. Xiaomi didn’t really skimp out in this regard either, the sound quality coming from those speakers is very good. The speakers are also more than loud enough. In fact, the secondary speaker at the top has two exit points, which certainly helps. One is top-facing, and the other is front-facing (from the earpiece). We’ve played our own audio tracks in order to test its sound quality, and we were quite impressed for a phone that costs this much.

The sound is well-balanced, and even the bass is good enough

The sound is well-balanced. In general, the sound quality is good, and the vocals are coming through just fine, they’re not overpowered or anything of the sort. On top of that, you’re also getting good bass with that, which is the most impressive part. It is worth noting that Dolby Atmos is present, and enabled by default. We do not recommend turning that off, as the experience is noticeably better when it’s on. You end up getting a richer sound and the speakers end up providing a louder sound.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+: Should you buy it?

Is the Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ worth the money? Well, it all depends on what you’re looking for, but in general, I’d say yes… definitely. This phone is, first and foremost, really well-balanced. It provides all the basics and adds layers to them. It’s very comfortable to use, while it’s not too heavy. It feels like a quality product, has a great display, and a very solid main camera. Its speakers is also praise-worthy at this price range, and so on. Even HyperOS is an improvement over MIUI 14. This is an easy recommendation for me.

You should buy the Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ if you:

…want the best Redmi Note 13 series device
…need a good phone but don’t want to break the bank
…you need a budget phone that offers good camera performance
…display quality and size is important to you
…get your phones wet often
…don’t want to buy a charger separately
…want a large phone that is not too heavy
…want to see how MIUI improved via HyperOS

You shouldn’t buy the Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro+ if you:

…need the very best battery life
…want great ultrawide and telephoto cameras
…play a lot of demanding games