Mi, Xiaomi, Redmi, an understatement of adjectives remains when you try to describe these in the Indian smartphone market. Starting with the Redmi Note 4G, the company had never looked back ever since and has managed to win the hearts of India, and even the globe by presenting devices at jaw-dropping prices. This time around with the Redmi Note 10 Series, the bar has been set so high that the entire industry took it a while to realize, what just happened? We are eager to share our experience with the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max and here’s our full review of the same!
Design and Display – EVOL with LOVE
The Redmi Note 10 Pro Max straightaway impresses everyone with its looks. The glass back has a gradient hue finish which looks very premium and has a matte finish to itself. The edges of the device smoothly blend into the frame making for a very comfortable experience to hold it in your palm. Even with its massive 5000mAh battery, the weight distribution is so finely tuned that even after weighing 192 grams, it feels slightly lighter when you compare its in-hand feel with other devices.
Xiaomi calls this design EVOL, which is interesting and all the three devices in this series – the Redmi Note 10, Redmi Note 10 Pro, and the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max have these. Talking of EVOL, noticed something about this word? Read it again. Well, it’s just LOVE spelled backward and this is indeed a very clever naming scheme by Redmi as the device surely has a design that makes you fall in love. By no means it looks and feels like a sub-Rs. 20,000 phone.
Coming to the display, this is again one of the best aspects of the device. The Redmi Note 10 Pro Max’s 6.57-inch screen is an AMOLED panel with a refresh rate of 120Hz. High refresh rate, that too on an AMOLED? Yes! Redmi has managed to pull off a great stunt with this display, and it looks gorgeous! The colors look so rich on this panel, and it also comes with an HDR rating as well. We tested it with Amazon Prime, Netflix and other OTT platforms and HDR was perfectly compatible and definitely made a difference.
The refresh rate itself makes up for a very smooth scrolling experience, and you can also lower it to 90Hz or even 60Hz from the settings, but we set it to max 120Hz itself while using the device. The outdoor visibility again was exceptional as the panel gets as bright as 1200 nits, making texts and visuals easily recognizable in all sorts of lights. As icing on the cake, it also comes equipped with Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5 for protection. This has to be one of the best display experiences we have had on a device in this segment.
Cameras – Triple-digit megapixels?
The Redmi Note 10 Pro Max’s other highlight has to be its primary 108MP camera, a Samsung ISOCELL HM2 sensor. This camera uses pixel binning with a ratio of 1:9 and captures images at 12MP in regular mode, but you can choose to take photos at full 108MP resolution using the dedicated mode. Talking about the pictures, this sensor reproduces some great shots in daylight with colors pretty much true to life. The dynamic range is also good, and the software processing does a neat job of adjusting the exposure when there’s a bright source of light in the background.
At night, the images take a slight hit with a few grains but are very bright and maintain good lighting on the subject. There’s also a dedicated Night Mode for enhancing photos shot in the dark. This mode makes the images much brighter and pleasing to the eyes, and these are so good that you can directly post them on social media with no need for post-processing. The 8MP wide-angle lens increases the field of view by a lot, and there’s no major fish eye effect. The color tones from this lens are very similar to that of the primary sensor which is indeed a very good thing.
The macro lens, which mostly gets overshadowed on other devices as it has a less use case scenario as compared to the primary cameras, is actually something we played around with a while this time with the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max. The macro shots can go to as close as 2cm, and the results are very impressive! This has to be on the best macro lenses that we have used on a smartphone.
For videos, the primary sensor can go up to 4K 30fps, with lower resolution videos supported at even 60fps. There’s also a super steady mode at 1080p30fps. Videos from this camera maintain a good amount of details, and the dynamic range is preserved very well. Especially while shooting the sunset, or sunrise, the sensor managed well to adjust the exposure, and there we no issues of blown-out highlights here. Overall, the video and photo quality on the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max was actually very good and Redmi has surely set up high standards for other competitors.
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The 16MP selfie camera is housed by the hole-punch display, and this has to be the tiniest cutout we have seen on a display. The selfies, are again great and come with really good skin colors. There’s also a portrait mode that blurs out the background. The edge detection is pretty good, and the selfies are very sharp. Videos from the front camera are capped at 1080p only but are stable enough when you shoot while walking.
Performance – Too little or too much?
The Redmi Note 10 Pro Max comes with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G chipset, which is actually a slight upgrade over the Snapdragon 720G found on its predecessor. Taling straight about the performance, the chipset here drives the 120Hz display very well with no hiccups. In daily tasks like opening apps, browsing through social media, consuming videos, and quick replies, the device was very snappy and there were absolutely no lags or stutters of any sort. The memory management is excellent! The device was easily able to retain 8-10 apps in its background with no reloading issues.
But it’s Redmi, known for its performance after all. So we tested the device with some games as well. And what better than playing a few games of PUBG Mobile to take the chipset over its heels. In PUBG, the default settings supported are Smooth+Ultra that enables a 40fps gameplay. We landed at Sosonovka Military Base, Georopol, Novorepnoyne, and a few other crowded places with a few enemy teams in Ace lobby. The performance remains very stable with a constant frame rate of around 38-40fps even in close range fights. Overall, the performance is very very impressive on the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max.
ADS, no not talking about Aim Down Sight of gaming but it’s about the recommendations in MIUI which Redmi has a tag on itself for now. To a surprise, there we almost no ads in the UI. There are a few pre-installed apps, which can be easily deleted with a simple click. The only notifications we got were from GetApps, but those can also be disabled. So it’s a very neat experience with MIUI this time around and it’s so good to see such a feature-packed version of Android getting matured. The UI is responsive throughout and we don’t have any complaints with MIUI on the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max.
Battery – Redmi does it, yet again!
The 5000mAh battery on the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max can easily take you through an entire day of usage. while testing the phone, we had over 2 hours of media streaming, lots of social media browsing, a couple of hours of gaming, regular calls, and a few camera shots, all this with Airtel 4G sim inserted in the device. In this usage pattern, the screen on time was constantly between 6-7 hours on all the days we used the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max.
Redmi does ship a 33W fast charger in the box itself, so no Apple effect can be seen here. The provided adapter charges the phone from 0% to 100% in around 90 minutes, which for a battery of that size is actually very fast considering the rated power of 33 watts.
Verdict
The Redmi Note 10 Pro Max is a very good device with an amazing display, great performance, an awesome set of cameras tipped with a very good battery to assist with. The lack of 5G can be a concern for some, but considering that 5G rollout in India is nowhere close, and even after the rollout you still will be able to use 4G makes the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max a very practical choice as a primary device over its competitors.
