Last June 8, Xiaomi officially unveiled two new additions to its Redmi Note 12 series – Redmi Note 12S and Redmi Note 12 Pro. The Redmi Note 12S carries a suggested retail price of Php12,999 while the Redmi Note 12 Pro is priced at Php14,999
The Redmi Note 12 Pro and Redmi Note 12S will be available in all authorized Xiaomi stores, and online via Lazada and Shopee starting June 9, 2023. Early buyers can also avail of a free Xiaomi Powerbank when they purchase any of the models from June 9 to 18, 2023.
After our first impression and unboxing of the Redmi Note 12 Pro, we continue our hands-on review as we go deep to uncover its features, performance, and show you the quality of its quad camera.
So, let’s dive into the full review.
Design And Build Quality
The Redmi Note 12 Pro will have four available colorways Star Blue, Glacier Blue, Polar White, and our review unit in Graphite Gray.
The phone weighs 201.8 grams which is still lighter than most phones with such large displays and it has a thickness of 8.12mm.
The Redmi Note 12 Pro offers a more flat frame minimalist design on both the front and back with more subtle curves around the edges for better grip and comfort in your hand.
The flat side frame is made of aluminum with a matte finish that adds a reliable grip to the phone. Although, we prefer to use the clear protective case included in the box for a much more comfortable hold and protection.
Going around its edges, it’s a pleasant surprise to see that the device has a USB-C port for charging, a 3.5mm audio jack to connect your wired headphones, and an IR blaster to control other smart devices. It also has dual stereo speakers, with a downward-firing speaker at the bottom and a second on the top of the phone.
The Redmi Note 12 Pro gets an IP53 rating against dust and light splash resistance like rain or shower. We would advise not to submerge the phone underwater. So it’s not exactly waterproof but we appreciate it having that kind of protection.
The front display has a Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for added protection against scratches and shatters resisting drops of up to 1.5 meters on hard and rough surfaces. It has a punch-hole notch design found on the top center and the bezels all around the display are thin except for the bottom chin which is slightly raised.
Good thing the phone’s screen comes with a pre-applied screen protector.
The back panel is made of durable polycarbonate plastic material and appears attractive with that matte frosted finish. It also has an anti-glare coating to hide fingerprint smudges on the phone.
You’ll have the quad cameras together with the LED flash housed in a rectangular camera island protruding out at the top left corner. The camera housing has round edges and a glass-type surface for a more elegant look.
The main camera has a large silver metal ring design around it while the other three cameras and LED flash are encased inside the glass surface.
Still at the back, you’ll easily spot the Redmi logo and certification marks found at the bottom.
Display
The Redmi Note 12 Pro has impressive display features, especially at this price point.
The screen utilizes a 6.67-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels.
The refresh rate can support the standard 60Hz to conserve more battery or up to a maximum of 120Hz for a smooth scrolling experience and lag-free transitions.
The screen is certified for HDR10, Dolby Vision content, and supports DCI-P3 wide color gamut space for more saturated and vivid colors across the board. It has a contrast ratio of 4,500,000:1 providing darker black levels and saturated colors.
The Redmi Note 12 Pro can produce up to 1100 nits of maximum peak brightness to use outdoors even in bright conditions.
With the sunlight mode, in case you’re using the phone under direct sunlight the display will provide an amount of extra brightness for a much better view.
To reduce eyestrain, the display has a reading mode feature to reduce the blue light to help protect your eyes as well. It has two sub-modes: a classic mode and a paper mode that emulates the texture of a real paper.
With the additional SGS eye care display certification, the Redmi Note 12 Pro don’t only exude great graphics on its screen but also protection and ease of viewing for the users.
Overall, the rich and vivid colors of the AMOLED display of the Redmi Note 12 Pro helps in playing games, watch our favorite video content, and social media come to life. The screen also retains plenty of detail and some impressive viewing angles.
Performance
The Redmi Note 12 Pro is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G with clock speeds up to 2.3GHz. It is fabricated on an 8Nm process technology that’s power-efficient, consumes less battery, and will produce less heat.
It has 8GB RAM with a virtual memory expansion of up to 8GB. You have a hefty 256GB internal storage that can accommodate more apps and photos. But if you still need more storage space, it’s expandable up to 1TB using a microSD card.
To ensure in keeping up with your demanding tasks from hours of playing games, watching videos, and multitasking on the phone. The Redmi Note 12 Pro has LiquidCooling technology using a heat pipe plus a multi-layer graphite sheet to keep the temperature low.
Here are our benchmark scores on the Redmi Note 12 Pro.
- Geekbench 6: 529 Single-Core / 855 Multi-CoreCPDT Benchmark: 195.25 MB/s Sequential Write / 289.10 MB/s Sequential Read
- PCMark: 10266 Work 3.0 Performance
- 3D Mark: 1123 (6.70 fps)
When it comes to gaming, the Redmi Note 12 Pro can easily handle most casual titles and even some of the most demanding games like Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, PUBG, Call of Duty, etc.
However, I just encountered some slightly dropped framerates in Asphalt 9 only. But with the other games mentioned like Call of Duty, Mobile Legends, and PUBG, they are relatively smooth and very playable.
For a better gaming experience, the phone has a Game Turbo sidebar (swipe right at the top left corner) to optimize your gameplay. It can boost your performance by clearing memory, freeing up storage space, and monitor your performance. There’s also a voice changer, a Game DND button, a record button, and a cast button to allow connection to an external monitor.
Audio on the Redmi Note 12 Pro has dual speakers which can slightly expect a room-filling sound if you turn the volume high. It’s loud, vocals are crystal-clear, a decent presence of bass, and detailed music can be heard nicely.
For an immersive sound experience, the phone also has Dolby Atmos® spatial audio technology with presets and a graphic equalizer to choose your preferred settings for different types of music.
If you want better sound quality, you can always use a Bluetooth audio device, wired headphones, or the 3.5mm audio jack for an external speaker.
In general, it makes the phone great for casual videos, listening to your playlist, or browsing your social media.
Camera
On the camera department, you have a quad camera setup on the rear comprising of a 108MP main camera with an aperture of f/1.9; an 8MP ultra-wide lens with an aperture of f/2.2, and a 120-degree viewing angle; a 2MP macro with f/2.4 aperture; and a 2MP depth camera with f/2.4 aperture.
The camera sensor of the phone is using a Samsung ISOCELL HM2 with a sensor size of 1/1.52-inch. The sensor is also armed with a nine-pixel binning technology, which combines nine small 0.7?m pixels into one large 2.1?m pixel to absorb more light.
Opening the camera app, you have six shooting modes ready for use – Pro, Photo, Video, documents, Portrait, and Night modes to capture photos when you’re in a low-light environment.
Click the more options will open other extra shooting modes which include the 108MP, Short Video, Panorama, Slow Motion, Time-Lapse, and Long Exposure.
By default, you have 0.6x, 1x, and 2x zoom switch options accessible on the camera app. The optical zoom can go as far as up to 10x.
At the top end of the viewfinder, you have a flash mode switch, an HDR switch, the AI toggle, a Google lens switch, and a hamburger menu for the other camera settings.
The photos we took from the main camera are excellent, especially during bright conditions. The photos came out with enough detail, high contrast, lesser noise, and not too oversaturated colors. The dynamic range is decent also.
We now know that there’s a dedicated Night mode for low-light situations. It really is a big help in making your photos a bit brighter with good-exposed detail in the shadows, and the presence of noise is much less.
For your selfies, the front camera offers a 16MP with an aperture of f/2.4.
The quality of the 16MP front-facing camera can also produce some really nice selfies good for social media posting. The details and exposure are very good as well as the skin color is accurate.
Even in portrait mode, you get good results with just the right amount of bokeh between the subject and the background.
If you want a natural selfie make sure you turn the beauty mode off.
To prevent banding which is a vertical or horizontal lines appearing when photographing images on TV and monitor screens. The camera app has an anti-banding feature either in auto, 50Hz, or 60Hz to ensure the frame rate is the same as the country’s electrical grid.
Check out the range of camera samples we captured on the Redmi Note 12 Pro.
0.6x Ultra-wide, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
1x Photo mode, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
2x Photo mode, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
10x Photo mode, Outdoor, Sunny Weather
1x Photo mode, Indoor – Ambient Lighting
1x Photo mode, Indoor – Ambient Lighting
1x Photo mode – Indoor, Ambient Lighting
1x Portrait mode – Indoor, Ambient Lighting
1x Night Mode – Outdoor, Low Light
Selfie, Outdoor – Cloudy Weather
Selfie, Portrait mode – Cloudy Weather
Selfie (Right photo with Flash On), Low Light
Selfie, Indoor – Ambient Lighting
1x Night mode, Outdoor – Low Light
1x Photo mode, Outdoor – Low Light
You can record videos at ultra-high definition with up to 4K resolution at 30fps only. You can also opt for a 1080p resolution with available frame rates at 30fps or 60fps. A 720p resolution is also possible at 30fps.
Here’s our video test sample on the Redmi Note 12 Pro.
To stabilize your shaky video recordings, there’s a video steady feature on the camera app found on the top. Enabling it will automatically set your resolution at 1080p at 30fps with a little image cropping.
Software
The Redmi Note 12 Pro is running the latest MIUI 14 based on Android 12.
You have a bunch of apps that are already pre-installed on the phone like Amazon Shopping, Booking.com, Facebook, Lazada, LinkedIn, Netflix, Spotify, TikTok, and WPS Office. There are around 7 games that you can already play, including Google apps, and Xiaomi’s very own proprietary apps.
Customization can be done on the MIUI 14, it lets you choose the style of the Always-on display, change its wallpaper, add widgets, and a theme store that can offer a wide selection of designs. In case you want to change to a specific theme, the general appearance will not only change but the ringtones and icons as well.
You can choose between two control center styles on how your notification shade and control panel will be viewed. The old version will already have both visible when you swipe down from the display. As for the new version, just swipe down from the left to view the notifications and swipe down from the right to open the control panel.
It can open an app in a floating window style or enable the sidebar for quick access to an app by simply swiping to the right edge of your screen You can only open one app for the floating window at a time.
It has privacy-related features to allow, set and adjust the permissions of your apps to protect data. The software carries a Security app to check and maintain a healthy software status
To sum up, the MIUI 14 on the Redmi Note 12 Pro runs smooth, and snappy, plus able to customize or adjust pretty much everything to your liking.
Biometrics and Connectivity
The Redmi Note 12 Pro has a fingerprint scanner built into the power button and facial recognition. The setup is very easy, fast, and much more reliable as an added layer of security for your device.
Both biometrics are incredibly fast. There’s even a setting to change its scanning type either on press or touch.
It also has a regular screen lock with a pin, pattern, and password.
As for its connectivity, the phone comes with all the advanced connectivity features like Bluetooth 5.1, NFC, Wi-Fi, USB Type-C, Wi-Fi, and an IR blaster to control your smart devices. Connecting my audio devices via Bluetooth is smooth sailing too.
The Note 12 Pro also supports all the essential frequency bands with a 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE for telephoning and mobile surfing.
Battery
Powering the Redmi Note 12 Pro is a 5,000mAh battery with support for a 67W turbo charging feature.
During our charging test, 15 minutes on the 67W charger will replenish 33 percent of the dead battery. The next 15 minutes of charging just went up to 61 percent. It took us only 59 minutes to juice up the phone from 0 to 100 percent. And, wow this is not bad at all!
To save extra power, the phone has a battery saver and ultra-battery saver mode which aims to limit power consumption. However, turning on this feature will limit apps, performance, background data usage, etc.
There’s no wireless charging feature but it can do reverse charging to power your other devices.
Using the Redmi Note 12 Pro on moderate use lasted for a full day, but it can stretch till the next day if you only use your phone occasionally.
If you will do more tasks on the phone like updating your social media apps, answering e-mails, browsing the web, watching videos, and playing online games for hours. You will probably need to reach for the charger by early evening. Again, we have no worries as we knew that the Redmi Note 12 Pro can charge the phone very fast.
What We Like
- AMOLED Display
- 120Hz Refresh Rate
- 5,000mAh Battery
- 67W Turbo Charging
- Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos
- Virtual RAM Expansion Up To 8GB
- Expandable Storage Up To 1TB
- Quad Camera Setup
- LiquidCooling Technology
- SGS Eye Care Display
- Dual Speakers
- IR Blaster
- Fast Biometrics
- 4K Video
- Stable and Smooth UI
What We Want
- Dedicated Card Slot
- 4K at 60fps
- Wireless Charging
- Less Bloatware
Conclusion
The Redmi Note 12 Pro is an interesting all-rounder smartphone with a 120hz AMOLED screen, good sound quality, snappy OS, bigger storage space with expandable capabilities, Virtual RAM expansion, and a large plentiful battery with a nice fast charging feature.
The Redmi Note 12 Pro offers a sharp, vibrant, and colorful AMOLED screen with Dolby Vision. It has support for a 120Hz refresh rate producing smoother motion and transitions. Plus, you get dual speakers with Dolby Atmos for superior studio-quality sound. With that being said, I personally enjoy playing games and watching my favorite video on the screen of this phone.
The camera experience and image quality are consistently good which can even record videos at 4K.
Although the MIUI 14 operates very smoothly it uses an Android 12 version. However, we might see Xiaomi upgrading it to Android 13 in future updates. Instead of a hybrid card slot, a dedicated card slot would also be fantastic to have on this phone.
Still, the Redmi Note 12 Pro is a very well-geared phone for the price of Php14,999. And given the price point on this phone, it’s impressive for what it has to offer. That’s why we do recommend the Redmi Note 12 Pro if you want to upgrade or try a new phone.
Redmi Note 12 Pro – Full Specifications
- Price: Php14,999
- Colors: Star Blue, Glacier Blue, Polar White, Graphite Gray
- Dimensions: 164.20mm x 76.1mm x 8.12mm
- Weight: 201.8g
- Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon® 732G Octa-core CPU, up to 2.2GHz
- GPU: Qualcomm® AdrenoTM 618
- LiquidCool Technology
- 8GB+256GB
- LPDDR4X RAM + UFS 2.2 storage (Expandable storage up to 1TB)
- Software: MIUI 13, based on Android 11
- Display: 6.67″ FHD+ AMOLED DotDisplay
- Refresh Rate: 120Hz
- DCI-P3 wide color gamut
- Resolution: 2400 × 1080 pixels
- Brightness: 1100 nits peak brightness
- Contrast ratio: 4,500,000:1
- Screen Technology: Supports Dolby Vision®, Sunlight display, Reading mode 3.0
- Protection: Corning® Gorilla® Glass® 5 front, IP53 Splash-proof tested
- Rear Camera: Main 108MP f/1.9, 8MP ultra-wide f/2.2, FOV 120°, 2MP macro camera f/2.4, 2MP depth camera f/2.4
- Camera Sensor: Samsung HM2 (0.7?m pixel size, 2.1?m 9-in-1 Super Pixel size)
- Sensor Size: 1/1.52″
- Front Camera: 16MP f/2.4
- Video: 4K 30fps, 1080p 30fps/60fps, 720p 30fps
- Biometrics: Side fingerprint sensor, AI Face Unlock
- Audio: Dual speakers, Dolby Atmos®, 3.5mm headphone jack
- Battery: 5,000mAh (typ)
- Charging Feature: 67W turbo charging
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi Protocol: 802.11b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.1, NFC2, IR Blaster
- SIM Slot: SIM 1 + Hybrid (SIM or MicroSD)
- Network Bands: 2G: GSM: 850 900 1800 1900 MHz, 3G: WCDMA: 1/2/4/5/8, 4G: LTE FDD: 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/20/28/66, 4G: LTE TDD: 38/40/41
