Smartphone reviewRedmi Note 13 Pro+: Xiaomi's new smartphone is perfectly fine, but is that good enough?
Smartphone review
Redmi Note 13 Pro+: Xiaomi's new smartphone is perfectly fine, but is that good enough?
According to Calcalist's smartphone reviewer Itai Smuskowitz, the Redmi Note 13 Pro+ is a basic and somewhat expensive mid-range device: the screen, camera and performance are fine, but there's not much beyond that
Top Line:
If I have to define Xiaomi's Redmi Note 13 Pro+ in one word it would be - “fine”. All in all, it's a mid-range device that gets the job done, even though it does so at a largely basic level. To its credit is its good protection and the integration of eSIM, but the performance is quite mediocre and the Xiaomi interface is annoying, at least until you learn to turn off some of the various notifications.
The official price of over $500 is a bit expensive compared to the competitors, not to mention that Xiaomi itself also has cheaper devices that compete in the same category and are more successful.
Details:
The smartphone manufacturers are fighting each other, and sometimes also themselves, when they develop mid-range devices at relatively affordable prices, but make sure they are not too successful and compete with the more expensive models.
It seems that at Xiaomi the internal competition is even tougher. I have previously mentioned the multitude of brands that the company owns - Redmi, Poco, and "regular" Xiaomi, and under each such brand there are several series' and models.
Structure and design: rounded, but less so
It had seemed that the smartphone manufacturers decided to abandon the screens with rounded edges, but it is back in this model.
The Note 13 Pro+ is a large device, close in dimensions to the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the iPhone 15 Pro Max, with a 6.67-inch screen. It also feels a little heavy, with a weight of about 200 grams.
The design itself is standard: the selfie camera is just a small circle at the top of the screen, on the right side are the device's power button and volume keys, the left side is empty, at the bottom there is a charger connection and a SIM drawer. Absent from the list: a standard headphone connection - here Xiaomi actually aligns with the industry and gives up this connection. On the other hand, the device still includes an infrared light and a remote app to operate various devices, and more importantly - there is also an eSIM.
The Note 13 Pro+ offers good protection: Gorilla Glass Victus for the screen and compliance with the IP68 standard for protection against dust and water, so the device should also survive immersion in water to a depth of 1.5 meters for 30 minutes. The kit also includes, as usual, a silicone protector.
Hardware: Loading is very fast, performance is not brilliant
The device is equipped with a Mediatek Dimensity 7200 Ultra processor, with 12 gigabytes of memory and 512 gigabytes of storage. This is a specification that seems standard today for a mid-range device, when until about a year ago this amount of memory and also the storage volume were at the upper end of this category of devices, if they were even available in relatively cheap models.
It's not a Qualcomm flagship processor, and Mediatek also has a newer, more powerful model, but it will suffice for most consumer applications. The Note 13 Pro+ felt a little slow in response in some cases, but nothing that makes it useless or frustrating.
The screen is good, and reaches a high level of brightness of 1,800 nits, meaning there is no problem using it even under direct sunlight. So why is it merely good? The color display is not vivid and not prominent enough. You can change the colors in the settings, but I didn't feel a significant difference between the different modes.
The speakers are fine, nothing more than that: you can hear well, but in some cases the sound is not of high enough quality and even a bit jarring. In any case, the speakers in most to all devices do not compete with an external speaker or headphones, and the Note 13 Pro+ is no exception in this respect.
All this is powered by a 5,000 mAh battery, and the feeling is that it isn't being utilized well enough. With not particularly intensive use, it lasted a whole day - not a bad figure, but other devices equipped with a similar battery lasted even longer. Xiaomi included a 120 volt fast charger in the kit that does an impressive job: 5 minutes were enough to fill the battery from 15% to about 40%, after fifteen minutes from the start of charging it had already reached 80% and after about 20 minutes the battery was completely full.
Software: Loads of apps
The Note 13 Pro+ runs Android 13 (although version 14 is already available) with Xiaomi's MIUI 14 interface. After the initial activation and installation, the phone was loaded with various applications, without my choosing or being asked - from Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and Booking.com through various Xiaomi tools to a large amount of games, some of which are installed and some of which are actually suggestions or recommendations for installation.
I've already reviewed plenty of Xiaomi devices, but somehow this time it felt more cluttered. Even during the use of the device, you are offered games over and over again, and Xiaomi should tone this down.
Even in Xiaomi's application for managing the device, which for some reason is called "security" but handles, among other things, freeing up memory, cleaning junk files and displaying the battery status, advertisements appear as soon as the application is opened.
Camera: Don't be impressed by the numbers
The Note 13 pro+ is equipped with a 200 megapixel lens, a wide lens with an 8 megapixel sensor, an additional 2 megapixel lens is dedicated to macro photography and of course there is a selfie camera with a sensor of 16 megapixels.
However, to use the 200 megapixel camera you have to select it from the menu, but at least this time this option appears clearly already in the main menu. And if you choose it, keep in mind that there is no optical zoom, at all, while in the other shooting modes you can also find X4 zoom.
As usual with Xiaomi, in the settings you can activate an AI mode where the camera recognizes the appropriate scene by itself, and even without this assistance the camera automatically switches to night photography depending on the lighting condition.
The results are good, but like with the screen (even when transferring the images to the computer) - a little more emphasis on the colors is missing, and the images feel a bit pale.
Xiaomi also integrates AI in the photo editing tool and offers a variety of options - to replace the background of the sky, for example, to highlight a figure you took and blur the background, to eliminate unnecessary details and more. Similar to the other companies operating in the field, the results vary depending on the quality and complexity of the images - changing the sky, for example, looks reliable, but deleting people or objects does not go completely smoothly and leaves traces and marks.
