Earlier this year, Redmi officially separated into a separate sub-brand with its own business strategy. The Redmi Note 7 was the first smartphone to launch after this change and it quickly gathered attention when it was equipped with a resolution camera up to 48MP while having the other strengths of the Redmi series, which is high capacity battery and good hardware configuration in the price range. Moreover, even though the cameras of the Redmi Note 7 still have some issues, but it exceeds our expectations for a budget smartphone.

Display

The Redmi Note series has been constantly changing in screen design in recent years. The Redmi Note 5 was one of Xiaomi's first smartphones to switch to an 18:9 aspect ratio, Redmi Note 6 has a "notch" screen and now, the Redmi Note 7 switches to the waterdrop notch design.

The waterdrop part of the Redmi Note 7 only contains the selfie camera so the area for the notification bar is very spacious, allowing to display a lot of information. However, the "chin" is still a bit thick so the screen-to-body ratio isn't improved significantly compared to the previous generations. Specifically, the screen-to-body ratio of the Redmi Note 7 reached 81.4%, still a little thicker than that of the Mi 8 Lite (82.5%).

The display quality of Redmi Note 7 is similar to the previous generations. Its IPS LCD panel offers a fairly wide viewing angle and standard color reproduction. The maximum brightness is not too high and is sufficient for most situations but it will be difficult to use outdoors.

Performance

At Rs Rs. 9,999 for 4GB RAM / 64GB version of internal memory, Redmi Note 7 is one of the few smartphones that owns the cheapest Snapdragon 660 today. This is an attractive factor for young users who regularly play mobile games. Many products using Snapdragon 660 processor with the same screen resolution and memory that we recently evaluated such as Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite or Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 can handle the daily tasks well or even heavy-graphics games.

With two games Dead Trigger 2 and Warhammer 40,000: FreeBlade, Redmi Note 7 can play smoothly at high graphics settings with the fps always staying stably at 59-60 FPS when measured by GameBench.

PUBG Mobile at the highest graphics setting has caused a bit of difficulty for the Redmi Note 7. The average FPS reached 26, with not too high fps stability (83%). We recommend users to lower the device. up images to make the experience smoother. When switching to the low graphics setting, the game was much smoother, fps was fixed at 30 with 92% stability when measured by GameBench.

Regarding software, Redmi Note 7 is preloaded with MIUI 10 which fully supports the familiar features of the Xiaomi family like the Second space to store private data, dual apps to run two Facebook or Messenger accounts ... on the same phone, lock an app with password protection and support a variety of gestures.

Battery

Redmi Note 7 inherits a high-capacity 4,000 mAh battery from its predecessor Redmi Note 6 Pro. This battery capacity is sufficient for users to use comfortably during the day. 

The highlight of the Redmi Note 7 is that it supports Quick Charge 4.0, so charging the 4,000 mAh battery is no longer a problem. However, the box comes with just a 5V-2A charger, meaning users will have to buy a quick charger separately to take advantage of the fast charging technology.

Camera

The resolution race on smartphones that seemed to be over for a long time has suddenly returned. The Redmi Note 7 is one of many affordable and mid-range phones currently equipped with 48MP cameras. However, as we all know, having more megapixels doesn't necessarily turn into better photos. The Redmi Note 7 uses Samsung's ISOCELL GM1 sensor, while the Redmi Note 7 Pro uses the Sony IMX586 one. 

By default, the 48MP camera of the Redmi Note 7 will take photos at 12MP resolution. Of course, the device also allows shooting 48MP photos with the 48MP mode. But when this mode is turned on, you will have to sacrifice AI and HDR scene recognition. Not just that, it also takes longer time to capture photos at 48MP resolution, up to a few seconds even in good lighting conditions, and a significantly higher size as well, about 2.5 times higher than at 12MP resolution. But what is more important is that the quality difference between 12MP and 48MP photos is negligible, very difficult to notice.

In bright enough conditions, the camera of Redmi Note 7 gives good quality in the price range, both in terms of detail, bright range, and portrait mode. However, photos taken by this phone have some issues such as bad color reproduction, often darker than reality. 

When compared to the Redmi Note 7 Pro using Sony's sensor, you can easily see the difference. Photos taken from the Redmi Note 7 Pro have better color reproduction and a wider dynamic range.

In low light, the handset has its own Night Mode, which will take multiple photos for longer exposure to produce brighter and more detailed images. In fact, night mode photos produce far better results than regular shots, capturing more details in darker areas, with more vivid colors. However, this image is only suitable for shooting still scenes because the processing time is quite long, up to 4 seconds in low light conditions. Taken with normal mode, the image quality is only average, lots of noise, and low detail.