Not that it’s any great shakes. Xiaomi phones tend to struggle with this looping video test, and the Note 12 Pro 5G drops a whopping five hours short of the OnePlus Nord 2T with its smaller battery. Even the Poco X5 Pro 5G, which is a fellow Xiaomi product, lasted an hour longer. In total, across a sixteen-hour day, starting at 7am and finishing at 11pm, through a combination of messaging, watching video, an hour of GPS and listening to music on Bluetooth earphones, I hit 20% by 8pm and needed a small recharge to make it a bit later. For many people, this will then likely be a most-of-the-day smartphone, not making it into a second without a top-up. This is a respectable showing if not quite the best available. There’s been precious little change on the front of the Redmi Note 12 Pro 5G, even since the days of the Redmi Note 10 Pro 5G. In practical use, long 15- or 16-hour days would routinely leave me with around 40% left on moderate to intensive days, and well above 50% on lighter days. That’s good going.

Faced with declining global sales and general stagnation, finding previously hidden demographics to sell phones to is now the urgent job of smartphone manufacturers everywhere. Like its mid-range rival, the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro Plus has had to justify a price bump over its predecessor. It has managed to do so, but perhaps not quite so comprehensively. Reassuringly, however, you get a 120W wired charger in the box. Xiaomi claims that you can charge the Note 12 Pro Plus to 100% in 19 minutes. I didn’t find it to be that rapid, at least not from totally empty, but a 29-minute zero to 100% time is still excellent. MP Front Camera: Camera Feature: Portrait Mode, Front Video Recording, Palm Shutter, Voice Shutter, Movie Frame, Night Mode, Slow Motion, Timelapse, AI Watermark, Long Exposure, Panorama, Short VideoComing to the display, thankfully the picture, as it were, is positive. The Redmi has a flat, 120Hz OLED display, with ‘1 billion colours’ (a number which can only be taken at face value) and HDR capabilities.

The Redmi Note 12 Pro 5G has its own pricing niche in the market, but it’s a very small one. There are some classy competitors out there for not much more money. Perhaps the biggest and most direct rival to the Redmi Note 12 Pro Plus, however, is the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G, which costs exactly the same price.

Features

The Redmi Note 12 Pro 5G runs on the same Mediatek Dimensity 1080 processor as the Redmi Note 12 Pro Plus 5G, which is quite a turn up for the books given the difference in price. It’s also an upgrade on the Snapdragon 695 used in the Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G. This 50MP + 50MP + 50MP camera setup bridges the Great Inconsistency by bringing you Our Most Consistent Camera Setup Ever with advanced computational photography and videography. Other than that, the app is the usual Xiaomi mish-mash of modes, some of which you may use, many of which you will not. It doesn’t get in the way of taking photos, and for the most part, is intuitive. The short video clip shown with quad speaker is an edit of ”Virtuoso: The Quartet" presented by Xiaomi Studios with all right reserved.

With its Advanced Cooling Solution The extra large vapor chamber and the three large graphite sheets have enhanced the cooling capabilities of the device to the next level. This setup is designed keeping the end user in mind for better cooling of their device even with heavy multitasking or gamingThere’s an optional AI mode for all of these cameras, but I found that it tended to make landscape shots look a little false, with punched up colours and brightness. I generally left it off. Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro 5G review: Verdict Interestingly, in our usual looping video test, which plays a looped video at a standard 170cd/m² brightness with Flight mode on, the Redmi Note 12 Pro 5G performed better than its Plus brother, lasting an hour longer. Similarly, the 16MP selfie camera struggles with exposure and tends to wash colours out somewhat, but it does an adequate job. Without doubt, Xiaomi is selling the Plus model on its main camera. Out goes the 108MP 1/1.52in sensor from last year’s model, and in comes a whopping 200MP 1/1.4in replacement, producing 12.5MP shots through a 16-in-1 pixel binning technique.