Xiaomi Redmi Note 3

Xiaomi’s phones aren’t officially sold in the UK, but while the brand may not be well known to us Brits, it’s bigger than Apple and Samsung in China. Redmi is the company’s budget smartphone line-up, and the Note 3 sits at the top of the series as an all-metal Android phablet with a fantastic design and decent performance.

Our review sample came from GearBest, and is the gold model with 16GB of storage and 2GB of RAM. This Note 3 costs £118.27 with free worldwide shipping, although you may have to pay import duty.

Design

Wow. That’s what every member of the PC Advisor editorial team said when we took the Redmi Note 3 out of its box. We’ve been waiting to get our hands on a Xiaomi phone for ages, and following the disappointment that was the Mi 4C the Note 3 had a lot of making up to do. Fortunately, it didn’t let us down.

While it has some of the markings of a budget Android phone – it’s on the chunky side at 8.65mm, plus there’s the rear-mounted speaker and now outdated Micro-USB port – it looks good enough to take on the iPhone in the design stakes. It’s certainly the best-looking budget Android we’ve ever seen.

Despite housing both a large 5.5in screen and a high-capacity battery (apparently achieved using a 690Wh/L high-density cell), this Xiaomi phablet feels fantastic in the hand. It’s reassuringly weighty without being heavy at 164g (only 4g more than the plastic Note 2), and rounded edges on the rear make it feel smaller than it is. As with the Mi 4C there’s also an easily accessible one-handed mode that lets you shrink down the contents of the screen to 4.5-, 4- or even 3.5in.

The gold metal shell is sandblasted to a smooth-to-thetouch but matt-effect finish. This contrasts nicely with the shiny polished edging seen around the screen, fingerprint scanner, camera and flash, and even the shiny Mi logo on the rear. It really is a premium-looking smartphone.

The fingerprint scanner mounted on the rear is perfectly positioned in terms of how you hold your phone. Usefully, it can wake and unlock the screen with a single touch, and Xiaomi’s claims of it recognising your fingerprint in 0.3 seconds rang true in our tests.

A full-HD screen is still not something you can reasonably expect to find in a smartphone of this price, and at 5.5in the 1920x1080 resolution equates to a crystal clear 403ppi. The screen is bright with realistic colours and great viewing angles, making the Note 3 an ideal mobile device on which to enjoy video. To get exactly the display you want, you can switch between warm, standard and cool screen colours, and choose between standard, automatic and increased contrast. The Note 3 also supports Sunlight display, making it easier to view in direct sunlight, plus a Reading mode.

Although the Xiaomi’s bezels are slim, a thin black border is evident around the edge of the screen; we like the effect it creates. In the Settings menu, you can change the wallpaper and themes, text size and font. Also here are options to change the colour of the LED for notifications, calls and texts, and the long-press function of each of the three Android-standard buttons below the screen.

Ports and connectors are where you would expect to find them, with a metal power button and volume rocker on the Note 3’s right edge, and a pin-operated slotloading dual-SIM tray on the left