Xiaomi Redmi 10 - our review

Equipment class B ("Mercedes" scale A, B, C, E, S)

Rating scale 1-6 (6-excellent)

Let's go< /h3>

Redmi 10 is the latest Xiaomi proposal at PLN 899 for the 4/64 GB version or PLN 999 for the 4/128 GB version. In the segment of about a thousand zlotys, it got really crowded, because Xiaomi itself currently offers as many as 6 other models priced similarly to Redmi 10. Models from other manufacturers should also be added. realme has a total of 4 models from the 8 series, including the latest 8i, which is a direct competitor to Redmi 10. It would seem that with such competition it is necessary to stand out with something, but at the same time in this price range manufacturers do not have much room for maneuver, because the most important thing is cost cutting. Let's check what Redmi 10 has to offer.

Main advantages and disadvantages of Redmi 10

Advantages of Redmi 10:

Disadvantages of Redmi 10:

How do we evaluate the design? – rating 4

The Redmi 10 housing is made entirely of plastic, which is a standard among devices from the beginning of the mid-range. The phone has an extensive, characteristic camera island that adds character to it and also gives the impression that the phone has more to offer in photography than it actually has. I like the matte finish of the phone case - it partially hides touch marks and improves the appearance of the device. I definitely prefer the matte cover of the redmi 10 compared to the glossy cover of the realme 8i. The downside of the Redmi 10 design is the "sandwich" design - the screen is in a black frame, which is located above the housing and the phone frame.

Your phone can be unlocked with your fingerprint and face. The fingerprint scanner is located in the power button. You can wake up and unlock the phone without pressing it - just a touch. Unlocking both ways works reliably. The fingerprint scanner is fast, because a short touch is enough for the phone to unlock, but it takes a noticeable moment to wake up the Redmi 10 screen.

Redmi 10 is one of the few affordable smartphones with stereo speakers. Admittedly, these are not high-quality speakers, and the left speaker sounds a little quieter and has less bass than the right one, but both channels are separated and the stereo effect is clearly audible when watching multimedia.

The smartphone is equipped with a headphone jack and an infrared emitter, allowing you to use Redmi 10 as a universal remote. The smartphone does not have an official seal standard, although a seal can be seen on the drawer for two SIM cards and a memory card.

What do we think about the display? - 4 rating-

The Redmi 10 screen has a diagonal of 6.5 inches, FHD+ resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels, 20:9 aspect ratio and a pixel density of 405 PPI. We also find here an increased refresh rate of 90 Hz, which noticeably improves the smoothness of the animation. It is worth recalling, however, that the realme 7i, which costs exactly the same, offers a refresh rate of 120 Hz, which is even higher.

The Redmi 10 display offers a sharp, legible image with sufficiently saturated colors, but the decrease in brightness when viewed from an angle is very noticeable and the viewing angle does not have to be large for the effect to be immediately visible. The maximum brightness is also not high. This can make it difficult to read in bright sunlight.

In the settings you will find dark mode, reading mode, color scheme, the ability to change the white balance, as well as the ability to choose a refresh rate between 60 and 90 Hz.

Specifications and operating system - score 3-

Redmi 10 is equipped with an octa-core MediaTek Helio G88 processor clocked at 2 x 2.0 GHz + 6 x 1.8 GHz. The processor supports 4 GB RAM and 64 GB for the system and files. The memory can be expanded with a micro SD card, the use of which does not exclude the use of dual SIM. Unfortunately, the memory used in Redmi 10 is the outdated eMMC 5.1 technology, instead of UFS.

Benchmark Results:

The realme 8i, priced even a little lower, uses a more powerful and modern Mediatek Helio G96 processor and UFS 2.1 memory instead of eMMC. The effects are clearly visible in the benchmarks. According to Antutu, Redmi 10 is almost half as efficient as realme 8i, and writing to the phone's memory is almost three times slower. This is a very clear difference, which this time is also felt in practice. Applications start noticeably longer, pages load slower, and system animations lose their fluidity from time to time. To be honest, I haven't had a smartphone in my hand for quite a long time that would give the impression that it has too weak a specification, even in the segment below a thousand zlotys.

Communication package includes LTE, WiFi ac, Bluetooth 5.1 and NFC. Location is realized using GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO and BDS. The set of sensors includes an accelerometer, a proximity sensor and a light intensity sensor. Unfortunately, there is no gyroscope and it can be seen during the 360 ​​video playback - locating the position of the device is inaccurate, with a large error and delay. This problem did not occur in realme 8i, because this phone is equipped with a gyroscope. This is another minus for Redmi 10.

Redmi 10 runs on Android 11 with the MIUI 12.5.9 overlay. The Android security update is from October 1, 2021, so it is current.

The overlay has received some significant visual changes recently - notifications have been separated from system shortcuts depending on whether we swipe from the left or right side of the top edge.

The system applications include an FM radio, voice recorder, QR code scanner, and Mi Pilot that allows you to control various home devices. Screen recording is possible, there is a Game Turbo function, floating windows and everything MIUI usually offers. Unfortunately, there are also ads in system applications, e.g. in the control panel (which can be turned off) and a lot of pre-installed applications, such as Amazon, TikTok or AliExpress. Although the possibility of uninstalling has not been blocked, I do not like pushing such programs by force, without asking the user if he needs them. The operation of the system itself in the case of Redmi 10 could be better, but here it is probably due to weak hardware.

What kind of photos and videos does he take? – rating 3

Redmi 10 has a camera island on the back with as many as 4 lenses and a fifth LED illuminating one of the lenses. In practice, of the four rear cameras, two are useful:

Available camera modes are: photo, video, portrait, pro, short video*, time-lapse, 50M, slow motion, night, panorama* - of which the modes marked with an asterisk are visible in the list, and after clicking they will be downloaded and installed, which takes a while. You can enable AI photo enhancement, HDR or live view filters. For unknown reasons, the macro camera is hidden in the settings.

The main camera happened to take blurry photos for no apparent reason - they were neither photos of moving objects, nor taken, for example, against the light or in low light. There were not many such photos, but enough to notice that such problems should not occur today. There is also a bit of tonal range missing. With the right, favorable conditions, you can take a sensible photo with Redmi 10. However, there is no guarantee that the effect will be reproducible.

A certain advantage of Redmi 10 is the presence of a wide-angle camera, which is not always present in phones for less than a thousand zlotys. For comparison, realme 8i does not have a wide-angle camera, although it must also be admitted that the main realme 8i camera gives clearly better results than that of Redmi 10.

Photos from the wide-angle camera with Redmi 10 are suitable for use if we are shooting during the day and the scene is not too contrasty. You can even say that taking into account the other features of the Redmi 10 phone, the quality of the wide-angle camera surprised me positively.

Unfortunately, night photos are below average, even compared to other inexpensive smartphones without optical stabilization.

Redmi 10 records video in a maximum resolution of Full HD 1080p and does not offer any stabilization during recordings. In addition, the video is not very detailed and even with stabilization I would describe it as below average, and it is just very poor.

Example photos:

Example video:

How long does the battery last? – rating 4

Redmi 10 has a 5000 mAh battery and a 22.5W charger, but the manufacturer states that the smartphone supports 18W charging.

In a WiFi video streaming test with the screen set to half brightness and 90Hz refresh rate, the smartphone drained to 4% battery after 15.5 hours. This is a good, comfortable result. This translates to roughly two days of moderate phone usage.

Loading is not fast. It takes more than two hours to fully charge the phone, and a half-hour charge will give us at most a quarter of the battery capacity.

Our final assessment

The competition among smartphones up to PLN 1,000 is so big that Redmi 10 is best evaluated in relation to other devices at a similar price. The smartphone I reviewed recently and priced similarly is realme 8i. Redmi 10 has basically only two advantages over it - stereo speakers and an additional wide-angle camera. Fans of the built-in infrared remote control can add a third bonus.

Realme 8i, on the other hand, has almost twice the performance, almost three times faster recording of the built-in memory, better quality photos from the main camera during the day and night, and stabilized video recordings. It also has a gyroscope, which was missing in Redmi 10, and the screen refresh rate is 120 Hz in realme (90 Hz in Redmi 10). Considering that the 4/64 version at realme is PLN 50 cheaper, and the 4/128 version is PLN 100 cheaper, it does not look good for Redmi 10. It has much more compromises and shortcomings, and offers little in return. I would definitely choose either realme 8i or PLN 100 more expensive POCO X3. Only a further price reduction can save the situation.

We love: the wide-angle camera

We don't like: Half the performance of the competition

Who Redmi 10 is for:

Who Redmi 10 isn't for:

Alternatives for Redmi 10:

Other Redmi 10 information: