Design and build quality
You’d think of a 200 megapixel camera as more of a flagship feature that’s what you’d get on Samsung’s Galaxy s23 Ultra but now the tech has made its way down to mid-rangers too the redmi note 12 Pro Plus brings that plus 120 watt fast charging a new chipset and a bigger battery than the previous model the Pro Plus is the most premium of the redmi note 12 series and the only one with a glass back the panel is slightly curved with a polished finish the frame is made of plastic though with a matte finish like the rest of the redmi note 12 series The Pro Plus has dust and splash proofing rated at ip53.
Display quality test
The display of the phone is a 6.67 inch AMOLED with a 1080p resolution a 120 hertz refresh rate and Gorilla Glass 5 protection it looks good sharp and contrasty and to bring some goodies too support for Adobe vision and 10 bit color and HDR 10 plus and the colors can be accurate depending on the settings you choose the note 12 Pro Plus as a display is really bright too we measured a maximum of 520 nits with a manual slider and this can boost up to around a thousand nits in auto mode when in bright conditions and when it comes to refresh rate you get 120 hertz to smooth out your swiping and scrolling that will dial down to 60 hertz when you stop interacting with it to save energy.
Speaker quality test
For audio you get a standard headphone jack as well as a pair of Dolby Atmos stereo speakers their loudness is good and the sound quality is good too with nice vocals and some bass. you can wake up and unlock the redmi Note 12 Pro Plus with a side mounted fingerprint reader and the phone comes with 256 gigs of storage on board that’s not expandable to MicroSD though which is something you usually get on these sorts of mid-rangers.
Side-mounted fingerprint reader & Storage options
The interface of the redmi note 12 Pro Plus is xiaomi’s latest MIUI 14 on top of Android 12. MIUI 14 is supposed to bring a suite of new features but we haven’t gotten those yet maybe with a software update what you do get here is overall very similar to what we’ve seen before but a bit snappier thanks to some under the hood optimizations you can access quick shortcuts from the home screen through the sidebar but the sidebar is different depending on the scenario in games the sidebar provides a handful of gaming related features and while in video apps the sidebar becomes a video toolbox it lets you do various things like screen record and take screenshots cast to another device and continue playing content with the screen off another special thing you get here is a remote control app for your appliances since the phone has an IR blaster powering.
Android 12, MIUI 13, Mediatek Dimensity 1080, Thermal chart
The xiaomi redmi note 12 Pro Plus is a mediatek dimensity 1080 an upgrade over the dimension 920 and last year’s redmi note 11 Pro Plus the most significant changes here are the Chip’s camera capabilities the domestic 1080s ISP can handle image data from sensors up to 200 megapixels like the camera we have on this phone in benchmarks there isn’t much difference in either the CPU or graphics performance compared to the previous model but the scores are among the best for the class only topped by phones running on the new Snapdragon 7 gen 1. The Thermals and the stability here were also great across the board and the redmi note 12 Pro Plus never became hot when testing just one like I mentioned earlier.
Battery life and charging speed test
This is a bigger battery this year is 5 000 milliamp hours as opposed to 4 500. however this didn’t translate into better battery life this is the first redmi we’ve seen in a while with an endurance rating of less than 100 hours 88 hours isn’t bad and the screen on tests were fine it’s the standby performance which brought down the overall score like the previous model the redmi note 12 Pro Plus comes with support for 120 watt hypercharge with a bundled adapter and default settings we were able to charge the phone from zero to one hundred percent in 30 minutes and enabling the boost mode allowed us to charge to full in just 23 minutes.
Main cameras, Daylight image quality, rear cameras, Low-light image quality, rear cameras
The cameras the star of the show is the main cam which uses a 200 megapixel Samsung hpx sensor that’s paired with the 8 megapixel ultrawide camera and a 2 megapixel macro cam the main camera bins pixels to create 12 megapixel images by default these are thoroughly impressive especially coming from a mid-range phone there’s plenty of detail with well-developed fine details like foliage the photos are free of noise and the colors are true to life the image sharpening is a bit too high though the contrast is also a bit too strong resulting in Inky Shadows with not much detail two times Zoom from the main cam appears to be not much better than the simple crop and upscale from the 12 megapixel photos the result is outright but the sharpness and detail leave more to be desired there is a high res mode you can enable which produces 50 megapixel photos these have a bit more detail and definition than the 12 megapixel ones they have a lot more natural rendition in terms of sharpness and contrast there’s also a 200 megapixel option but these are just upscaled from the 50 megapixel ones there’s no benefit in it and the file size is huge portrait mode shots are decent the subject separation is proficient but photo quality is somewhat average 8 megapixel photos from the ultrawide cam are pretty good with plenty of sharpness and fine detail for this sort of camera there’s low noise plenty of contrast and the dynamic range is all right the 2 megapixel macro photos are decent there’s enough detail considering the resolution low noise and saturated colors when it detects low light conditions the redmi note 12 Pro Plus will automatically apply night mode processing to its main Cam’s photos and they are very quick to capture too these look good they’re well exposed with more than enough detail there’s low noise saturated colors and the overall quality is quite solid the contrast is again too high resulting in a loss of all detail in the shadows if you’re up for the dedicated night mode it’ll take an extra moment to shoot and save a photo and the result will deliver photos with slightly lifted Shadows it’s definitely a positive change but the difference is not huge you can also disable the night mode entirely this will net you more detail and sharpness and a darker more realistic exposure the dynamic range is narrow though with plenty of blown highlights the ultrawide Cam’s low light photos aren’t great they’re dark and noisy with an average level of detail and poor dynamic range the night mode improves the dynamic range and the exposure but the detail takes a noticeable hit.
Selfie camera image and video quality, Video quality, rear cameras
The redmi note 12 Pro Plus has a 16 megapixel front-facing cam for selfies they’re decent with Lively colors but the detail level is just okay and the contrast is again too strong the dynamic range is good if HDR kicks in now on to video recording the main camera supports 4K video capture at 30fps and these videos are class leading the detail level is exceptional with a natural balanced look the colors are accurate and contrast is great the dynamic range is good too the ultra wide camera shoots in 1080P and the quality is actually excellent the detail level is great for the resolution the colors are accurate and the dynamic range is good too electronic stabilization is always on for all cameras except for the macro it worked quite well on the ultrawide cam which shoots in 1080P but is disappointing on the main one at 4K resolution in low light conditions 4K videos from the main camera have low noise saturated colors and a lot of detail the dynamic range is just alright but these are quite good for a mid-ranger.
Conclusion
The xiaomi redmi note 12 Pro Plus it’s a great mid-ranger with plenty of Premium bells and whistles including super fast charging and excellent display and that class leading 200 megapixel main camera the phone does fall short in a couple of areas now the battery life isn’t as good as on other redmi models and you don’t get expandable storage through microSD still the Pro Plus brings plenty of bang for your buck and it’s worth recommending especially if you’re looking for a camera phone in this price range.