Xiaomi Redmi 10: Halfway to being a great budget phone
Its design and screen may belong to a more expensive phone, but the Xiaomi Redmi 10 disappoints with its poor camera and unmistakable performance.
Pros
- Good Performance
- Good battery life
- Good display and speakers
- Decent daytime camera performance
Cons
- Very poor for video
- Spammy software at launch time
- Average overall camera performance
| Xiaomi Redmi 10 Review |
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The Xiaomi Redmi 10 is a budget 4G Android phone, the highlights of which are initially not what they might seem.
Xiaomi deliberately made the camera housing of the Redmi 10 to upgrade, but the camera array you get here is the best. While its primary camera has 50 megapixels to its name, results are inconsistent and rarely all that pretty.
The real strong points are the stereo speakers, even if the sound quality isn't remarkable, solid battery life, and a decently sharp screen. As such, it is not as easy to recommend the Redmi 10 as some of the real Xiaomi hits from last year, such as the great Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro or the Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC.
The appeal has also waned a bit from the many sales organized by Xiaomi, with solid phones like the Redmi Note 9 Pro selling for little.
Motorola's Moto G50 is also a worthy alternative. It generally costs a bit more and has a lower-resolution screen, but it has better software, even better battery life, and has 5G and a faster chipset.
However, we must not overlook one of the major draws of buying a budget Xiaomi phone. The Redmi 10 features a Full HD display at a price that many other big names only offer 720p screens. It makes a significant difference, even if it's something you quickly come to terms with once you switch from a 720p phone.
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Xiaomi Redmi 10 4GB RAM
XIAOMI REDMI 10 128GB WHITE 4GB RAM DUAL SIM FACTORY UNLOCKED SMARTPHONE
View & Buy| Xiaomi Redmi 10 Release Date and Price |
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- Starts at $179/£149 (around AU$270)
The Redmi 10 was launched by Xiaomi in August 2021, a little over a year after the Redmi 9.
This phone is more expensive than its predecessor, at $179/£149 (about AU$270) with 64GB of storage or $199/£199 (about AU$365) with 128GB of storage, the latter model reviewed here Is. There's also a version with 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM (up from 4GB) for $219 (about £160 / AU$290) in some regions.
The pricing is accessible, but don't forget that this is a 4G only phone. There is no 5G mobile internet available on similarly priced phones at the moment.
| Xiaomi Redmi 10 Design |
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- Plastic design dressed up to look like glass and metal
- A shift from a teardrop notch to a punch-hole
The design of the Redmi 10 is a good example of 'fake it. This is a concept we have talked about earlier. A lot of plastic phones are dressed up as high-end to look like metal and glass designs.
Xiaomi has gone a little further this time, using a camera housing design looking far larger and more detailed than the simple strip seen on the Redmi 9. The backside of Redmi 10 looks like glass. The camera looks like it could be a $1,000/£1,000 phone.
Of course, this is all a sham. The back of the Redmi 10 is plastic and a metallic-looking color gradient is used at the bottom to classify its appearance. We'll get to the camera later, but a large part of it is just a black border that sits on the back and has nothing to do with the camera.
Redmi 10 has painted-on cheekbones. But does it matter? If you flashed us the back of the phone and told us it cost $450, we'd believe you. We can appreciate a phone that can fool friends into thinking you've spent more. As long as you come to buy Redmi 10, it is fine.
In other words, keep reading to know more about the budget-related limitations of the Xiaomi Redmi 10.
There are some less confusing parts of the design. Redmi 9 had a teardrop notch, Redmi 10 has a punch-hole, which seems more modern to most eyes.
The screen borders are typical for cheap Android, but not excessive, and the Redmi 10 is much easier to handle than some other Xiaomi phones. Many of the company's affordable lines use ultra-large displays that add significantly to the width of the phone. The Redmi 10 is 75.5mm wide, similar to the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE.
You get a side-mounted fingerprint scanner for secure unlocking, and with slightly longer pauses when working than some top-end phones, this is a reliable pad. The Xiaomi Redmi 10 also has an IR blaster, which is something you only see on select Chinese phones these days.
An IR blaster sends a signal similar to a classic TV remote control using the Mi Remote app. It turns Redmi 10 into a universal remote. Testing with an LG TV, planar projector, and Anthem AV receiver, we couldn't get it to work. But you may have good luck. It may be disabled for some reason in the firmware of our device.
| Xiaomi Redmi 10 Display |
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- 6.5-inch 1080p LCD
- 90Hz refresh rate with 60Hz battery saver mode
- Fair 445-nit brightness turbo mode for outdoors
The Xiaomi Redmi 10's screen is one of the phone's strong parts, though primarily against rival brands rather than other Xiaomi Android devices you can buy.
At this affordable level, both Samsung and Motorola use 720p screens with a lower pixel density than the Redmi 10. This 6.5-inch screen is quite sharp. A pixel density of around 405 pixels per inch is great for a phone this cheap.
Color saturation is also good, though we recommend tweaking it a bit. The color temperature of the Redmi 10 fresh out of the box was a bit too good, possibly used to make it appear a bit more 'pop'.
Set the color temperature to 'Warm', or switch from Vivid to Standard mode to give the display a more relaxed, attractive look. We also found, like many phones, that the default wallpaper doesn't show colors at all. A few minor changes were made to it and it went from decent to excellent looking.
Redmi 10 is a 90Hz phone but it was not capable of prowess as standard. You can choose either 60Hz or 90Hz mode, and the faster the Android menu appears the more smooth scrolling.
It's not a super-slick screen that dips to a steady screen, changing the refresh rate as needed, but it will drop to 60Hz for apps that don't use a high refresh rate, like Netflix.
This is one of the better displays you can get at the price. But it is not complete. It's an LCD, so blacks won't look right in dark rooms. We don't think this is an issue. However, there may be glare. Redmi 10 can reach 445 nits outdoors in bright sunlight. While this is fine for a cheap phone, it is less than the 600+ that you can get from the Redmi Note 10 Pro.
We noticed this when taking pictures outside. With this type of screen brightness, the preview image is not visible in direct sunlight.
| Xiaomi Redmi 10 Camera |
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- 50MP main sensor is okay at best, often poor
- 1080p 30fps unstabilized video is weak
- Poor ultra-wide and tertiary cameras
The camera of the Xiaomi Redmi 10 is its most confusing area. It looks and feels advanced. The camera array looks like the photographic equivalent of a Swiss army knife from a glance and has a 50MP sensor.
Bad news: While a phone of this level generally has a decent camera and a lot of difficulties, the Redmi 10 doesn't have any good cameras. So far we've only had high-quality 50MP cameras in phones, such as the Oppo Find X3 Pro. But Samsung, as it has done several times in the past, turns down the tone with the S5KJN1 sensor seen here.
A great example of why more megapixels are often bad news, this sensor fits 50 million pixels into a very small 1/2.76-inch chip. So where the Oppo Find X3 Pro has one-micron-sized sensor pixels, these are 0.64 microns. They are some of the tiniest pixels to be seen in a phone's camera.
We dug up this information only after going on several shoots with the Redmi 10, noticed all the negative effects we usually associate with such small photosites, and wondered why.
The dynamic range of Redmi 10 is poor. HDR mode can try to hide this somewhat, but it's also faulty, sometimes refusing to engage (when using HDR Auto) and generally pumping out highly inconsistent results. And there's only so much you can do to hide the shortcomings of a crappy sensor with software-based enhancements.
HDR modes typically merge multiple exposures so that very bright and dark parts of the scene can be captured and properly resolved in one frame. While the Redmi 10 has a crack at it, when HDR works, the shadows/dark parts of the picture often look like oatmeal. Any natural textures turn fuzzy and indistinct as if captured by the rather weak selfie camera of the primary camera.
Color reproduction is poor in less than solid lighting, and while the Redmi 10 tries to help things along by applying a color filter at sunset, results rarely match what your eyes feel.
Night-time photos look bad whether you use Night Mode or not. It brightens up images a bit, but images remain noisy and often look less warm than images taken with Auto mode.
The worst results are probably in mid-level light when shooting indoors or under tree cover. Images appear soft, fuzzy, and muddy which should appear brown and turn purple.
Next to a slightly older phone, you can buy for a similar price (albeit a lower storage variant), the Xiaomi Poco X3 NFC, the Redmi 10's main camera, is disappointing. Video clips taken from the phone also often become unusable as there is no stabilization.
In a phone at this stage, we don't expect high-end video features like stable 4K and 120fps slo-mo, but the Redmi 10 is limited to 1080p, 30 frames per second capture. And even at this low capture rate, it can't handle the electronic/software stabilization.
It is not impossible to take good shots with the Xiaomi Redmi 10. You can find some in this review's photo gallery that looks just fine. But Xiaomi doesn't make it easy.
We've only covered the first camera of the phone for now. The 8MP ultra-wide is close to what we'd expect in a budget phone. This is a low-end OmniVision camera with soft images and limited dynamic range.
The gradients of the sky often look unrealistic, and highlights cut into the clouds are to be expected. The image signal processor (ISP) of the Redmi 10, the brain behind the camera, doesn't seem so hot.
The other two cameras are filler pieces, typical of low-end phones. There is a 2MP depth sensor, which is used in portrait mode, so you can capture images with a blurry background. The last camera is a 2MP macro, which, like all 2MP macro cameras, takes very poor pictures. An 8MP selfie camera sits on the front and is unmistakable.
If you want a decent camera, the Redmi 10 is not the obvious choice. A lot of 12MP, 13MP, 16MP, and 48MP cameras will outperform this phone's 50MP camera.
| Xiaomi Redmi 10 Software |
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- Has an unusually annoying version of MIUI
- Android 11 core software
- Some minor lag
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| Image Credit: gsmarena |
Xiaomi Redmi 10 is an Android 11 phone and uses Xiaomi's MIUI 12.5 interface. And this is a rather annoying version of this software
You can choose whether to have an app drawer or not. Some may not like the stylistic choice of the Settings menu, but it's hardly worth bothering about. However, the drop-down on the Redmi 10 is not helpful.
In a traditional take on Android, you swipe down once to open your notification bar. You swipe up again to access the brightness controls and feature toggles. Redmi 10 takes a different approach, using the right side of the screen for feature toggles and the left side for notifications.
It feels clumsy for one-handed use because you have to reach far enough to pull down your notifications. Xiaomi does not use this approach in all its Androids. The Poco X3 Pro has traditional gestures: one for notification swipe down and one for quick access toggle, two for more access to the settings.
Xiaomi Redmi 10 seems like a real step back. Will you get used to it? Maybe. But we still find it very annoying even after a week.
The general performance of the Redmi 10 is fine, with a few common caveats that come with an entry-level CPU. When you load an app that isn't sitting in cache because it was used a moment ago, there are some short waits. And the interface in general has some slight lag.
However, most of it is so minimal that we barely registered it after a few days of use.
| Xiaomi Redmi 10 Gaming and performance |
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- One of the weaker phones for gaming at the price
- Stereo speakers, but they are lopsided in output
- Barely an upgrade over the last-gen Redmi 9
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| Image Credit: gsmarena |
The Xiaomi Redmi 10 has a few more obvious issues with gaming, especially when compared to slightly more expensive barnstormers like the Xiaomi Poco X3 Pro.
This phone has MediaTek Helio G88, which is a low-end processor made for 4G phones. You can compare it with the Snapdragon 662 used in the Moto G30.
Even with the top-end version of the Redmi 10, with 6GB of RAM, you cannot run Fortnite. Epic Games won't even let you install it. ARK: Survival Evolved runs pretty poorly at high graphics settings, and Asphalt 9's frame rate slows down during busy times. The busiest moments of that game often occur several times within a 10-second window.
The difference in gaming performance between this and the Xiaomi Poco X3 Pro is huge considering the fairly small price disparity.
This phone has stereo speakers, which are good for gaming. However, we weren't all that impressed when we fired up the Asphalt 9 as the output was very uneven. The bottom speaker is so loud compared to the speaker on the top of the phone that it barely sounds like a stereo array.
Typically, in such stereo arrays, one speaker sounds much smoother/heavier than the other, but the L/R channel is roughly matched to the higher frequency output to provide a sense of balance.
Less mid-range and 'bass' (no phone has real bass) than the Poco X3 Pro, though it passes the test of making podcasts audible during your shower. The maximum volume is solid, the stone is slightly thinner or more brittle than some.
Xiaomi also uses the relatively slow eMMC storage in this phone, though with reading speeds of 283MB/s and writes of 152MB/s we're not seeing anything bad. Still, the Poco X3 Pro gives you a read of around 1000MB/s. This is a real performance.
Benchmarking fan? Redmi 10 scores 1,236 points in Geekbench 5 (372 per core). The Moto G50 scores about 35% better and is almost identical to the previous generation Redmi 9's score. That's not a great performance for a $199/£199 phone (which is the price of our mid-model).
| Xiaomi Redmi 10 Battery life |
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- 5,000mAh battery with 18W charging
- Very good general use battery life
- Slightly more expensive Xiaomi phones charge faster
The Xiaomi Redmi 10 packs a 5,000mAh battery, just like most of its arch-rivals and its bigger siblings. We've found that the Moto G50 lasts longer between charges, but some people will find some reason to complain here.
It can last a heavy day of use, and usually has around 30-40% charge left by the time we come to plug it in at the lights-out. This is with the screen set to its 90Hz mode, and you're likely to see a slight boost by limiting the refresh rate to 60Hz.
However, there has been no improvement in battery charging with this generation. The Redmi 10 has 18W charging, although it comes with a 22.5W charger. We used a power meter and plugged it into both the bundled charger and 30W. In both cases, the phone only draws around the claimed 18W.
After charging the Redmi 10 from a completely flat state for 30 minutes, it reached a 29% charge. That's nowhere near the '50% in 30 minutes' fast-charging standard.
Xiaomi Redmi 10 Best Phone Now
Do you want a good screen?
The Redmi 10 has a much sharper screen than rival Samsung and Motorola phones you can buy. The 1080p resolution looks great in size, and the display is vibrant, especially when you make some changes.
Do you want a long-lasting battery?
Its 5,000mAh battery runs well when charged. You can drive it hard enough and still see the Redmi 10 running all day. While it's not a two-day phone for us, it could be close to it for very light phone users.
Do you want something that looks good?
This phone paves the way for success in a pretty solid way. It looks less cheap than some of the others you can buy for around the price, and it doesn't have a huge logo on the back like some Poco-series and Redmi phones.