Redmi Note 11T review: Feature-rich mid-range phone

For a long time, Xiaomi’s sub-brand Redmi Note series is dominating the budget and mid-range segment (to be precise between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000). There are very few, which can match the spec-to-price ratio of the Redmi Note model. The Note 10 series was one of the best-selling devices in the market.

The Redmi Note 11T comes with a similar Evol design language we saw in the previous iterations, but internal hardware particularly the processor and camera specifications are new. Let’s see whether the phone delivers the goods.

Design, build quality, and display

Redmi Note 11T flaunts a slim form factor with a frosted finish on the back and yet, when holding it, offers a smooth hand feels experience. The shell looks premium and does a fine job keeping the dirty fingerprint smudges. Though it is thin, the device is not light in terms of weight (195g) and understandable, given it comes with a massive 5,000mAh battery.

I like the svelte design (163.6mm x 75.8mm) language of the Redmi Note 11T that tapers at the edges, as it is perfect to fully wrap my fingers around the rails and the weight makes the hand, hold on to it. Our review unit is aquamarine blue and it looks lovely in the sunlight. The company also offers two other colour options— matte black and stardust white.

Add to that, Redmi offers good quality soft silicon cone with the retail box and also pre-fits a layer of scream guard sheet on the front panel, which increases the durability of the device in terms of avoiding scratches caused by unintentional pressing of keys or coins in the pocket.

It should be noted that a 6.6-inch full HD+ (1080 × 2400p)LCD screen comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 shield and IP53 water splash-resistant rating, meaning the device can survive accidental water splashes. This makes Redmi Note 11T the most durable among any of its classes of phones.

The device’s IPS LCD screen is bright and has a pixel density of 399 ppi (pixels per inch). To me, it was good enough to read messages, watch videos, or browse the internet under any lighting conditions. It supports a variable refresh rate (between 50Hz and 90Hz), and up to 240Hz touch sampling rate, which comes in handy to play any of the popular battle royale games on the Google Play Store.

It also features a hybrid dual-slot tray(nano-SIM 1 + nano-SIM-2/microSD card), IR blaster, and side-mounted fingerprint sensor, which by the way works fantastic.

Performance

Under-the-hood, it houses a 6nm class MediaTek Dimensity 810 processor (2.4 GHz Cortex-A76 x 2 cores + 2.0 GHz Cortex-A55 x 6 cores) with Mali-G57 MC2 GPU, 6GB/8GB LPDDR4X RAM with 64GB / 128GB (UFS 2.2) storage ( expandable up to 1TB), and Android 11-based MIUI 12.5 OS.

The device performed smoothly without any fuss not just in terms of day-to-day activities such as opening apps, operating cameras, but also gaming too.

As I said earlier, the device’s heavyweight is due to its battery. It ships with a 5,000mAh cell capacity and the device constantly delivered one and half days of battery life under normal usage. I have noted that I am not into gaming and I usually spend more time on social media platforms, do binge-watch movies, TV series content on OTT platforms, and do internet browsing for the latest news. Even if you play a session of thirty or even an hour of games, the device will still be able to last a full day with a lot of juice left in the tank, and rest assured, you won’t feel any battery-draining anxiety at any point of time.

The company also offers a 33W fast charger in-box and it can juice up the device from zero to 50 per cent under 30 minutes. This is a really good value-added feature, which makes the device a compelling buy.

Also, the device supports multiple 5G bands (SA: n1/ n3/ n5/n8/ n28/ n40/ n78/ NSA：n1/n3/n40/n78) and whenever the infrastructure gets ready, Redmi Note 11T owners will be able to enjoy internet speeds up to 2.77Gbps. With this, you can download big full HD videos within a few seconds without any buffering from the web to the phone.

Photography

The Redmi Note 11T features dual-camera module -- 50MP(f/1.8) + 8MP ultra-wide (f/2.2) with LED flash. On the front, it features 16MP (f/2.45) selfie camera.

The camera takes fantastic images in the sunlight. It manages to capture the scene pretty well. The subjects, particularly the flowers come off in warmer colors than normal, but I don't complain as they are really great to look at and share on them on social media platforms.

It also takes pretty good ultra-wide shots and macro (close-up) photos too. The sample photos below have shown that the phone's camera hardware has been able to successfully capture a lot of details in the frame.

In the night mode, the photo seems to look good on the compact screen of the phone, but when you see the same picture on a big screen of a PC, you will see grains in dark regions.

Even the selfie camera too works like charm and yes, like the previous iterations, the native camera app comes with a buffet of beautification tools to enhance the facial look and looks fancy on the social media platforms.

Both the front and the rear-side cameras can record full HD (1080p) videos at 30 frames per second (fps). The primary camera also supports 1080p video at 60 fps too.

Final thoughts

The Redmi Note 11T is a great value-for-money mid-range phone. Besides the long battery life, what I liked the most was the imaging aspect. It takes really good photos and it is one of the best camera phones in its class (under Rs 20,000).

The Redmi Note 11T comes in three variants— 6GB RAM + 64GB storage, 6GB RAM + 128GB storage and 8GB RAM+ 128GB storage-- for Rs 16,999, Rs 17,999 and Rs 19,999, respectively.

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