Redmi 9 Prime review: Xiaomi's budget smartphone prime monster

 

The Redmi 9 Prime is the top model in the Chinese smartphone maker series Xiaomi’s Redmi 9 series. Priced at Rs 9,999 on the front, the smartphone boasts a full HD solution, has a quad-camera set-up on the back, a powerful battery with fast charging support, and P2i dust- and water resistant protection.  

These are some of the hardest features to find on a smartphone with less than Rs 10,000. So, the Redmi 9 Prime looks like a go-to smartphone in the budget segment. But how does it go as a complete product? Let's find out:

Design 

With a budget smartphone, the Redmi 9 Prime has great design and inspiring design. Made of plastic, the smartphone has a carved back cover that provides good grip on the hand. It feels comfortable to hold and operate, without the feature of a wide and long form. 

The phone's rear camera module does not appear much on the frame. Therefore, it does not sway in the upper areas, unless you touch the pressure on the upper side of the screen. As for the screen, it is covered under Gorilla Glass 3 to prevent scratches and smudges. 

 It’s not the best iteration of Gorilla Glass you get on a budget smartphone, but this is better than no protection at all. The phone is covered with P2i cover to protect it from light water and dust.

The Redmi 9 Prime has a 6.53-inch IPS LCD screen with full HD + resolution and 19.5: 9 factor ratio. The display has bezels, and the bottom is thick - a common feature on most budget smartphones. The screen is clear and responsive but the light is slightly muted. Therefore, the screen has a small readability of the sun. However, it works well in home settings.  

Being a full HD unit, the screen does not look pixel and works for a wide variety of content - web, multimedia and text. The phone has a Wide vine L1 certificate from Google's digital rights management (DRM) platform required to stream movies or TV shows from high-end platforms like Amazon Prime and Netflix at higher resolution than 480p.

Camera 

The Redmi 9 Prime has a quad camera set up on the back, with a 13 megapixel core sensor, an 8MP ultra wide sensor, a 5MP macro sensor, and a 2MP sensor. Previously, the phone had an 8MP sensor for selfies and face recognition. The phone's main camera is good, but it doesn't lead to class. It works well in daytime conditions and captures beautiful details with minimal noise and neutral colors. In low light, however, the camera captures sound and casts shadows and highlights details. camera sample camera sample sample camera The ultrawide camera has a reputation for daytime heating. 

It works well in low light but, like the main camera, misses out on details, shadows and highlighting. Photographs taken show a barrel with twisted frame corners and soft details at the edges. Xiaomi's budget smartphones use one of the best macro camera modes and those on the Redmi 9 Prime are no different. Ideal for a close-up shot and captures good details with a good exposure value.  

Like the best and most comprehensive sensors, low-resolution photography is not the place to get a great sensor. Depth sensor helps phone portrait mode and other features related to the value associated with the match. It looks great on separating the item from the background, and the portraits come out well, with a creamy bokeh effect on the back. camera sample camera sample sample camera

Performance 

The Redmi 9 Prime features a MediaTek Helio G80 system-on-chip, paired with 4GB RAM and up to 128 GB of internal storage. Boots Android 10 based system-based MIUI 11 user interface, which is a custom skin placed on top of the app. The phone is powered by a 5,020 mAh battery and supports 18W fast charging. However, the phone comes with a standard 10W charger in the box. Details aside, the                  Redmi 9 Prime is a no-frills smartphone that handles everything well.  

 It delivers consistent performance without major problems. It works well with processor-centric tasks such as multitasking, switching between applications, internet browsing, UI scrolling, etc., and does not show any weaknesses. It is not possible to perform tasks that contain graphics such as play, multimedia editing, etc., on this mobile. However, like other budget smartphones, it is not well suited for such tasks. 

While its performance is better than what you get on most budget smartphones, the phone's custom UI doesn't seem to be optimized for the good user experience. The phone comes with pre-installed bloatware and the UI contains ads from the notification area and other Xiaomi apps. Unfortunately, the visibility of the ads is obvious, and that enhances user experience.  

You can disable ads, but the process is long and complicated. In terms of time on-battery, a fully charged battery gets you about two days of backup for normal use, as well as a day backup for deep usage. Charging the phone using a 10W charger provided is painful - the battery takes about three hours to get a full charge. Charging time, however, drops to about half of Xiaomi's 18W charger.

Redmi 9 Prime Review: Decision

Xiaomi Redmi 9 Prime is the best of the sub-Rs 10,000 smartphone on the market right now. It has an inspiring design, full HD clarity screen, capable cameras, fast performance, and good battery life. All of these features allow for the main moniker of the phone and make it a smartphone to the segment. However, be aware of ads on the user interface before thinking about this.