Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G Review After Using For 1 Month

Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 series is expansive with a plethora of models under this lineup. The latest to be added is the affordable and 5G-ready Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G. Launched in India recently, the phone first launched in China back in May as the Redmi Note 10 5G. It brings the Dimensity 700 5G chipset and competes head-on with Poco M3 Pro 5G and Realme Narzo 30 5G.

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However, it lacks on multiple fronts including no ultrawide snapper, no stereo speaker, and restricted charging brick in the box. Here’s everything you need to know about Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G in a detailed hands-on review.

Available via Mi.com and Amazon India, you can get your hands on the new Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G starting at Rs 14,499/- for its base 4GB+64GB variant. Max is up to 6GB+128GB variant and you get a new price tag of 16,499/- which is the same on both the venues at the time of writing this. If you decide to purchase the phone from retail stores, the price is likely to vary by an odd of 500/- additional.

Mi.com has an exchange program that rewards/discounts up to Rs 10,000/- on exchanging an eligible smartphone while buying Note 10T 5G. The same offer is available on Amazon India albeit with a different upper range. There is a tonne of other offers related to debit cards and credit cards and other modes of payments including standard EMI and No-cost EMI.

The unboxing experience is pretty old school and inside the box 0f Redmi Note 10T, you get the usual stuff that can be expected from a Redmi Note series phone. This includes the device itself, an 18W charger, a USB to USB Type-C cable, some documentation, and a translucent clear silicon back case.

Before we talk in detail about Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T, let’s have a quick look at the key specifications. 

• Display: 6.5-inch FHD+ Dot display, 90Hz high refresh rate
• Processor: Mediatek Dimensity 700
• Storage: 4GB/64GB, 6GB/128GB
• Software: MIUI 12 (Based On Android 11)
• Rear cameras: 48MP + 2MP + 2MP
• Selfie camera: 8MP
• Battery: 5000 mAh battery with 18W fast charger
• Weight: 16.2 x 0.9 x 7.5 cm
• Dimensions: 190g

Now, let’s move ahead and see how the Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T turns out to be.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G design is the same as Redmi Note 10 5G that was released in China. Why won’t it be because it is indeed a rebranded version? For reference, if you haven’t seen the Chinese version, the phone resembles a lot like its siblings in the Redmi Note 10 series so there’s nothing else to discuss.

The phone, surprisingly, has a good-quality build for its price. It is still using a plastic frame and a plastic back although the latter is more “glasstic” which is a term used for plastic panels with a glass-like finish to them. The panel is matte and shiny which relieves it from attracting smudges and fingerprint marks on the panel. It makes for a great feature since wiping the back panel for smudges if it had stuck would’ve been a constant hassle.

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The phone has curved side panels and with a tall structure, holding the phone is much easier. However, it has a 6.5″ display which means reaching on top of the display with a single hand isn’t always possible unless you have big hands. The software doesn’t offer any one-handed mode either.

Talking about the front, it is a massive display with considerable bezels around all four sides. It doesn’t put you off-rails because it goes in line with other budget-friendly devices. The punch-hole at the centre of the top bezel is huge so it is based on your opinion whether it acts as an obstruction or not.

You get a 3.5mm headphone jack on top with an IR blaster and a secondary mic. There’s a hybrid dual SIM card slot where you either use two 5G SIMs or go for a single SIM and a memory card and it is located on the left. On the right, you get a volume rocker on top and a power button at the middle that performs double duty as a side-mounted fingerprint scanner.

When it comes to the bottom side, you have an array of three assortments i.e. a USB- C port, a single loudspeaker, and a primary microphone at your disposal.

There’s no IP rating and neither the phone is resistant against water or splashes to the best of my knowledge. Even if your phone escapes unhurt after dipping in a glass of water, you have actually voided the warranty since, without IP rating, OEM doesn’t have water damage coverage under warranty.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G packs in a 6.5-inch IPS LCD panel boasting a 90Hz refresh rate. The panel is FHD+ with 108062400 pixels resolution along with a rich 405 PPI density. It has a 20:9 aspect ratio. Now it was all about the Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G specs w.r.t. display, here’s a hands-on review when tested in real-life.

To be honest, Xiaomi should have done something when it comes to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G display. It has almost the same display as on Note 10 5G as well as Poco M3 Pro 5G which shares almost the same pricing as well.

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The display is tall no doubt, however, it is an LCD panel. I don’t say it is any worse but hey, if you are upgrading/downgrading from an AMOLED display, you will see a considerable change in performance and colour reproduction as well. LCD panels are cheaper and thus, used on entry-level to mid-range devices. It is bright so viewing the display in bright sunlight won’t be that difficult.

The device uses a 90Hz Adaptive Refresh Rate that ensures you get the smoothest transitions and animations wherever you go. You can either set it to 60Hz or go for 90Hz which is adaptive. This means it will go for 90Hz when scrolling or when you are interacting with the screen while the video players, games, and a few other entities are locked at 60Hz irrespective of the RR mode selected.

There’s Widevine L1 DRM certification that allows it to stream HD content on Redmi Note 10T 5G. That’s a relief.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G has a Dimensity 700 5G octa-core processor. The chipset is an entry-level one that has a dual-cluster arrangement with a max frequency of 2.2GHz. The CPU comes paired with a Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. About the storage, the device has up to 6GB RAM and up to 128GB of UFS 2.2 storage.

This new Redmi phone gets the same processor as that of Poco M3 Pro 5G so you can expect the same performance as well. There’s nothing extraordinary about the device although I feel the MIUI under the hood might slow it down a bit. Viewing media, songs, calling, texting, and browsing the internet are just a few tasks that I tested on the phone. The Dimensity 700 can handle it all with ease. However, it is an entry-level chipset so you can expect some degree of sluggishness here and there.

Check out this cool 2-minutes review of Redmi Note 10 Pro Max

Gaming, on the other hand, bores a different story altogether. Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G performance is decent in gaming since you can play ‘n’ number of 2D and casual games with ease. It is when the chipset begins to work hard when playing high-graphics games like BGMI or Call of Duty: Mobile. You will have to set the graphics to Medium to get a good gaming experience. Also, it gets a bit warm but that’s usually when going through high-end apps and games so that’s something you will have to cope up with anyways.

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The performance is decent for the price tag although you get MIUI 12 on-board Note 10T 5G against Redmi Note 10S’ MIUI 12.5. Even though the UI is based on Android 11, getting an MIUI 12.5 would’ve meant less cluster, fewer ads, fewer pre-installed apps, and less hassle overall. MIUI 12 is full of ads and you can’t avoid them all. There is a tonne of apps too that you can’t uninstall (at least most of them) and it is a bit sluggish.

Redmi Note 10T 5G packs a selfie camera at the front housing an 8MP snapper. The rear camera assembly has a triple rear camera setup housing a 48MP primary shooter with f/1.8 aperture with PDAF and two auxiliary snappers i.e. 2MP depth and 2MP macro sensor. Xiaomi used a popular technique to increase heads on the camera assembly so two of the decorative sensors in the Redmi Note 10T 5G camera section are rather unnecessarily added.

There’s a single 48MP shooter (others are decorative) that can capture quality shots. It retains most details, has decent colour reproductions and the shots are overall well-exposed when you grab it in the daytime. However, as the intensity of light decreases, the quality of the shots proportionally reduces as well. Shots are fuzzy, shaky, and somewhat blur in low-light if you don’t have steady hands.

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The portrait mode on the Redmi Note 10T 5G uses the depth sensor for depth data in conjunction with the primary camera. Turns out portrait shots are well-executed. But you would still need a good amount of light to capture quality images. Low-light photography using the portrait mode isn’t that good.

Finally, we have the selfie shooter at 8MP which is way smaller than that of the primary camera at the back. It is also among the weakest of the five Redmi Note 10 series smartphones available in the market. It does capture good-quality shots at daytime and just like its rear counterpart, suffers a lot in low-light mode.

There’s a night mode available that highlights a few areas but overall, it is average. But I won’t blame Xiaomi for it because many smartphones in the series suffer from such a fate. However, being the No. 1 smartphone manufacturer in India (at the time of writing this), Xiaomi should have done better.

With a 5,000 mAh battery pack on the Redmi Note 10T 5G, this is among the few pros that you get with the smartphone. The battery pack is capable of providing background for a day of moderate to high usage. You can stretch it to a day and a half or even two whole days with careful and mixed usage. I don’t have any doubt that the 5,000 mAh battery on-board the device will make you feel less anxious about charging the phone repeatedly.

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However, the phone has a max charging speed of 18W even though its charging brick has a 22.5W capacity. With 18W at your disposal, it will easily take approx 2 hours (and a few minutes) to juice up the battery to its full capacity. I know it is sluggish by today’s standards but it is what it is. No wireless or reverse charging is available and there’s no rocket science here since it is a budget smartphone.

There’s a single bottom-firing loudspeaker and it is as loud as it can get. Redmi Note 10T 5G should have integrated a stereo speaker setup but Xiaomi chose a single speaker setup instead. Thus,  will have to go through with it.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 10T 5G is a 5G-ready smartphone that supports both SA and NSA 5G networks which includes 1, 3, 40, 77, and 78 bands. There’s LTE-A with carrier aggregation on-board the device too. For now, you have 4G as mentioned and its call connectivity and quality are on-point with the price tag so there’s no hassle.

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There’s of course PIN and Pattern available at your disposal. Apart from that, you have a side-mounted fingerprint scanner that lets you get access to your device with just a tap. It is instant and much faster than the 2D software-based facial recognition system available as well.

Pros 

• 5000 mAh battery
• 5G connectivity
• 90Hz refresh rate

Cons 

• Hybrid SIM slot
• Average camera setup
• Dual stereo speakers missing