The Lowdown

The Redmi Note 12 Pro+ 5G is a fantastic Android phone, but what really pushes it from “cool, great phone” into highly recommended territory is that you can snag one of these off of Amazon for as little as $291.50 (it’s regular retail price is $325). That’s ONE-QUARTER of what an iPhone 14 Pro Max costs for a phone with a 200MP camera and stereo sound.

Overall

Pros

Camera is astounding
Lots of video and photo effect options
Snappy performance
Good battery life
Excellent sound
Affordable

Cons

Limited US carrier support

Buy from Amazon

We’re in an era where there’s a plethora of phone options, especially for Android phones. If you need a bigger screen, a sharper camera, or a more pocketable device, there’s one out there to fit your criteria. We had the chance to test the new Xiaomi Redmi Note 12 Pro+ 5G, and the camera blew us away!

Before we get to why the camera is so great, let’s look at the whole package. The Redmi Note 12 Pro+ sports a 6.67″ screen and comes in at a svelte 0.33″ thick, making it fairly pocketable for a large device.

There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, a USB-C connector on the bottom, and volume/power buttons on t0 the right side. It’s a typical slab-style Android phone in style, but it feels quite solid and comfortable to hold.

The Redmi Note 12 Pro+ runs Android 12 with Redmi’s MIUI 13 interface over it. It isn’t a super busy overlay, and it mostly serves to organize the apps into categories in the app drawer and offers slightly different icons than stock Android.

My daily phone is a Pixel 7, and while it’s clear the Redmi interface is different, it doesn’t feel unpleasant or overly busy.

Under the hood, the Redmi Note 12 Pro+ runs a MediaTek Dimensity 1080 with Vapor Chamber cooling technology.

It does support fast charging, but the fast charger included was for non-US plugs, so we couldn’t test it. However, even regular USB-C chargers seemed to top off the phone reasonably fast, and while we didn’t do anything too intense with the phone, it did stay nicely cool.

The phone sports a roomy 6.67″ Pro AMOLED screen, which works beautifully for videos, photos, reading, and web browsing. It’s on the larger end of what’s comfortable to hold in your hand, but I had zero issues using it one-handed.

The speakers support Dolby ATMOS, and the screen supports Dolby Vision, which makes for a surprisingly robust viewing experience. Even simple YouTube videos sounded good and in stereo thanks to speakers on the top and bottom of the phone.

The Redmi Note 12 Pro+ also sports a fingerprint reader in the recessed power button, facial recognition, and the usual pattern/code unlock options. The facial recognition was fast enough that most of the time, I didn’t need the fingerprint reader or pattern code, but when I did, the fingerprint sensor worked quite well.

While I know the in-screen fingerprint readers work well (and I use it regularly with my Pixel 7), having it on the side is extremely handy.

Redmi also included a clear case with the phone, and normally I wouldn’t bring this up, but I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. It fits the phone well, leaves the fingerprint reader open, has a nice raised ledge to protect the camera array, and even has a little tab that covers the charging port, so you don’t have to worry about dust or pocket lint sneaking inside.

It’s not as rugged as I might choose for a daily case, but for a free case, it’s quite impressive.

The real star of the show here is the Redmi Note 12 Pro+’s camera array. It sports three cameras with an 8-megapixel/2-megapixel/200-megapixel mix. No, that’s not a typo, it’s a 200-megapixel camera, and it is spectacular.

Austin, the dog, graciously agreed to help me test it out, and we had a blast trying different options, both with and without Austin (photos were taken with night vision, portrait mode, and regular mode):