Xiaomi Redmi 12 5G review: The perfect budget 5G phone?

The Redmi 12 5G has made its global debut in India with the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 in tow. The Redmi Number series banks on affordability as one of its key hallmarks. However, if you look at the market stats, Xiaomi's journey has not been so breezy in the last few quarters. With an aim to regain its supremacy in the smartphone market, the company has hedged its bets on the Redmi 12 lineup. But is the attractive price-to-value ratio of the Redmi 12 5G inviting enough for buyers? We put the latest Redmi 12 5G through its paces to find out just that.

Design & Build Quality

The Redmi 12 5G has received upgrades in form and design over the Redmi 11 Prime 5 G's curved edges. It has a flat-edge design and is a bit taller to fit on a bigger screen. The new design also makes it thinner at 8.17 mm. 

The Redmi 12 5G has a plastic frame with a glass back and is offered in three colours: Jade Black, Pastel Blue and Moonstone Silver, which gives a rainbow-like effect under direct light. The camera deco has a chrome finish which adds a nice touch, and though it looks like a triple camera setup, the smaller third module houses the LED flash. 

The Gorilla Glass 3 on both front & back ensures protection from daily wear and tear, while the IP53 rating gives it a layer of dust and splash resistance.

In daily use, the phone is comfortable to hold in your hand and gives a durable feeling. The flat rails, rounded edges and glass back provide enough grip, but most people would be happy putting on the protective case provided in the box. Overall, the design upgrade makes it more refined and good-looking than the previous generation, which gets a thumbs-up from me.

Display

The Redmi 12 5G gets a bigger 6.7-inch FHD+ display than the Redmi 11 Prime's 6.5-inch screen. Though, it isn't an AMOLED panel and uses an LCD panel with a 90Hz refresh rate. Redmi says that the display on this phone offers 550 nits of peak brightness and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. However, in testing the Redmi 12's display, we got around 325 nits of peak brightness in Sunlight mode and two nits for black levels. 

In daily use, the display on the Redmi 12 can get bright enough when required. The screen produces sharp visuals, and the screen size is perfect for watching movies or videos on YouTube. The Adaptive refresh rate option keeps things running smoothly by automatically switching between preset refresh rates based on what's running on the screen. The touch response rate is also great, and I did not face any delay when playing games on this phone.

Performance

Making its India debut with the Redmi 12 5G is the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2, Qualcomm's latest SoC made for budget offerings on a 4nm process. This makes it quite adept at handling daily tasks and extremely power efficient. The phone runs on MIUI 14, which is based on Android 13, and packs upto 8GB RAM and 256GB storage variants to choose from. In terms of future updates, Xiaomi promises two years of version updates and three years of security updates for the Redmi 12 5G, which is great.

The Redmi 12 5G has all the performance chops you would expect from a budget offering. While the Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 performs admirably well in the usual set of benchmarks, such as AnTuTu and Geekbench, the CPU throttling test is where it goes above and beyond with a 92% score which translates to a negligible throttling of just 8%.

The phone performs quite well In games such as Asphalt 9, COD Mobile and BGMI, and I did not experience any lag or frame drops while playing these games.

The MIUI 14 runs smoothly daily and is just snappy from the get-go. However, preloaded apps and games could spoil some precious first impressions for buyers. 

Battery Life

The 5,000mAh battery on the Redmi 12 5G is quite an efficient performer. In our battery tests, the Redmi 12 5G lasted for over 17 hours in the PC Mark Battery run, which is exceptional. In my daily use, I managed to get close to 8 hours of screen time, though that differs from person to person and their unique usage habits.

Nevertheless, what you're looking at here is a day's worth of battery life on heavy use, and it can be spread across two days if you are a regular user.

One gripe that I have here is about the charging speed of 18W. It takes over 2 hours and 20 minutes to fully charge the Redmi 12 5G using the 22.5W charging adapter provided in the box.

Cameras

The cameras on the Redmi 12 5G are suitable for daily use. It likely has the same 50MP sensor as last year with an f/1.8 aperture. The primary 50MP camera produces sharp images, but more often than not, the pictures appear washed out with low dynamic range.

In an indoor environment, the camera tries to capture neutral colours, and with adequate lighting, you will be able to get away with instagrammable shots. The night mode cannot rescue the images since it adds a host of grains while attempting to brighten the picture. However, the camera department needs further improvement and fine-tuning in image processing. 

As far as affordable phone go, the primary camera comes packed with features such as portrait, night, Timelapse modes and more. The camera app also has presets for classic film filters and can record in 1080p at 30fps.

Verdict

The Redmi 12 5G is the company's attempt at reasserting dominance in the sub-₹15k segment. The phone looks and feels great in the hand and offers a large and beautiful display to watch movies and videos. The performance is sufficient for daily use as you can play any games or run any app(s) of your choice without stressing out the system. The battery life is extraordinary, and this is where the synergy between hardware and software is the maximum, and you can expect dependable battery performance. 

With its aggressive pricing, you cannot look past the value Redmi 12 5G offers. The new upgrades make it a no-brainer for anyone looking for an affordable 5G phone or want a secondary 5G phone to experience superfast connectivity.

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