The new Redmi Note 11 series was unveiled earlier this week and it already went through a limited sale (an early bird deal with $20-30 worth of discounts). Did you get one? Will you get one once the phones become widely available and which one? That’s what we want to know this week.
The Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G fills a 5G-shaped hole in the Note series. There was a Note 10 5G last year, but that was more of a mid-range offering and not a Pro. Anyway, the Note 11 Pro 5G is mostly identical to its 4G-only sibling with the key difference being the Snapdragon 695 chipset.
Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
Compared to last year’s Pro, the 11-series entries offer a brighter display charging that’s almost twice as fast – the 67W charger (included in the box) needs 15 minutes for a 0-50% charge.
Redmi Note 11 Pro
One thing that has changed since the 10-series is the pricing. The Redmi Note 10 Pro (Max) started at $280 (6/64GB) and higher specced models went up to $330 (8/128GB). The 4G version of the 11 Pro starts at $300 (6/64GB) and goes up to $350 (8/128GB). And if you want the 5G version instead, add $30 on top of those prices.
Pricing info: Redmi Note 11 Pro • Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G
That’s not ideal considering that the Helio G96 chipset inside the Redmi Note 11 Pro (4G) is not strictly faster than the Snapdragon 732G it aims to replace (the GPU is its main weak point). We don’t have benchmarks of the Snapdragon 695 yet and while we’re excited to test its power efficiency, we noticed a downgrade – the chip doesn’t support 4K recording, while the 732G (and the Note 10 Pro it powered) did handle 4K at 30 fps.
Redmi Note 11S
Let’s move on to the vanilla series. Its upgrades over the Note 10 models include a higher refresh rate (90 Hz, but still) and new cameras – including the same 108 MP sensor (ISOCELL HM2) as the Pro phones. With 9-in-1 binning it has a larger effective pixel size for low-light shooting and natively supports zooming up to 3x.
Redmi Note 11
Surprisingly, prices have fallen, at least in the case of the Redmi Note 11, which starts at $180 for a 4/64GB unit (and this is if you missed the early bird deal) and goes up to $230 for a 6/128GB unit. The Redmi Note 10 started at $200 (6/64GB).
Pricing info: Redmi Note 11 • Redmi Note 11S
As for the Redmi Note 11S, that camera upgrade isn’t cheap – it starts at $250 (6/64GB) and goes up to $300 (8/128GB), $20 more than the Note 10S on all storage options.
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