Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 5G review: Cheap smartphone with 108Mp camera

Price When Reviewed

£279

Best Prices Today: Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 5G

No other brand turns out mid-priced smartphones at anything like the same rate as Xiaomi, and the latest of those is the Redmi Note 13 5G.

The result of such an iterative approach is that one Redmi phone can rather bleed into the next. So what does the Redmi Note 13 5G have to offer that we haven’t seen before?

Precious little, to be perfectly frank. But when you’re spending less than £300 on a phone, innovation and novelty matter much less than balance and solid dependability. On those fronts, the Redmi Note 13 5G is tough to criticise – though there remain some familiar issues, as well as one notable point of regression.

Design & Build

• Flatter, slimmer, lighter design than before
• Very plasticky but solid enough
• IP54 & Gorilla Glass 5

After the Redmi Note 12 5G‘s slightly bland curved design, Xiaomi has joined the trend for flatter edges with the Redmi Note 13 5G.

It’s still got a slightly cheap-feeling plastic frame, while the rear panel is its own none-too-premium shiny form of plastic. Although it certainly looks more striking than its predecessor.

My Arctic White test model is the stand-out one of the three (Graphite Black and Ocean Teal being the others) due to a curious marble-like finish that’s visible at an angle, and which gradually fades into view from top to bottom.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

There’s a square camera module that stands out slightly from the back of the phone, and which serves as a point of differentiation from the non-5G Redmi Note 13.

Improvements are subtle, but they’re there. An IP54 rating means that the Redmi Note 13 5G is slightly more splash-resistant than the Redmi Note 12 5G, which is always welcome but it’s still not fully waterproof.

The use of Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on the front of the phone brings about an upgrade to toughness, with last year’s model only offering Corning Gorilla Glass 3.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

At 174.5g, the Redmi Note 13 5G is about 15g lighter than its predecessor, while Xiaomi has also shaved the thickness down a little to 7.6mm. A footprint of 161.11 x 74.95mm also undercuts the Note 12 5G, seemingly thanks to slightly smaller bezels. There isn’t the same annoyingly large chin this time around.

Xiaomi has once again equipped its affordable phone with a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, positioned within the power button. It unlocks the phone relatively smoothly and reliably.

Also making a return is a top-mounted 3.5mm headphone jack, positioned alongside an IR blaster. The latter feature lets you control your TV or stereo using the preinstalled Mi Remote.

Screen & speakers

• Familiar 6.67in Full HD+ OLED display
• 120Hz refresh rate
• Downward-firing mono speaker

Xiaomi hasn’t really upped its display game at all with the Redmi Note 13 5G. But then, it was already very good for the money so it’s understandable.

This is another 6.67in Full HD+ (2400 x 1080) OLED display with vibrant colours and deep blacks. It hits a full 120Hz refresh rate, though can only drop to 60Hz like many phones at this price. This isn’t an uber-efficient LTPO panel.

Xiaomi cites a top brightness of 500 nits, which tallies with my own tests. I recorded a peak of around 480 nits with autobrightness turned off.

As that might suggest, the Redmi Note 13 5G isn’t the strongest when it comes to HDR support. You won’t be able to capitalise on HDR10+ or Dolby Vision when streaming viable video content.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

In truth, it isn’t a huge loss for a phone selling at this price. The important thing is that the screen is nice and colour-accurate, with a 100% sRGB gamut coverage in the Standard colour scheme, and an average Delta E of 0.96 (close to 1 being the ideal).

Xiaomi once again supplies 1920Hz PWM dimming, which promises to minimise flickering (and thus eye strain) at low brightness.

While the lack of display improvements is perfectly defensible – this is a very good screen – the lack of advancement in the audio department is much less so. Once again, you get a pretty puny mono speaker on the bottom edge of the phone. It’s far too easy to block with your holding finger.

The sound quality itself is nice and clear, if predictably lacking in low-end punch.

Specs & Performance

• MediaTek Dimensity 6080 and 8GB RAM
• Adequate performance
• 256GB of expandable storage

After Xiaomi went with a modest Qualcomm chip in 2023, we’re back in MediaTek territory in 2024’s Redmi Note 13 5G.

The MediaTek Dimensity 6080 provides a modest boost to performance over the Snapdragon 4 Gen 1, especially combined with double the RAM at 8GB.

I was unable to make a direct benchmark comparison with last year’s model (very few tests ran on the Redmi Note 12 5G at the time), but can compare the results to some of the Note 13 5G’s contemporaries.

In our suite of tests, the Redmi broadly matched the Samsung Galaxy A25 5G and the Moto G84 5G in the CPU-focused Geekbench 6 test, but fell short of its rivals in the GPU-focused GFX Bench graphics tests. That’s not ideal when you consider that both of those alternatives are £30 cheaper.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Generally speaking, using the Redmi Note 13 5G feels perfectly fine. It unlocks quickly enough using the fingerprint sensor, and navigating through its menus makes adequate use of that slick 120Hz refresh rate. Jumping between open apps doesn’t cause quite the same performance issues as it did with the Note 12 5G, likely thanks to that extra memory.

Where you notice the performance shortfall is in the slightly protracted app start up times, or the delay when jumping into the Camera app. Needless to say, high-end gaming isn’t the Note 13 5G’s forte either. 3D console racer Wreckfest at least runs, but it only becomes playable with the graphical settings cranked right down.

As well as 5G, the phone also has Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.3, so it’s well set up on the connectivity front.

Cameras

• 108Mp main sensor
• Reasonable results in good lighting, terrible night shots
• Decent selfie camera

Xiaomi has levelled the Redmi Note 13 5G’s camera system up in the form of a 108Mp 1/1.67″ main sensor. This would appear to be the Samsung Isocell HM6 – an older component, sure, but one which has made its way into pricier phones like the Xiaomi 12T in the past.

I’d love to say that this has resulted in a markedly stronger photographic package across the board, but it hasn’t. Shots taken in good lighting with that main sensor are fine, though like last year the colours can seem a little punched up on sunnier days. They’re reasonably well exposed, though, with decent detail.

However, Night mode shots are terrible, packed full of noise and blur. You can probably blame the lack of OIS (optical image stabilisation) here, and quite possibly some image processing limitations related to that MediaTek chip.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

There’s no dedicated telephoto camera here, but you can still take 2x and 3x shots within the main UI through cropping techniques. If you touch and drag, you can go up to 10x, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The results are extremely noisy towards the top end.

Weirdly, however, the 3x shots that I took with the Note 13 5G came out sharper than the 2x shots. I can only assume (and indeed hope) that it’s a bug in the camera app, and one that’ll be sorted in the near future.

Elsewhere, the 8Mp ultra-wide sees a big drop off in detail, while the 2Mp macro sensor is a predictably superfluous component as it almost always is. It simply doesn’t pack in enough pixels, and can’t pull in enough light to properly highlight those close-up details.

Selfie shots using the 16Mp front camera are pretty darned good for a phone of this price, however, capturing decent subject detail and background separation, as well as relatively natural skin tones. It didn’t suffer too badly with blowing out bright background elements either.

Video remains limited to 1080p at 30fps, which is a minor disappointment, though this is the default setting for many pricier phones despite being able to film in 4K or even higher. Again, it’s the lack OIS that’s the biggest impediment to obtaining smooth footage here.

Battery Life & Charging

• 5000mAh battery
• Stamina doesn’t seem as good as before
• Solid 33W charging

The Redmi Note 13 5G’s battery and charging specs are very familiar. That starts with the usual 5000mAh cell, which is once again sufficient to power it along for a full day of usage.

However, it feels like the phone’s stamina is worse than the Redmi Note 12 5G’s before it. Using the usual PC Mark Work 3.0 battery test, the Note 13 5G lasts 9 hours 50 minutes – that’s 35 minutes short of its predecessor.

More generally, I found the Note 13 5G’s battery performance to be somewhat erratic. I never ran out before bedtime, but for every full 15-hour day that left me with more than 50% left in the tank, I would get one that left me around the 35% mark. On one intensive day of mixed network usage and a fair amount of media streaming, I found myself with just 14% left.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Varying network environments and inconsistent third-party app behaviour mean that we should always sound a note of caution when citing such anecdotal experiences. But when this patchy performance is backed up by a disappointing benchmark result, I feel comfortable in concluding that the Note 13 5G’s stamina isn’t quite where it should be.

You get the same 33W wired charger in the box, which is perfectly sufficient, if not outstanding. It lets you get from empty to 55% in 30 minutes, while a full charge will take around an hour and 10 minutes, like before.

There’s no wireless charging, but you wouldn’t expect it at this price.

Software & Apps

• HyperOS 1.0 over Android 14
• Excessive bloatware
• Unintuitive and buggy notification menu

The Note 13 5G runs Xiaomi’s new HyperOS 1.0 on top of Android 14. Don’t let the name change from or the use of Google’s latest OS fool you though. This still feels very much like MIUI before it.

Xiaomi’s heavy-handed approach to UI customisation is very much unchanged, with big ugly icons, an annoyingly convoluted split notification pane, and stacks upon stacks of unwanted bloatware.

On the latter front, you still get a whole folder of ‘More apps’ preinstalled, as well as one with a selection of questionable games.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

While all this will be familiar to owners of previous Xiaomi-branded phones, I have a couple of all-new bugbears this time around.

For all the space given over to the aforementioned notification and shortcut toggle menus, there’s now seemingly no space for a Settings menu shortcut. You have to back out to the home screen and hit the dedicated app icon.

Then there’s the immensely annoying Music app widget that seemed to be permanently rooted to my lock screen and notification pane. The intrusive (and non-existent) track: SONG_EMPTY by Unknown Artist.

In terms of software updates, Xiaomi has seemingly promised three major Android updates and four years of security patch updates, which is decent for a cheaper smartphone.

Price & Availability

Xiaomi is offering a streamlined selection for the Redmi Note 13 5G here in the UK and Europe. There’s just one model on offer which comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage – a straight doubling up from the Note 12 5G.

This singular model costs £279/€299 direct from Xiaomi. I haven’t spotted any UK operator offering the Redmi Note 13 5G on contract at the time of writing.

Once again, this positions the phone in the somewhat awkward position of being too expensive to be categorised as an out-and-out budget phone, but a lot cheaper than most mid-range phones.

I’ve already mentioned two other phones that do something similar in the Samsung Galaxy A25 5G and the Moto G84 5G. However, those phones manage to hit that magic £249 mark, which skirts the top end of budget phone territory.

In the opposite direction, Xiaomi itself offers the Redmi Note 13 Pro 5G for £339. This gets you a phone that’s broadly similar at first glance. However, with superior Qualcomm performance, a sharper display, faster charging, an in-display fingerprint sensor, stereo speakers, and a better 200Mp main camera, it’s actually a significant step up for just £60.

Should you buy the Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 5G?

The Redmi Note 13 5G covers a lot of bases for £279, and there have been a couple of subtle but welcome design improvements over previous models. I still rate its 120Hz OLED display quite highly, too.

On the other hand, its battery life appears to have taken a slight step back, while Xiaomi’s new HyperOS UI is hardly the MIUI upgrade we were hoping for. The choice of processor might represent a modest upgrade, meanwhile, but you can get faster performance for less money elsewhere.

Together with a weirdly inconsistent camera setup, the Redmi Note 13 5G doesn’t feel like it’s on quite so solid ground as some of its predecessors. It’s a good phone, but there’s better value to be found elsewhere without looking very far.

Spending a little more will get you the much more assured Redmi Note 13 Pro 5G, while spending a little less gets you the rock-solid Samsung Galaxy A25 5G or the excellent Motorola Moto G84 5G.

Specs

• HyperOS 1.0 over Android 14
• 6.67in, FHD+, AMOLED, 120Hz, flat display
• Side-mounted fingerprint sensor
• MediaTek Dimensity 6080
• 8GB LPDDR4X RAM
• 256GB storage
• 108Mp, f/1.7 main camera
• 8Mp, f/2.2 ultra-wide camera
• 2Mp, f/2.4 macro camera
• Up to 1080p @ 30fps rear video
• 16Mp front-facing camera
• Mono speaker
• Hybrid dual-SIM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
• Bluetooth 5.3
• 5000mAh battery
• 33W charging
• 161.11 x 74.95 x 7.6 mm
• 174.5g
• Launch colours: Graphite Black, Arctic White, Ocean Teal