Redmi Note 9S Price and Full review: the best buy of 2020

Xiaomi did it again?
Have you made another smartphone that could be the best buy of the year?

Over the past few years Xiaomi, with the Redmi Note series, has made a brace of consecutive best buys: in 2018 it has succeeded with Redmi Note 7, in 2019 with Redmi Note 8, will it have succeeded also in 2020 with Redmi Note 9S? Let’s find out in the full review of Redmi Note 9S.

Package

The features of the Xiaomi devices are always complete with everything you need, that of Redmi Note 9s is no exception.

Inside the box, we find a 22.5W USB charger compatible with fast charging, a USB Type C cable and a useful transparent silicone cover.

The cover is not of the highest quality but helps protect the exposed camera, but let’s talk about this later.

A film is applied to the smartphone, this, unfortunately, is of questionable quality and it crawls all too easily, however it remains a useful addition.

Construction and ergonomics.

From the first moment, we realize that Redmi Note 9S is a beautiful and well-made smartphone with a single flaw found in the very exposed rear camera.

The construction is perfect indeed. Thanks to the aluminium used in the side frame and the glass used for the screen and back cover, the smartphone is excellent and beautiful and pleasant to hold.

The glass used is Gorilla Glass 5: good resistance, less oleophobic treatment. Screen and back cover tend to collect many fingerprints, and you will often find yourself having to clean both sides of the device.

The ergonomics is enough, but we have become accustomed to the large size trend for a few years now.

The smartphone has an elongated shape and quite important dimensions, it is difficult to grasp with one hand, but at least it is not slippery.

The dimensions and weight are in the category average: 165.5 x 76.68 x 8.8 millimetres for a weight of 209 grams.

The design is modern and quite aligned with current smartphones.

The differentiation points are to be found in the rear camera, the power button and the front hole. The rear camera has a square shape in a central position that gives harmony and balance to the back cover.

The photographic block, however, it is quite exposed and makes the device highly shaky when laid on flat surfaces.

I was pleasantly impressed by the power button equipped with a fingerprint sensor, the button is comfortable to press, easy to find thanks to the practical groove and the fingerprint sensor works almost perfectly, even if it does not have an instantaneous speed.

The side sensor is comfortable and effective, more intuitive, precise and easy to find than the sensors hidden under the display, he convinced me.

The front camera is hidden in a small central hole, is not very noticeable and is user friendly when using the device.

The rest of the design is that of a classic smartphone: slot for two NanoSIM and microSD on the left, volume rocker on the right, in the lower part 3.5 mm audio jack, USB TypeC port and speaker, in the upper part capsule with LED notification, usual proximity and brightness sensors, microphone and infrared port.

Note aside the colours deserve, for our tests, we used the green/blue aqua version (Aurora Blue) which is very beautiful and is able to give character and strength to the product design alone.

Redmi Note 9S is available in three different colours: Glacier White, Interstellar Black and Aurora Blue.

Hardware and performance.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S has a good hardware compartment consisting of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G octa-core processor, Adreno A618 GPU, 4 or 6 GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 64 or 128 GB of UFS 2.1 internal memory expandable via microSD.

The performance during a classic daily use of smartphones is excellent, and we have never encountered lag problems or slowdowns, only some uncertainty in phases of greater workload.

The performances are therefore on average with other devices of the same range and are largely sufficient for intense use of the smartphone.

The system is always fluid and quick, thanks also to MIUI optimizations. The opening of the apps and the uploads take place fairly quickly.

Performance remains good also in the gaming sector. We concentrated our tests on heavy games such as Real Racing 3, Fortnite, Call of duty and Asphalt 9.

In all cases, we managed to get good performance and smooth gaming with medium-high graphics settings.

The overheating of the smartphone is average and is not annoying or problematic, except after long gaming sessions.

Audio and connectivity.

The audio compartment is composed of the stereo speaker, positioned in the lower part, which guarantees a sound of good quality and a good maximum volume, even if a little lacking in the bass.

The ear capsule works well and with clear voices and an excellent maximum volume. L ‘ sound in the headphones, either via the 3.5 mm audio jack and Bluetooth, is very good quality.

Remember the presence of the notification LEDnestled inside the ear capsule, it is small but bright enough to do its job well.

During tests some problems found with the proximity sensor, it happened to me sometimes to find the active screen on call and to press on the touch with the cheek (I expect that the problem will be fixed with a software update).

The connectivity part has left me perplexed. The My Redmi 9S Notes is subject to a problem of the WiFi connection stability, which supports WiFi a / b / g / n / ac Dual Band.

In fact, leaving the smartphone in standby the connection remains active but does not transmit with the consequent loss of notifications and data.

It is enough to wait about fifteen seconds to see the wifi reactivate and return to work properly on its own, but you need to unlock the phone and open an app that requires a connection.

This problem appears to be widespread in Europe and should be resolved soon with a software update.

The WiFi connection is accompanied by Bluetooth 5.0, GPS / A-GPS / Glonass / Beidou / Galileo, an infrared sensor for the remote control function and FM radio.

Bluetooth and positioning work very well, guarantee stable connections and very precise positioning.

Redmi Note 9S is equipped with Dual SIM with Dual Standby able to take full advantage of 4G LTE thanks to the support of the 20 bands.

During tests, no problems encountered with the connection, the quality of reception has always been excellent and the quality of the audio on call has always been more than satisfactory.

To unlock the phone, Redmi Note 9S has to unlock with the face and fingerprint sensor.

The facial unlock relies on the front camera. Facial recognition is the standard Android one, fast with good light but not very precise and reliable with decreasing brightness, until it becomes unusable in the dark.

The fingerprint sensor is located on the right side of the smartphone, a very comfortable position to reach, a little less for left-handers, and it works very well, it is exact and recognizes the fingerprint 95% of the time, but it is not very fast, and there is always a moment of waiting before the device is unlocked.

The big shortcoming of Redmi Note 9S is NFC. At a time when contactless payments are in widespread use, it could be a pleasant addition. It will be included in the Pro version.

Display

The screens are the components that have improved the most in recent years on Xiaomi devices.

Redmi Note 9S has a 6.67-inch LCD display with 20: 9 ratio and FullHD + resolution, 2400 x 1080 pixels, support for HDR10 and 450nit brightness.

The screen has a very bright panel, with bright and well-calibrated colours and a good level of contrast.

The good brightness ensures excellent readability outdoors, even in sunlight. The brightness response is well calibrated and fast.

The elongated shape of the panel makes it ideal for enjoying streaming movies and TV series and makes it very comfortable for gaming. In these modes of use the hole of the centred camera is noticeable and seems to almost disappear when you focus on viewing in the central part of the screen.

The video streaming is in high definition thanks to the Widevine L1 certification which will allow us to enjoy Full HD on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney + and Youtube.

Camera

Redmi Note 9S differs from the mass of mid-range products thanks to an excellent quadruple camera. The quad-camera, equipped with single-tone LED flash and 10X digital zoom, is composed of:

• 48 MP main sensor, f / 1.79 aperture and PDAF autofocus.

• 8 MP wide-angle sensor with 119 ° field of view and f / 2.2 aperture.

• 5 MP macro sensor with f / 2.4 aperture.

• 2 MP depth of field sensor.

The shots taken from the main optics are really good, with a good level of brightness, fairly precise and well-balanced colours and a good level of detail.

It is also possible to shoot using HDR and AI which improve, although slightly, the shades of the shots.

The images taken during the day are of higher quality than those made by devices of the same price range.

Photos taken in the dark, using night mode and a good steady hand are sufficient but there is a loss of quality.

In photos taken in the dark, the greatest risk is to get slightly blurred photos, in this case, you may have to repeat the shot keeping your hand steadier or relying on a support or an easel.

The wide-angle lens allows you to take very good photos, even if of a lower quality than the main camera, with a good level of detail.

The photos are easily usable for your social networks, the ones taken at night are less good.

The macro lens allows you to create shots with a 2x detail, a function that I don’t find particularly useful but that could be useful to someone.

The photos taken in this mode are good and with precise details and good colours.

Overall good bokeh effect with both cameras, with a good focus on faces and good blur. All perfect for selfies to be posted on social media.

With the rear camera, you can shoot videos in 4K at 30 fps of decent quality. In FullHD you get good videos with good colour balance and more than enough electronic stabilization.

The front camera, hidden in the small hole of which we have already spoken, is equipped with a 16 MP sensor with f / 2.5 aperture.

The photos taken from this perspective are more than enough, perfect for social media, even if the colours are not really realistic with a strange patina effect.

During the tests, I tried to install the Google Camera to compare the shots with the Xiaomi app.

I have to say that with Google Camera the overall quality of the photos improves slightly and you get shots with better-balanced colours and better contrasts and details.

This applies to both the main and front cameras. In this case, however, you must have a steady hand during shooting, the exposure time is slightly longer and the risk of having blurred or blurred shots increases considerably.

Software

The operating system of Redmi Note 9S is based on Android 10 with MIUI 11 customization. Xiaomi’s software and graphic customizations continue to convince for quality, fluidity and completeness.

The graphic aspect of the operating system is really well done, with the possibility of using the light or dark mode and wide customization possibilities.

The gestures, the presence of the gaming mode, the display customizations, the second space, dual app and security-related functions are appreciable.

MIUI 11 continues to prove one of the best Android customizations available to date, but it is not yet at the level of Android stock or One UI Samsung.

In my opinion, there are still two small flaws to fix: the absence of the application drawer and the number of apps pre-installed on the first start.

As for the drawer, it may be appropriate to insert the possibility of using it, without having to resort to another launcher.

Not all users, myself included, are comfortable with an iPhone-style launcher.

While the pre-installed apps, not useful, are in my opinion too many, and I don’t understand the usefulness of pre-installing social networks such as Facebook and TikTok, which can be easily installed by an interested user, and decent quality games that most users will never open.

Battery

The battery of the Redmi Note 9S amazed me. Under the glass body, there is a 5020 mAh battery that supports rapid charging at 18W and which allows excellent autonomy, especially thanks to software optimization.

During my two weeks of testing, I had more or less demanding days in terms of stress use, but in any case, I always managed to get to one and a half days of use, in some cases even two full days.

In the various charging tranches, I almost touched the 9 hours of the screen and I never went below 6 and a half hours.

With a basic use of the smartphone you get to the first day of use with over 50% of battery remaining, this allows us to arrive safely even at the end of the second day without having to recharge.

The battery is, therefore, one of the strengths of the device and allows an average user to never have the thought of not being able to get to the end of the day.

Price

Redmi Note 9S is on sale in the 4/64 version for 209 euros, in the 6/128 version for 239 euros. Extremely interesting prices and able to offer a crazy quality-price ratio.

Given the little price difference between the two versions, I recommend you focus on the 6/128 model which guarantees slightly better performance and, above all, guarantees you a lot more memory for apps, photos and videos.

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Conclusions

Redmi Note 9S is a smartphone that convinced and amazed me!

Redmi Note 9S is a smartphone that convinced me and amazed me (leaving out the problems with WiFi).

There are still some points to improve, such as the (physical) exposure of the rear camera, the dancer proximity sensor and the oleophobic treatment, but these are details of secondary importance that do not damage the overall quality of the device.

The only real flaw is the absence of the NFC chip which in the era of contactless payments should now be present on all smartphones.

Turning to the positive aspects, I must admit that Redmi Note 9S is a very beautiful, well-made smartphone, with monstrous autonomy, equipped with a splendid display, excellent software and a photographic sector at the top of its category.

Is it the best buy of 2020? The answer is yes for 3 reasons:

• At the moment there are no competitors able to beat it in its price range.

• It has an unbeatable value for money.

• It will mature over time thanks to software updates

Final judgement.

Pictures of Redmi Note 9S

Our opinion

Redmi Note 9S is a smartphone that convinced me and amazed me (leaving out the problems with WiFi).

There are still some points to improve, such as the (physical) exposure of the rear camera, the dancer proximity sensor and the oleophobic treatment, but these are details of secondary importance that do not damage the overall quality of the device.

The only real flaw is the absence of the NFC chip which in the era of contactless payments should now be present on all smartphones.

Turning to the positive aspects, I must admit that Redmi Note 9S is a very beautiful, well-made smartphone, with monstrous autonomy, equipped with a splendid display, excellent software and a photographic sector at the top of its category.

Is it the best buy of 2020? The answer is yes, here are the 3 reasons:

1. At the moment there are no competitors able to beat it in its price range.
2. It has an unbeatable value for money.
3. It will mature over time thanks to software updates