The Redmi Note 12 Pro+ has finally made its way to our shores, and it’s easy to see why people are excited.

This phone comes in at an affordable price point, but it does so while packing some seriously high-end specifications.

The most exciting feature, in our view, is the inclusion of a 200MP primary camera – very similar to the unit that delivers excellent results on the pricey Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.

The question is, what compromises had to be made to hit such an aggressive price point? We’ve been testing to find out.

Design

• Dimensions: 163.0 x 76.03 x 7.98 mm
• Weight: 187 grams
• Colours: Midnight Black / Polar White / Sky Blue

Our review unit came in the Sky Blue colourway, and it’s a pretty striking finish. The colour shifts between shades of light and dark blue, depending on your viewing angle, and it always looks lovely.

The rear of the phone has a silky-smooth feel, with gently curving edges, and it feels great in the hand. It’s not too slippery, either, which is a common gripe we have with such streamlined designs.

There’s a colour-matched aluminium frame around the edges, leading to a flat display that’s coated with Corning Gorilla Glass 5.

The fingerprint reader is located on the power button on the right-hand side of the phone, next to the volume rocker. We found it to be responsive and quick, and we rarely experienced any phantom activations.

Up on top, there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack, which we’re always pleased to see, but there’s no expandable storage on this model. However, with 256GB as standard, you might not need it – unless you’re going to be taking a huge amount of 200MP snaps.

Display and speakers

• 6.67-inch 120Hz FHD+ AMOLED
• Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and DCI-P3 gamut support
• Dual stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support

The display looks superb, its 120Hz refresh rate makes swiping around the OS feel smooth and responsive and the colours are vibrant and poppy, as we’ve come to expect from an AMOLED panel.

It’s a flat-fronted design, which means no unusual reflections on the edges and far fewer accidental taps, just the way we like it.

It has support for Dolby Vision and HDR10+ as well as options to display in either sRGB or DCI-P3 colour gamuts. There’s a great level of colour customisation available in the settings, so it’s very easy to adjust to your tastes.

The speakers are quite impressive, with plenty of clarity and a good level of volume. They aren’t quite up there with the best that we’ve heard, but they’re certainly well above average, and the stereo configuration allows for some nice imaging.

Of course, this phone has a headphone socket, as well as Bluetooth 5.2, so you won’t be short of options if you want to enhance the audio experience further.

Performance and software

• MediaTek Dimensity 1080
• 8GB LPDDR4X RAM, 256GB UFS 2.2 storage
• 5000 mAh battery, 120W HyperCharge
• MIUI 14 based on Android 12

The Redmi Note 12 Pro+ runs on MediaTek’s Dimensity 1080 platform, just like the Samsung Galaxy A34 that we looked at recently.

For the majority of our daily tasks, like sending messages, watching YouTube and using Waze, the phone performed almost exactly as a flagship would. It remained feeling snappy and responsive, even during some heavy multitasking, and slowdowns were few and far between.

It was only when we loaded up some games that we could start to see the difference. For example, Genshin Impact needs to be set to 30fps on the low graphics preset to avoid stuttering, it’s nowhere near as capable as a phone with a flagship processor.

However, for casual use, it performs decently and doesn’t heat up too much in the process. So if you can live with less graphical fidelity, it might serve your needs just fine.

The battery life has been decent throughout our testing, it’s only on long travel days with lots of screen time and navigation tasks that we managed to run low on juice by bedtime.

This isn’t a two-day endurance champ by any stretch, but the battery lasts plenty long enough for our needs. The charging is lightning-fast, too, thanks to a 120W wall adapter that comes included in the box, so running low barely causes an inconvenience.

Cameras

• Main: 200MP f/1.65 (Samsung Isocell HPX)
• Ultra-wide: 8MP f/2.2
• Macro: 2MP f/2.4
• Selfie: 16MP f/2.45

The star of the show is the 200MP main camera, backed up by the less exciting mid-range combo of an 8MP wide-angle and a 2MP macro.

There’s not much to be said about the auxiliary lenses, we’ve seen the same hardware on countless other devices in this price range, and the results are as you’d expect. The wide-angle is useful, but you’ll want to stick to well-lit scenarios, and the detail lacks compared to the main sensor – while the 2MP macro isn’t of much use to us at all.

For the majority of our testing, we stuck to the superior main camera, and the results were good. There’s plenty of dynamic range, natural colour representation and sharp detail.

By default, the phone uses pixel binning to deliver 12.5MP stills, but you can switch to either 50MP or 200MP by using the dedicated Ultra HD mode in the camera app. You’ll want to ensure that you have sufficient light to do so, though, and the camera app will warn you of this when switching over.

We found the 200MP results a little disappointing. While the file sizes are indeed much larger, the amount of detail retained doesn’t increase as much as you might hope. You won’t be able to crop in much more than 2x without things starting to look a bit like an oil painting.

At night, the main sensor performs fairly well, and the night mode does a great job of bringing out details in dimly lit situations. You’ll need a fairly static subject for the best results, though, as the system is quite prone to motion blur.

Around the front, there’s a 16MP punch-hole selfie camera with a fixed focus. As usual, on Xiaomi phones, there’s a degree of skin smoothing enabled by default, but once you turn that off, the selfie camera delivers great detail. Artificial background blurring is effective and reliable, too, we’d say the edge detection is a cut above most other smartphones in this price range.

The main sensor can shoot video at up to 4K 30fps or 1080p 60fps, but image stabilisation is disabled on both of these modes, which is a bit of a shame. You’d really need a gimbal or tripod if you wanted to take advantage of these resolutions.

At 1080p 30fps the stabilisation is very effective, even at night time, and we also found the focusing to be quick and accurate.

Verdict

There’s no denying that the Redmi Note 12 Pro+ is a lot of phone for the money. 120W charging and a 120Hz display are something of a rarity at this price point, and a 200MP camera is unheard of.

In reality, though, we’re not sure that the 200MP camera quite lives up to the hype. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a very good camera, but we just don’t think it’s a huge step up from the IMX766 on the cheaper Pro model.

The usual Xiaomi software quirks are present here, too, as is a lot of bloatware, and this takes away from the premium sheen of the rest of the device.

Still, this is an affordable phone that can take great shots, has an excellent display and speakers, and offers snappy day-to-day performance. So long as you keep your photographic expectations realistic, we think you’ll have a great time with the Redmi Note 12 Pro+.