Xiaomi made a huge splash in the Indian market earlier this year with the Redmi Note 9 Pro and the Redmi Note 9 Pro Max. These two smartphones had impressive specifications at competitive prices, but the excitement has been short lived, as they have both become more expensive now thanks to rupee-dollar fluctuations and a GST hike. Now, Xiaomi has launched the Redmi Note 9 which comes in at a sub Rs. 15,000 price.

Redmi introduced its Aura Balance design with the Redmi Note 9 Pro ₹ 13,999 series, and the Redmi Note 9 ₹ 11,999 gets it by default. It looks a lot like its siblings, but unlike them the Redmi Note 9 does not have a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. Instead, it has a more traditional rear-mounted one, positioned right below the rear camera module.

Xiaomi has matched the colour of the fingerprint scanner with the glossy finish of the camera module, which makes it hard to spot from a distance. I prefer a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, and the one on the Redmi Note 9 is well positioned. Xiaomi has launched the smartphone in three colours: Pebble Grey, Arctic White, and Aqua Green. I had an Arctic White unit for this review, and it has a nice gradient at the back.

The second big change on the Redmi Note 9 is the hole-punch display. The front-facing camera is in the upper left corner rather than in the centre, like the Redmi Note 9 Pro (Review) and Redmi Note 9 Pro Max ₹ 16,999 (Review). The hole isn’t distracting. If you hold the phone in landscape, chances are you won’t notice it at all. What you will notice are the bezels, which are fairly thick, but I would say that this is acceptable at this price point.

Xiaomi has gone with a big display for the Redmi Note 9, and so this phone needs a slight shuffle in the hand to reach the top with one hand. The power and volume buttons are well positioned and easy to hit. Just like most other Redmi phones, the Note 9 has an IR emitter on the top. This can be used to control your television or air conditioner, and could come in handy.

The phone is 8.9mm thick and weighs 199g. It is slightly on the heavier side compared to some of the other smartphones in this price range. Xiaomi says it has used a P2i nano-coating on the device with rubber seals on the ports for a bit of protection from exposure to liquids. The main reason for the weight could be the big battery that this phone packs. Xiaomi has also bundled a 22.5W charger in the box (though charging is currently limited to 18W – more on that later).

The Redmi Note 9 is now the entry point for the Note 9 series, and Xiaomi has picked the MediaTek Helio G85 for this model. It is an octa-core processor with two Cortex-A75 cores clocked at 2GHz, and six Cortex-A55 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. For graphics, it has an ARM Mali-G52 GPU clocked at 1GHz.

The Redmi Note 9 has a 6.53-inch display with a full-HD+ resolution (1080×2340 pixels) and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 for protection. There are three variants of the Redmi Note 9: 4GB of RAM with 64GB of storage, 4GB of RAM with 128GB of storage, and 6GB of RAM with 128GB of storage. These variants are priced at Rs. 11,999, Rs, 13,499, and Rs. 14,999 respectively at launch, and I had the top variant for this review.

The Redmi Note 9 offers expandable storage with a dedicated microSD card slot. It has two Nano-SIM slots and supports dual 4G as well as VoLTE. There’s Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi 802.11 n, and four satellite navigation systems. The battery capacity is 5,020mAh. The Redmi Note 9 is also capable of 9W reverse charging through the USB Type-C port.

In terms of software, nothing much is new. The Redmi Note 9 runs MIUI 11 on top of Android 10 and my unit had the recent June security patch. The phone does come with a fair amount of bloatware preinstalled, and suggests that you download some more during the setup process. It also shows ads on the lockscreen, an option that is enabled by default, but I disabled it while setting up the phone. Some of the apps that come preinstalled on the phone are Mi Store, Osom Rummy, Helo, Mi Community, Zili, and Mi Pay. Helo and Mi Community have been banned by the Government of India but were preinstalled on my review unit; these apps did not work, though.

The UI is very similar to what I have gotten used to on other Xiaomi smartphones. You get traditional three-button navigation by default but you can swap this for swipe gestures. There are other useful features such as Game Turbo, which clears RAM, gives higher bandwidth priority to games running in the foreground, and restricts gesture navigation while gaming. It also offers the option to accept incoming calls in hands-free mode, and you can customise touch response for each game.

The performance of the Redmi Note 9 gave me no reason to complain. The MediaTek Helio G85 is a capable processor and could handle my daily tasks easily. App loading times were acceptable, and with 6GB of RAM, I could switch between different apps easily.

The Redmi Note 9 could run games such as PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 9: Legends without any issues. In PUBG Mobile, the phone defaulted to the Medium settings but I could bump it up to High without too much of a drop in performance. However, the phone got warm to the touch after playing for 20 minutes. I also noticed nearly a 10 percent battery drop during this time. Asphalt 9 ran at the default settings, and I only noticed occasional stutter on a few tracks.

The Redmi Note 9 has a quad-camera setup consisting of a 48-megapixel primary camera, 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. For selfies, it has a 13-megapixel camera in the front. The camera app is very similar to what I have seen on other Redmi phones.

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