Xiaomi Redmi Go review

Xiaomi’s first smartphone to run on Android Oreo (Go Edition), the Redmi Go has made it to India. It is specially crafted for people who are first-time smartphone users and are transitioning from feature phones. With this, the Redmi Go is now the most affordable Xiaomi phone in India at Rs 4,499.

Feature phones remain a key segment in the Indian mobile phone market as it saw a shipment of more than 181.3 million units in 2018. While Jio holds the crown when it comes to feature phone shipment share, there are only a handful of great entry-level smartphones.

With the toppings of stock Android goodness, the Redmi Go makes a case for itself in the entry-level smartphone segment. Is it worth its asking price? Here is what we found out.

Xiaomi Redmi Go price and release date

 Redmi Go is priced at Rs 4,499 and it is available on Flipkart, Mi India Store and other Xiaomi partner retail stores. 

Design

The Redmi Go has a very compact form-factor and upon first look, it does not seem to be cheap. It’s got a solid build courtesy of aluminum alloy chassis and the brushed aluminum finish on the back.

The phone has a certain heft and it definitely does not go for the sleek profile that we have seen with other sub-Rs 10,000 phones. To give you an idea, the Redmi Go is 8.4mm thick and weighs around 137g. The back panel is slightly curved towards the edges providing an easy grip when in hand. There are thick bezels on the top and bottom which house the speaker, front-facing camera and capacitive touch keys respectively.  

The volume buttons and power key are located on the right edge while the dual SIM card and microSD card slots are situated on the left edge. There’s a speaker unit on the bottom adjacent to the USB 2.0 charging slot and a 3.5mm jack on top. So, the Go has got all the essentials covered which is nice. Again, for the asking price, the Redmi Go offers a superior build quality than its contemporaries in the same budget segment, thus making it a formidable option for first-time smartphone owners. 

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Display

The Redmi Go does not come with the baggage of being a modern smartphone flush with a notch and wide-screens. It has prominent bezels and features a 5-inch HD (1280 x 720 pixels) IPS display with a 16:9 aspect ratio. To provide additional protection against regular drops, the display is layered with hardened 2.5D glass. This makes the phone slightly durable for regular wear and tear or in an event of slippage.

There’s little that we expect from the phone’s display considering its price, but in our usage, the display wasn’t really bad at all. In fact, the Go has one of the better HD displays at the price it is being offered at. 

In addition to that, it packs in features like ambient display and night light which is a welcome bonus. In our time with the phone, the display looked bright with vivid colour reproduction.

Camera

Being an entry-level phone, the camera on the Redmi Go offers a pretty basic set of features. It has an 8MP rear camera and a 5MP front-facing camera for selfies. The camera can record videos in full high definition, supports Auto HDR and AI Beautify mode for selfies among others. 

In our daily use, the cameras performed decently while we did notice that the pictures came out with a lot of grains in low-lit environments like indoors. Otherwise, the pictures made by Redmi Go depict accurate colours, retain a good amount of details, identify textures in the frame and is generally a good camera for casual users. In some landscape shots, the sensor just falls short of capturing the cloudy sky but that is what you get out of a budget phone like Redmi Go. While at times, the autofocus was snappy enough to capture a movable object. 

Overall, the Redmi Go has a good set of cameras that will not disappoint a buyer who’s entering the smartphone segment with this phone.

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