Xiaomi Redmi 13 review
Display
The Redmi 13 has a pretty large 6.79-inch display. It has a FHD+ resolution of 1080 x 2460 pixels, which adds up to a pretty crisp pixel density of around 396 ppi. While the display itself doesn't look half bad in a dark room, any sort of light source bouncing off its extra reflective surface ruins the experience.
And the Redmi 13 simply lacks the brightness to properly combat reflections. Officially, the phone should be able to do 550 nits in high-brightness mode. In our standardized testing, we measured only 342 nits by maxing out the slider and 448 nits in high brightness mode. Unfortunately, that's not enough to be comfortable outdoors. In fact, as we said, it's not even enough to properly combat sole reflections indoors.
The minimum brightness we measured at point white was 3.3 nits, which is quite respectable. The display also supports DC dimming which however doesn't have much merit on an LCD where brightness is not controlled via PWM like on OLEDs.
Max display brightness test
White test pattern, 75% fill (nits)
- Manual mode
- Auto mode
Redmi Note 13 4G
Xiaomi Redmi 12
Tecno Spark 10 Pro
Galaxy A14 5G
Tecno Pova 5 Pro
Galaxy A05s
Xiaomi Redmi 13
The panel on the Redmi 13 uses a standard 8-bit color depth. You get to choose from a few color modes, and there is even manual color temperature adjustment. Even so, you can never quite tune the colors to be totally accurate. The Redmi 13 aims for the sRGB color space in all its color modes and always seems to fall short.
The Redmi 13 has a 90Hz refresh rate. Admittedly, that's not quite as good as what some of its competitors are offering, like the Poco M6 Pro and its 120Hz OLED panel. Still, 90Hz is better than 60Hz.
The Redmi 13 has some automatic refresh rate switching logic, which is on by default. The display can actually operate at 36Hz, 48Hz, 60Hz and 90Hz. You do not see such low and non-typical refresh rate modes every day. The phone fluctuates between the modes depending on whether you are interacting with the phone or not, what is happening on screen and what app is in focus. High refresh rate gaming appears to work just fine and pretty consistently. We got all of our test titles to cooperate and push past the 60fps mark.
The Redmi 13 has no HDR support on the display. It does have some HDR decoding capabilities for HDR10 and HLG. No HDR10+ or Dolby Vision, though. On the plus side, it does support the highest possible Widevine L1 DRM certification, allowing apps like Netflix to offer up FullHD streams to saturate the display resolution.
Battery life
The Redmi 13 has a pretty large 5,030 mAh battery on board. However, based on historical data about the Helio G85 and G88 (which are basically the same chipset as the G91 Ultra), we came into the battery testing with pretty tame expectations. And tame is basically what we got. With an active use score of 10:28 hours, the Redmi 13 is decent but largely unimpressive in the battery department.
Our new Active Use Score is an estimate of how long the battery will last if you use the device with a mix of all four test activities. You can adjust the calculation based on your usage pattern using the sliders below. You can read about our current battery life testing procedure here. For a comprehensive list of all tested devices so far, head this way.
Charging speed
The Redmi 13 advertises 33W fast charging on its 5030 mAh battery. In many markets, there is no charger included in the box and we found no detailed info on exactly what charging standard the Redmi 13 supports. Since Xiaomi does make and sell a 33W charger, we can only assume that it is the best fit.
Unfortunately, we didn't have a 33W Xiaomi charger at hand when testing the Redmi 13 so we opted to test it with a 67W Xiaomi HyperCharge adapter instead.
The Redmi 13 isn't particularly quick to charge. In fact, we would say that it is a bit sluggish.
Charging speed
- in 15 min
- in 30 min
- Time to full charge (from 0%)
Poco X5 Pro
Galaxy A25
Galaxy A15
Galaxy A24 4G
Galaxy A05s
Redmi 13
Tecno Spark 10 Pro
Speaker - loudness and quality
The Redmi 13 has a single bottom-firing speaker. There is no stereo setup, not even a hybrid one. Don't expect too much from this speaker, either. In our testing, we only managed an AVERAGE loudness score. Quality-wise, it isn't great either. It's not overly screechy, but it distorts at high volume. Mids are a bit muddy, but generally okay.
Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.
Connectivity
The Redmi 13 is a dual-SIM 4G/LTE device. It has two Nano-SIM slots, one of which is a hybrid slot shared with the microSD expansion.
There is GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO and BDS support for location services. Local connectivity is handled by dual-band Wi-Fi ac and Bluetooth 5.4 with LE support. You also get an FM radio receiver, a 3.5mm audio jack, an IR blaster and NFC on some markets. Check with your retailer for more info.
The Type-C port on the Redmi 13 is backed up by a simple USB 2.0 data connection, which means a theoretical data transfer rate of 480 Mbps max. It has OTG/Host support but nothing else fancy, like video output.
The Redmi 13 has an onboard BMA510 accelerometer, an MMC5603 magnetometer and compass combo and an SIP1328 light sensor. Unfortunately, both the gyroscope and proximity sensor are virtual. There is no barometer.
Reader comments
- Nintenboy01
- 30 Jun 2024
- sSI
I wonder if it's just poor software or cheaper, more power-hungry OLED panels compared to what Realme uses. Like Realme GT 6 has the same chipset as Poco F6 and only 10% larger battery but it gets way better battery life.
- Anonymous
- 30 Jun 2024
- sSI
Cortex-A75 really isn't good at all in 2024. Bare minimum is at least 4x Cortex-A76, or better yet A78. Coupled with slow eMMC and subpar battery life it's just a terrible value. Actually the poor battery life is becoming a trend with Xiaom...
- Anonymous
- 29 Jun 2024
- sgj
Battery perf looks pretty bad for a phone that big and heavey and 5000mah. I have a tablet with g99, it is ok, sometimes really annoying sluggish on bad coded sites like Amazon. So I wouldn't go for the weaker g91 i mean.