Xiaomi Redmi Pro review: Peripheral vision

Contacts and telephony

The dialer and the phonebook share a single app although there are two shortcuts, bringing you straight to the tab you need. The app has pleasant flat looks and it's about the same as we remember it. It uses a tabbed interface - recent with dialer on the first and the contact list on the second.

The Phonebook

There's also voice call recording and you can set it up to activate on each call if you like. You can also assign an answer gesture, pre-define quick responses upon reject, there is even support for internet calling.

There are even more call settings if you dig deeper into the menu - flip to mute the ringer, turn on/off the proximity sensor, lock automatically once slipped in a pocket, it can even mute calls from unknown numbers.

In our loudspeaker test, the Redmi Pro scored a Good mark, which means you will be able to hear it in most environments without too much trouble. The phone packs a single speaker at the bottom, but it's quite loud. Our only gripe is that there's not enough bass coming out of it.

Multimedia

The Redmi Pro comes with a custom Gallery app, which hasn't been really changed from MIUI of old. It defaults to your camera roll, but it also supports Albums, Cloud and People. The People sorting, once chosen, sorts all of your photos by people's faces. Everything is automatic. Here you can also create a new baby album, to put your newborn pics inside.

The Gallery app remains unchanged

The integrated editor offers various effects, frames, tools (crop, mirror, straighten, rotate, fisheye, doodle) plus light adjustments that let you bring out the shadows or the highlights.

Editing an image

An FM radio app is also available. Theoretically, the Redmi Pro does not require a headset to use as an antenna, so you can listen FM radio without any additional accessories. However, in our testing the phone didn't manage to acquire a perfect FM signal. FM recording is also available.

FM Radio

Video player

The video player interface is very basic but there is rich video codec support. It managed to play everything we threw at it (including MKV and WMV files). The AC3 audio codec is surprisingly, supported too.

The MIUI 8 video player

Subtitles and pop-up play are not supported by the MIUI's video player though, so you might want to look around the Play Store if you need a more capable alternative.

Unspectacular audio quality

The Xiaomi Redmi Pro started off well in our audio quality test. When connected to an active external amplifier, the smartphone had perfectly clean output with no weak points to it. The volume was only average though, so not quite the best result.

When we plugged in a pair of headphones the stereo crosstalk rose considerably and intermodulation distortion crept in. Frequency response also got a little shaky so it's really only passable quality.

Xiaomi Redmi Pro frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.