Redmi A1 Quick Review

Xiaomi has all smartphones for different price ranges and their recent one is posed to be the popular one as the Redmi A1 packs amazing specifications for its very affordable price of Php3,999 for a limited time. 

Of course, our expectations were low on the smartphone as this one is really affordable but man, this smartphone packs pretty good hardware for its price.

Design and Hardware

First, let’s talk about the design of the smartphone. The Redmi A1 comes with a plastic build. The back comes with a leather-style plastic back that makes the smartphone look a little bit good to the eyes. Despite being plastic, the smartphone does have a solid feel despite having cheap materials.

The size of the smartphone is still ergonomic thanks to the curves on the side of the smartphone. The 6.52-inch display of the smartphone might be large for some but the smartphone is still light on the pocket due to the plastic build quality of the smartphone

On the side, there’s the power button and also the volume rocker and there’s no fingerprint scanner on the smartphone which is understandable for its price range. However, the downside of this smartphone is that it still uses micro USB, a standard that is getting phased out already.

For the battery of the smartphone, there’s the 5000mAh battery inside the smartphone and we got a really long battery on the smartphone and since this one is an entry-level smartphone with an Android Go Edition inside, you’ll have fewer resources running on the smartphone and it can last a day or even a two depending on your usage.

Display

For the display of the smartphone, it comes with a 6.52-inch display with HD+ resolution. That might not sound stellar for most people but I do appreciate that they were able to maximize the display of the smartphone at this size despite being in the entry-level segment.

It doesn’t have a high refresh rate nor it doesn’t have the best quality but it performs just fine when I was using the smartphone outside. Definitely, something that will work on your everyday usage. 

Software and Performance

For the performance side, it’s what we can expect from a smartphone with MediaTek Helio A22 inside and also a 2GB of RAM. It doesn’t really shine in this department and you can really feel the sluggishness of the performance of the smartphone but thankfully, Android 12 Go Edition is a lot lighter on the smartphone so it can help improve the performance of the smartphone.

The Go Edition of the smartphone means that the Redmi A1 comes with a lighter and some Go Edition apps of the smartphone. Thanks to this, the apps loads faster but of course, this doesn’t mean that you can run different apps at the same time.

If you want to play games, we were able to play Mobile Legends on the smartphone since it was a casual and light game. We were also able to play PUBG Mobile on the smartphone and it was playable at the lowest settings. In Geekbench, we got this score on the smartphone. 

Camera

The camera of the smartphone comes with an 8MP main camera along with a depth sensor. Well, the rear camera of the smartphone will do the basic stuff and it was better than I expected but of course, it wasn’t the best that we’ve seen. But of course, it was soft on both rear and selfie cameras but again, this is an entry-level smartphone.

Verdict

Overall, the Redmi A1 might not be the most ideal smartphone out there in the market but it’s definitely a good one for its price. We might not get all the features that we need since this is an Android Go Edition and its processing power isn’t the best and there’s the micro USB on this one but the Redmi A1 can do most of the basic stuff that you need on a smartphone and you also get a decent camera for its price, a large display, and also a long battery life.

The Redmi A1 is now available for Php3,999 for a limited time. It has an official price of Php4,499.