Like every year, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro should represent one of the best sellers of the year for Xiaomi. And for good reason: the manufacturer displays a very aggressive pricing policy for rather well-equipped products. Does the bet of this Redmi Note 14 Pro, in its 4G version for this test, manage to renew interest? Answer with our full review.
Price and release date of the Redmi Note 14 Pro (4G)
The Redmi Note 14 Pro costs 303 euros in its most accessible version, equipped with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. In the 12 GB and 512 GB versions, the price rises to 373 euros.
There is also a 5G version that starts at 403 euros and rises to 453 euros in its best-equipped version.
Design: not complicated
The Redmi Note 14 Pro that we are testing is efficient. With its purple dress, its small rectangular photo block pierced with four circles, three modules and a flash, it looks like any Chinese smartphone released in recent years.
A small notable evolution, it adopts a curved screen. Its back also integrates a slight curvature, which gives a thin aluminum edge completely against the trend of the flat edges that are all the rage on the high-end. The finishes are correct even if we can feel the separation between the screen and the edge under the fingers. The plastic back is not unpleasant.
The bottom edge houses the world: one of the two speakers, the dual SIM drawer and the USB-C port. The top of the smartphone houses the jack port and the second speaker, wedged just between the screen and the edge in a barely discernible slot. Let us also mention the presence of a fingerprint sensor hidden under the screen. This one is placed a little low, but is rather responsive.
To finish the tour of the owner, a word on durability. For a smartphone under 400 euros, it includes reassuring elements, such as Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front and IP 64 certification (dustproof, but simply water resistant).
Screen: no HDR and correct calibration
The Redmi Note 14 Pro has a 6.67-inch Oled screen with a resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels refreshed at 120 Hz. Note that the screen does not support HDR, which may be lacking at a time when most SVoD services integrate this technology.
For a 300 euro smartphone, the Redmi Note 14 Pro performs very well in 01Lab's measurements. It displays an average brightness of 1360 cd/m² and a maximum value of 1450 cd/m². At minimum brightness, we have a slightly high value of 1.87 cd/m².
Concerning the calibration, we once again find Xiaomi's propensity to offer a rather correct calibration. The average delta E 2000, which measures the precision of the colors displayed and which is more precise as its value is low, rises to 3.16. Let's add that this measurement was carried out from a color mode displaying a wide range of colors, since it supported the DCI-P3 color spectrum.
In addition, it is appreciable to note that the difference with a color mode supporting sRGB, simpler to manage, is not the most notable, since we only go down to 2.93. Our recommendation is therefore to choose the “Intense” color mode.
Our opinion on the Audio: not great
Don’t expect an unforgettable audiovisual experience from this smartphone. In addition to the absence of HDR, the sound delivered by the two speakers clearly leans towards the treble. We could even publish a wanted notice for the bass as you have to concentrate so much to detect it. In addition, the distribution between the two sound sources is not very balanced, with the main speaker taking over.
Fortunately, unlike the screen, you can adjust the audio by plugging headphones into its jack or via Bluetooth 5.3.
Battery: a little short, but good charge
With its 5500 mAh battery, the smartphone displays a rather comfortable capacity on paper. But for once, the reality of use contradicts this first impression.
On our automated mixed autonomy protocol designed by 01Lab, the Redmi Note 14 Pro peaks at just 12 hours and 20 minutes to go from 100 to 10% autonomy. A mediocre score, when some smartphones tested with this new protocol already exceed 20 hours.
Charge
As is often the case with Xiaomi, the quality of the proprietary charge saves the battery life. Indeed, by connecting a 120W charger from the brand, we obtained a very good charging time of 1 hour and 19 minutes, to be qualified with a slightly low charging time of 20% battery life after 10 minutes of charging.
For a smartphone that only supports 45 W charging, this is still very good and should compensate for the poor battery life, as long as you buy the official charger and are prepared to carry it with you.
Photo: comparison with high-end
For most buyers, a high-end smartphone will give the impression of being just as good as an entry-level smartphone, the differences and nuances often being quite subtle. The element that often allows you to sort the wheat from the chaff is the photo, where the high-end shows its interest.
This is why we suggest, in addition to the usual field photos that you usually find in our tests, to quickly look at a comparison. This will be done with the Samsung Galaxy S24, a high-end smartphone from 2024 sold for more than 700 euros. We will use our photo scene from 01Lab which allows for a fairer comparison. You will systematically find the Redmi Note on the left and the Galaxy on the right.
We start with the wide angle in a bright situation. We can see several elements on which the Redmi loses ground. The cube in the middle reveals a somewhat narrow dynamic range since we can no longer see the hole that crosses it. Also, the blade of vegetation loses a lot of detail on the Redmi, just like the note. The colorimetry also leans more towards yellows.
Let's move on to the ultra wide angle, and this time in low light. In these conditions, the difference in terms of noise and sharpness speaks for itself.
Let's move on to portrait mode and some real-world photos. As you can see, the result is far from ugly. The smartphone manages to apply a background blur well by cutting out its subject as it should.
And if you find the third photo a little too crowded, don't panic, the Redmi Note 14 Pro integrates Google's famous magic eraser. Judge for yourself.
Let's move on to low-light scenes. As you can see, there are many flaws (noise, blur, chromatic aberrations, lens flare), but the smartphone still manages to obtain a result that we would call usable. For 300 euros, this is very fair.
Performances: pas une formule 1
A 4G smartphone requires that Xiaomi dig deep for its chip and integrates a chip with the old Mediatek nomenclature, a Helio G100-Ultra.
Various configurations exist. You can choose between 8 + 128 GB, 8 + 256 GB, 12 + 256 GB and 12 + 512 GB. Whatever happens, the RAM will be in LPDDR4X and the storage in UFS 2.2, the old standard a little outdated today compared to the big names in 4.0, but which will do the job in this price range. The storage is expandable up to 1 TB with an SD card.
In everyday use, the Redmi Note 14 Pro is generally quite fluid, even if it suffers from some somewhat heavy tasks like Google's magic eraser where you will have to wait a few seconds. We were also able to note some sporadic slowdowns.
In benchmarks, the Helio chip takes a hit and is left behind by all its competitors. This is true for Geekbench
Before closing the bullet chapter, let's specify the network configuration of the Redmi Note 14. A 4G smartphone, it supports WiFi 5, a standard that is completely outdated in 2025, and integrates a single-band GPS, which reduces the accuracy of satellite positioning.
Software: HyperOS
The Redmi Note 14 Pro comes with HyperOS 1.0. At the time of this review, it has still not been upgraded to HyperOS 2.0. Too bad, because the promises of updates are already not great on this model. It goes up to 3 years of major updates and four years of security patches.
We went into more detail about HyperOS in our Redmi Note 14 Pro+ review. If you’re interested, be sure to check it out.
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