Xiaomi officially unveiled the redmi Note 11S in the Kenyan market a few weeks back. This was one of the three devices unveiled by the company back then. The standard redmi Note 11 and the redmi Note 11 Pro are the other two. The standard Note 11 is available starting from Ksh 19,999 while the redmi Note 11 Pro is available starting from Ksh 29,999.
The redmi Note 11S sits right in the middle of the two devices. It is available in three different configurations that you can get in Kenya for:
6+64GB – 22,999
6+128GB – 27,999
8+128GB – 29,999
At this price, anyone who is looking for a smartphone probably has three main boxes they want ticked:
- A good and reliable battery
- Good Cameras
- Decent Processors
There are many other specific things you may want but these are the main ones that manufacturers with phones within this price range focus on.
Battery Life
The redmi Note 11S comes with a 5,000 mAh battery that most people will have no issue using for an entire day on a single charge. The phone does support 33W fast charging that fully charges the battery in a little over 1 hour. In most cases, I had about 6 hours of screen-on time when using the phone and this is good in my books.
Read: The Xiaomi 12 Series Has Officially Been Unveiled
Since this phone comes with MIUI, it does have a number of battery-saving options that you can use to extend the battery life. The default battery setting is ‘Balanced’ which is sort of the best of both worlds, you get good performance and still some battery-saving features. There is a performance mode that is perfect if you want better performance that might reduce the battery life.
Overall, the battery life of this phone impressed me. It does live up to my expectations and this is always a positive thing.
Very Good Cameras
The redmi Note 11S has a quad-camera setup at the back and a single camera for selfies. The back camera has a 108 MP main sensor, 8MP ultra-wide sensor, 2MP macro lens and a 2MP depth sensor. Quality is very good for its price with well-detailed shots with good dynamic range and colours. If you love mobile photography, this phone will not disappoint you.
By default, the back camera takes 12MP photos but you can change the camera settings in the shooting options to select the 108MP resolution. The 12MP photos are good enough for most settings and I rarely ended up using the 108MP resolution.
redmi note 11s camera
The camera has Night mode option but it did not work well for me. It does need a lot of work for it to be perfect since the shots are not worth taking. Comparing it with some of the other phones on the market including those from Xiaomi, it could definitely have been better.
Selfies on the other hand are great, they have good color and appear sharp.
Great Performance
The redmi Note 11S is powered by the MediaTek Helio G96 processor that was first announced last year. This processor is capable and can handle simple day to day tasks and some gaming too. MediaTek is marketing this as a mid-range gaming processor which is somehow true. I played some games with this phone with no performance issues at all.
Multitasking and switching between multiple apps present no serious problems either. This phone is capable of handling those and with the optimizations baked into MIUI, it does a good job at that. Apps launch very fast at all times.
Unlike previous versions of MIUI, you do not get promoted ads with redmi Note 11S. It also comes with few pre-installed apps from Xiaomi and Google and some extra ones like Netflix etc. Most of these tend to be useful and most people will not uninstall them.
AMOLED display
The display is also one other thing that makes this phone worth it. This is an AMOLED display with Full HD resolution and 90Hz refresh rate. You never go wrong with AMOLED especially if you are a fan of dark mode. The blacks appear quite good.
The display gets bright enough for ease of use outdoors under direct sunlight. It is also very responsive as you would expect from a phone of this caliber.
Conclusions
The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11S offers good value for money. You get everything you expect from this phone and more. The three things I have focused on have all been ticked and this means that this phone will do exactly what it promises. The battery life is good, the cameras are decent and the performance is reliable. The phone also has a good display to complete the cycle.
In addition, it has stereo speakers which lack bass but still audible. For its price, the redmi Note 11S does tick all the boxes for me.