Redmi Note 10 Pro vs Redmi Note 10 Pro Max - Which one should you buy?

  We will look at all of the differences and similarities between these phones,Let us begin with the point that matters most to everyone, that is the price of both these phones. Redmi has priced both the phone very closely. The base, 6GB RAM and 64GB storage variant of the Redmi Note 10 Pro is available at Rs.15,999. And the base 6GB RAM and 64GB RAM variant of the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max is priced at Rs.18,999. So there is a Rs.3000 difference between theprice of both these phones. This difference remains constant, no matterwhich variant you go for. Now if price is the most important factorfor you and if you just can’t spend anything over the 16K Rs. mark, your only option isto go for the base variant of the Redmi Note 10 Pro. But if you have Rs.18,999, then you mighthave a different confusion, that whether to get the 8/128GB variant of the Redmi Note10 Pro or go for the base variant of the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max. To clear this confusion, let us see what theNote 10 Pro Max offers you for the extra 3K Rs. They get the same Glass sandwich design. Front gets the gorilla glass 5 protection,while the back gets a normal frosted toughened glass. Shiny frame running around the phone is madeof plastic, but painted to look like metal on both. Both get their volume up and down buttonsand the power button with the fingerprint sensor under it on the right side. On the left side, there is just the SIM tray. And this tray can hold 2 nano SIM cards anda MicroSD card at the same time. At the top, they get the IR blaster, Noisecancelling microphone, secondary speaker grill and a 3.5mm headphone jack. And at the bottom, there’s a microphone,USB type C port for charging and data transfer and Speaker grill. So the build, design, materials used, andeven the ports on both these phones are exactly the same. The one and only visual change between thesephones is at the back. Did you notice it yet? There is a silver ring around the main cameraon the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max, where as you don’t get this ring around the main cameraon the Redmi Note 10 Pro. I have checked all the colour and storagevariants of both these phones, and this silver ring is present on all models of the Pro Max,while it is absent from all colour and storage variants of the Note 10 Pro. Now many people had this confusion that boththe phones get this silver ring, because all of the Redmi Note 10 Pro’s promotional materialand even their official website and the order page shows this ring on the regular Note 10Pro, and this is very misleading. I asked some people from Redmi about it, andthey confirmed that this silver ring is only on the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max, and not on theNote 10 Pro. Anyways, any confusion that you guys had shouldnow be cleared. Another thing that you should know, is thatonly this Vintage Bronze and Glacial Blue colours have the frosted matte glass back. The Dark Night or the grey coloured one hasa glossy back. Out of these 2 colours, I think the vintagebronze looks better. But if you like to use these phones withoutthe case, Glacial blue is better one at hiding the fingerprints on the back. These phones have the exact same dimensionsand weight, and they are much thinner, lighter and narrower than the Note 9 Pro series phones. Because of all this, they fit and feel reallygood in your hands. Yes, hands and not hand. Although they are smaller in all dimensionscompared to Note 9 series, but with displays this big, they are still 2 handed devices. Speaking of the displays, both get the same6.67 inch Super AMOLED display with peak brightness of 1200 nits, support for HDR10 content, DCIP3 colour gamut, 120Hz refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling rate. Displays on both these phones look very good,and both of them have Widewine L1 support so you won’t have any issues watching higherdefinition videos on Netflix or Amazon. Both also get a hole punch cutout for the16 megapixel selfie camera. Despite of have an AMOLED display, the fingerprintsensor on both are mounted on the side under the power button. I know many people wanted in display fingerprintsensors, but I like these physical ones on the side. These are much faster and accurate than thein display ones on the phones in this price range. Stereo speakers on both produce the same qualityof sound and even the loudness levels are similar from both. Both are even having the same Snapdragon 732Gprocessor, Adreno 618GPU, 6 or 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM, 64 or 128GB of UFS 2.2 storage, and 5020mAh battery. So the performance and battery life of boththese phones is exactly same. When the battery runs out, both get the 33watt fast charger in the box, which again takes similar time to charge both these phones. I tried opening same apps on both of themand as expected, there is barely any difference between the app load time, or performanceof the apps on either of the phones. They are even running the same version ofMIUI 12 which is built on top of Android 11. Both also get the same software updates onsame days. If everything on both of them is same, whyis Redmi charging 3000 Rs. extra for the Note 10 Pro Max? Well this extra money goes towards the higherresolution primary camera on the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max. It gets a 108 Megapixel Samsung HM2 sensorwith F/1.9 aperture for its main camera. And the regular Note 10 pro gets a 64 megapixelSamsung GW3 sensor with F/1.79 aperture as its main camera. Yes Redmi’s site says that Redmi Note 10Pro also gets F/1.9 aperture, but that is again wrong, because the exif data of theseimages tells us that it is indeed F/1.79 aperture. Again Redmi is aware of this but they arenot making the changes on their website. So 108MP vs 64MP main camera is the only differencebetween these 2 phones. Other 3 cameras are again the same on both. There’s an 8 megapixel sensor with ultrawide lens, 5 megapixel sensor with super macro lens, and a 2 megapixel depth sensor on boththe phones. Now in my detailed camera review of the RedmiNote 10 Pro, we have seen that its 64 megapixel camera does very well in daytime, and witha few updates, it could take good images in lower light as well. So how much difference does the 108 megapixelmain camera on the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max bring in? Lets find out. Now since my city is under strict lockdowndue to rising number of Covid-19 cases, I wasn’t able to take lot of image samplesfor a full on Tecworkz style camera comparison, but I managed to take a few, and those areenough to make out the difference between these 2 cameras. Looking at the daytime shots from both thephones, although these are pixel binned images, they look incredibly detailed. Only difference you can see straight awayis the way both of them capture colours. Images from the Note 10 Pro are a bit warmerand the Note 10 Pro Max tends to capture cooler colour tones. Other than that, it is hard to find any differencebetween them. But when I zoom in a bit, you can see imagefrom the Note 10 Pro Max is showing more details. The actual scene had a warm look when I tookthese images, so I feel the regular Note 10 Pro is capturing natural looking colours. This continues to be the case for all outdoorimages in daytime. Colours are much closer from both when youclick these images indoors or under artificial lights. In either case, both the images look good,and which one you like will depend on your colour preference. With more details in its shots, Note 10 ProMax is also capturing better dynamic range of the 2. You can see its image has more details inthe building whereas it is a bit dark in the image form Redmi Note 10 Pro. Pro Max also seems to have handled the brightsun slightly better. In this shot, you again see a clear differencein the colour temperature between these 2. Dynamic range wise, which one do you thinkdid better? Let me know in the comments. As you can probably tell, Note 10 Pro Maxis showing better dynamic range in all these shots. It brings back more details from the shadows,and it is also making sure that the brighter parts of the scene are not blown out. In this shot, Note 10 Pro did a lot better. I had both phones on Auto HDR, and I don’tthink the HDR mode on the Note 10 Pro Max fired for this particular shot. Both phones are quick and accurate at settingthe focus on any particular object. So the close up shots look good from bothof them. Pro Max has a bigger sensor so the backgroundin its portrait shots is blurred out more. And it also seems to have better minimum focusingdistance of the 2. The super macro camera is similar on boththe phones, so these macro shots from both are almost identical. I just love that these phones let us get somuch closer to the subject, and since these are 5 megapixel cameras, these macro shotsend up capturing lot of details. Like the Super Macro camera, Wide camera isalso same on both the phones, so these wide images also look pretty much the same. And these is no change in colour temperatureor white balance between the wide shots of these phones. So the cooler and warmer colours that we sawwere just form the main cameras. Now here are 64 megapixel images form theRedmi Note 10 Pro compared side by side with the 108 megapixel images form the Note 10Pro Max. It is hard to see from this far, but the 108megapixel images do have more details. To see the extra details, you will have tozoom in 6-7 times on these images. Most of us don’t zoom in so far on our images,so I would suggest you to stick to the default resolution on both these phones. You can switch to the higher resolution mode,if you are capturing some landscape or architecture, coz that is where you would want your camerato capture those extra details. Edge detection in the portrait mode is nearperfect from both the phones. The only difference that we again see is thechange in colour temperature of these portrait shots. When you take these images indoors, both ofthem start capturing similar looking colours. Indoor images are slightly brighter from theNote 10 Pro. This might because it is having a wider aperturecompared to the primary camera of the Pro Max. Once we get to even lower light, images areslightly brighter from the Note 10 Pro Max. But upon zooming in, neither of these phonesseem to have captured enough details. With the night mode turned on, images do looka bit sharper but we also start seeing more noise in these shots. In night time, I won’t say one of theseperforms noticeably better than the other. Both of them do a similar job, with and withoutthe night mode turned on. Only difference that I saw is, text is a bitsharper in Pro Max’s low light images. Again the selfie camera is also same on boththe phones, so these normal and portrait selfies also look almost identical. Now the only difference between these 2 phonesis the slightly more details, and better dynamic range in the images from the main camera ofthe Note 10 Pro Max. Images form all other cameras are exactlyidentical from both, and there is not a huge difference between the low light shots. Now you will have to decide, if this is worththe extra 3000Rs. To you or not. So all other things being the same on boththese phones, in the end the decision that which of these 2 should you buy comes downto 2 things. First is the price, and second is the camera. Now as I said in the beginning, if you arein a money crunch or if your budget simply doesn’t allow you to spend more than 16or 17 thousand Rs. on a new phone, you can simply get the Redmi Note 10 Pro. I would even say that for most average userswho occasionally use the cameras on their phone, or who are not very inclined towards the photography aspect of a phone, 64 megapixel camera on it would produce just as good images. For others who can spend the extra amount,it comes down to the camera. Again, if you are an occasional photographer,or you just casually take images here and there, go with the Redmi Note 10 Pro and savethe extra Rs.3000, or maybe spend it somewhere else. But if you take a lot of images, or if youunderstand a thing or 2 about photography and you want to take your smartphone photographygame further, or if you are the designated smartphone photographer when you go on tripswith your friends and family, I think you can spend the extra money and go for the RedmiNote 10 Pro Max. I am happy clicking my images with either of these phones. But which one would you choose? Let me know in the comments.

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