At a time when flagship smartphones are breaching the $1,000 mark, while adding less and less value with each new iteration, budget-friendly smartphones are getting cheaper and are offering more value for the money spent. Take the recently launched Honor 8X (starting at Rs. 14,999) for example – the smartphone features a very premium design and build quality with a massive 6.5-inch nearly bezel-less display and almost everything you’d expect (maybe even more) from a smartphone in this price range.
First and foremost, lets get the specifications of the competing devices out of the way. The Honor 8X, being a newer smartphone, packs slightly better specifications than the Redmi Note 5 Pro thereby taking a slight lead to begin with. Here’s a quick look at the complete specifications of the two devices:
Note: In order to keep the comparison as fair as possible, I’ll be using the 4/64GB variants of both the devices.
Now that we’ve got the specifications out of the way, let’s focus on the design and build quality of the two devices. The Honor 8X features a more modern design with glass on the front and back, with a metal chassis in between. In comparison, the Redmi Note 5 Pro has a slightly outdated design with a metal back and it looks a whole lot like several other smartphones from the company. On top of that, the Honor 8X also has a shimmery dual-tone color on the back that looks quite appealing.
Display
As mentioned earlier, the Honor 8X features a 6.5-inch FHD+ nearly bezel-less notched IPS display, while the Redmi Note 5 Pro features a 5.99-inch FHD+ IPS display with slightly larger bezels and no notch. Individually, both the displays look pretty great, they get reasonably bright and they look quite vivid. However, when compared side-by-side, the Honor 8X’s display looks a whole lot better.
Since the Honor 8X is a newer device it comes equipped with a more powerful Kirin 710 chipset from Huawei, while the Redmi Note 5 Pro features a Snapdragon 636 chipset. Both the devices manage to run the most demanding games at medium to low settings, but the Redmi Note 5 Pro tends to drop a couple of frames here and there when things get a little bit too aggressive.
In terms of software, the Honor 8X runs EMUI 8.2 based on Android 8.1 Oreo, while the Redmi Note 5 Pro runs MIUI 10 also based on Android 8.1 Oreo. If you’re a fan of feature packed ROMs then you’ll probably like the software on both the devices. I personally don’t have any favorites, but if you’ve owned a Xiaomi or Honor device before, you might have some preferences.
Both the ROMs are chock full to the brim with customization options and features. If you’re coming from stock Android, you might get overwhelmed by the Settings menu alone, thankfully both devices feature a Search option in the Settings menu to save you from any trouble. Both the ROMs also have very intuitive full-screen gestures that work the same.
In case you’ve already gone through our camera review of the Honor 8X you’d know that the device didn’t fare all that well in our testing and delivered quite average results. While the images clicked by the Honor 8X are totally usable, they aren’t as good as the images clicked by the Redmi Note 5 Pro.
In low lighting conditions, the Honor 8X performs even worse, struggling to focus on the subject and thereby delivering images that lack details and are full of noise. Here are some of the images we used for comparison:
Both the devices have a pretty capable portrait mode, thanks to the secondary 2MP and 5MP sensors. However, the Redmi Note 5 Pro still manages to click better portrait images than the Honor 8X. The images captured by the Redmi Note 5 Pro have better subject separation and a more natural looking background blur. Take a look at these sample images and see for yourself:
The Redmi Note 5 Pro also manages to click better selfies and portrait selfies, with greater details and better color accuracy. The Honor 8X just isn’t able to match the results. Here are a few images that we used for comparison:
Winner: Redmi Note 5 Pro
Since the Redmi Note 5 Pro packs in a larger 4,000mAh battery, you’d expect it to perform better than the Honor 8X in the battery testing. However, you’d be surprised to know that even with a smaller 3,750mAh battery and a larger display, the Honor 8X manages to outperform the Redmi Note 5 Pro.
Well, if you’ve been keeping track of the scores then you’d already know that the Honor 8X wins by quite a margin. The device offers a more premium design and build quality, a stunning display and slightly better performance. It also manages to keep up with the Redmi Note 5 Pro in terms of the software experience, however, the Honor 8X still manages to lose to the older device in the camera department. This brings me to the conclusion that even though the Honor 8X is now the best budget mid-ranger in the market today, it still might not be the go to choice for a number of buyers who prioritize the camera performance over everything else. For buyers who don’t use their smartphone’s camera as much, the Honor 8X is definitely the smartphone to go for in this price range.
