Redmi Note 17 Pro Max review: a budget battery monster held back by modest cameras

The Redmi Note series has always occupied that incredibly competitive space between cheap phones that simply get the job done and more ambitious mid-range models that start borrowing features from flagships.

However, for Digital Camera World readers, the Pro Max moniker doesn’t signal better camera sensors or a collection of more elaborate lenses, as it might do on other devices like the iPhone.

Xiaomi still talks up the phone's photography credentials, including a 50MP optically stabilized main camera, 4K video, Pro modes and a collection of AI-assisted editing tools, but the hardware itself is relatively simple. Alongside the main camera, there is just an 8MP ultrawide, with, like last year, no dedicated telephoto at all.

However, the phone does pack in a frankly ridiculous 10,000mAh (9,210mAh on the European model) silicon-carbon battery, paired with 100W charging, inside a phone that remains just 8.65mm thick in most finishes.

Xiaomi has also given the Note 17 Pro Max an impressive 6.83-inch 1.5K AMOLED screen, Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 processor, up to 12GB of RAM, and a tougher body protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2.

So has Xiaomi created the perfect mid-range all-rounder, or does the Note 17 Pro Max leave photographers wishing some of that enormous battery had been traded for another lens?

Specifications

Price & Availability

At £499, the Redmi still offers excellent value, with an excellent AMOLED display, unusually robust construction, fast 100W charging and, above all, that enormous 10,000mAh / 9,210mAh battery.

There are compromises, though. The Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 is perfectly capable rather than particularly powerful, and photographers are getting just a 50MP main camera and 8MP ultrawide, with no 200MP sensor (as found on the Redmi Note 15 Pro+) or dedicated telephoto lens. That puts it up against the Pixel 10a with its two-camera system.

But as an all-round phone, particularly for anyone who values battery life, I think there is plenty here for the money.

Design

The Redmi Note 17 Pro Max is a perfectly nice-looking phone, although my black review unit is especially understated and hard to really get excited about. There is little accenting or contrast between the back and sides, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with that, it isn't exactly eye-catching. Xiaomi also offers more interesting Green, Purple and Cloud Blush versions.

Cloud Blush is the most glamorous. Xiaomi says its fiberglass back uses photochromic technology to shift from white towards a pink-orange finish when exposed to sunlight. I haven't had that version to test, but from the marketing images it reminds me strongly of some of the finishes Vivo has used in recent generations. It is eye-catching, certainly, although not enormously original.

This isn't really a Xiaomi problem specifically. Smartphone design has reached the point where an awful lot of devices from Vivo, Oppo, OnePlus, and Xiaomi are converging on essentially the same formula: flat sides, softly rounded corners, a large rectangular screen, and a camera block pushed into the top-left corner. And yes, a lot of them owe at least some debt to recent generations of iPhone.

Still, I prefer this design to the previous generation of Redmi Note. Moving the cameras into the corner rather than placing them inside a large circular central island makes more practical sense to me. It keeps my fingers further away from the lenses while I am holding the phone, which means fewer greasy fingerprints and fewer opportunities to get my fingers in photos.

The actual camera bump is refreshingly small. I spend a lot of time testing Ultra phones with huge camera housings, so having something this restrained is a pleasant change. Of course, Xiaomi has managed that partly because there simply isn't a telephoto camera hiding underneath it.

The Black version feels fine in the hand, although the rear panel has a slightly hollow sensation when handled. But it doesn't feel fragile, and Xiaomi has given the phone its latest Titan build. Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protects the display, while the phone carries IP66, IP68, IP69, and IP69K dust and water resistance, so you can take it swimming in fresh water.

Xiaomi also cites certified testing involving drops of up to three meters onto granite and water immersion at two meters for as long as 72 hours. I have dropped the phone a few times (onto concrete, not granite) to investigate that claim, and it has held up fine with some minor scratches to the frame.

What impresses me much more is what Xiaomi has managed internally. The Note 17 Pro Max contains a colossal 9,210mAh silicon-carbon battery (10,000mAh in some markets) yet measures only 8.65mm thick in the Black, Green and Purple versions. At 225.1g, it doesn't feel disproportionately heavy against rivals considering the battery capacity.

There are the usual power and volume controls around the edge. I am quite glad Xiaomi hasn't felt compelled to add one of the increasingly common dedicated camera buttons, which I still don't find especially necessary on most phones. I would, however, happily take a customizable Action-style button on the opposite side for launching a favorite setting or function. That would be more useful to me on a daily basis.

My sample also came with a simple silicone case. There is nothing particularly luxurious about it, but I will always take a functional case in the box over having to go online and overpay for one.

The under-display fingerprint reader is quick, but it sits noticeably lower than on many phones I use, below the point where my thumb naturally lands when I pick up the device. I eventually adapted, but even after several days I still found myself having to slightly reposition my grip.

Xiaomi has fitted an excellent screen for its class. The 6.83-inch AMOLED panel has a 2772 x 1280 resolution and refresh rate of up to 120Hz, and it looks fantastic. It is sharp, colorful and, to my eyes, pleasingly accurate. Brightness is impressive. Xiaomi quotes a peak of 3,500 nits, and I had no difficulty using the display in brighter conditions outside.

There is also 12-bit color, DCI-P3 coverage, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and 3840Hz PWM dimming, alongside TÜV Rheinland certifications for low blue light, circadian-friendly viewing, and flicker reduction.

Camera Performance

The camera system consists of a 50MP main camera with optical image stabilization and an f/1.5 aperture, paired with an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide. There is then a 32MP front-facing camera. This has been reduced from the 200MP sensor included in last year's Redmi Note 15 Pro Plus, and again, there is no dedicated telephoto lens.

That is the single biggest weakness of the Note 17 Pro Max as a photography-focused smartphone. I don't necessarily expect every mid-range phone to offer some enormous periscope camera, but a useful short telephoto would have made this a substantially more compelling all-round camera.

The main camera itself is respectable. In good conditions it can produce plenty of detail, and one area where I think Xiaomi has done particularly well is color. Images generally looked true to life, without excessive saturation or dramatic tonal shifts. Although there is none of the Leica co-engineered processing here from more premium Xiaomi phones.

Image 1 of 18

Xiaomi's default sharpening and processing can be a little overeager. Photos often have a slightly crisp, processed appearance when viewed closely. I wouldn't describe the results as bad, but there is a visible "phone photo" quality that keeps them from feeling particularly natural.

HDR performance could also be stronger. On bright days, I encountered blown highlights in skies where I would expect a more sophisticated camera phone to recover substantially more information.

The 2x option is useful and produces perfectly respectable results in decent light. Beyond that, things deteriorate quickly. This is where the 200MP sensor, or a dedicated telephoto, would transform the experience. The phone has a good-enough main camera, but I think it's asking too much for a 50MP 1x camera to handle zoom for anything past 4x, at a push, in good light.

Image 1 of 6

There is no dedicated macro camera or macro mode that I could find either. Instead, I relied on the main camera and its 2x option to get closer to subjects. It can focus reasonably close, and the results are usable for details and casual close-ups, but I wouldn't call it true macro photography.

Portrait mode fares better. The artificial background blur looks reasonably convincing and subject separation is generally good. Hair remains the classic issue, and the Note occasionally gets confused by finer strands, but overall I was pleased.

There is also a Pro mode for both stills and video. Phones obviously have fixed apertures, so you don't get anything resembling the complete creative control of an interchangeable-lens camera, but having access to manual shooting controls remains useful. You can also switch into the full 50MP mode when maximum resolution matters.

There is a trade-off, however. Shooting at full resolution means giving up some of Xiaomi's computational low-light processing, so bigger numbers don't automatically translate to better pictures in every situation.

The camera app includes several built-in filters. I find some of them a little tacky straight out of the box, but Xiaomi at least allows adjustments to color, contrast, and other characteristics, which makes them much more useful.

One slightly worrying performance quirk appeared when I launched the camera and immediately hit the shutter. On a handful of occasions, the resulting image came out completely corrupted (see below), producing a kaleidoscopic nightmare. It wasn't frequent enough to really cause an issue, but it also wasn’t a one-off occurrence. Hopefully this is the sort of software problem Xiaomi can eliminate with an update.

Phone Performance

The Redmi Note 17 Pro Max is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 6 Gen 5, which is clearly a compromise to keep the overall device cost down, as it's actually a weaker processor than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 that powers other devices in this bracket.

Storage configurations run from 8GB RAM and 128GB of storage up to 12GB and 512GB. One detail worth noting is that the 128GB model uses slower UFS 2.2 storage, while the 256GB and 512GB capacities move to UFS 4.1.

My Geekbench results came in at 919 single-core, 2,829 multi-core, and 3,279 for the GPU test. (3DMark was not available at the time of testing).

Those aren't numbers that are going to trouble many new phones, but my day-to-day experience was largely fine. Apps opened quickly enough, general navigation felt smooth, and I didn't encounter persistent hanging, with only some minor operating-system sluggishness.

However, editing photographs in Xiaomi's Gallery app can take a beat longer to preview changes than I am accustomed to on more powerful phones. It doesn't ruin the experience, but there is a noticeable difference if you regularly use premium devices.

Xiaomi's HyperOS 3 is generally straightforward to navigate, although it has some quirks and a fair bit of bloatware out of the box. But I particularly like Xiaomi’s built-in Gallery editor. It strikes a nice balance between giving me useful tools without being overly complicated.

There is also the now-obligatory collection of AI features. Xiaomi offers generative expansion, object removal, sky adjustments, simulated bokeh, and other computational edits.

Image 1 of 2

Image 1 of 2

For straightforward jobs, they can be genuinely handy. Removing a small reflection or adding a little artificial background blur can work surprisingly well. But more complicated edits reveal that Xiaomi still has some catching up to do with the best tools I've used from Adobe and Google.

The AI eraser in particular can struggle around shadows and complex edges. Generated areas can appear visibly softer or more pixelated than the surrounding photograph, and I occasionally saw repeated textures that gave away exactly where the image had been reconstructed.

Finally on to the mammoth battery. Xiaomi has achieved that 9,210 mAh capacity using silicon-carbon battery technology, with 100W wired charging and up to 27W wired reverse charging also supported.

In my own use, battery life was outstanding. With a mixture of web browsing, streaming, photography, photo editing, and general everyday use, I comfortably exceeded two days between charges. For lighter users, it could go substantially further. I left the Note 17 Pro Max sitting on standby largely untouched for four days, and it used only around 20% of its battery.

Final Verdict

So Xiaomi has chosen the Pro Max in the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max to represent battery capacity, rather than cameras. And I can’t really fault that. I comfortably got more than two days of fairly heavy use from it, while lighter use can stretch much further. More importantly, Xiaomi has achieved this in a device still just 8.65mm thick. There is also an excellent 6.83-inch AMOLED screen, good durability, and smooth enough everyday performance – despite the processor downgrade.

But the camera system has taken a bit of a backseat. The 200MP sensor in last year's model has become a 50MP main camera. It takes decent photographs with pleasantly realistic color, but processing can be too aggressive, and HDR needs improvement. The 8MP ultrawide is fairly basic, while the complete absence of a telephoto camera feels like the most obvious compromise Xiaomi has made.

That won't matter to everyone. But for Digital Camera World readers, and anyone buying a phone partly because they want a versatile camera in their pocket, this might be the deciding factor.

Alternatives

Vivo V70

The Vivo V70 looks very similar, but manages to squeeze in a third telephoto camera. However, the battery, while good, can't compete with the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max. It's not available in all markets, but if imported, it can come in cheaper than the Redmi.

Oppo Reno 16 5G

If photography matters more to you, the Oppo Reno 16 5G is the more camera-focused direction to look. It sits slightly further up the market, but it has a fantastic set of cameras and a huge battery life. (Oppo Reno 16 Pro review)