Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition Review: 210W, 17 Minutes To Full Charge

Redmi Note series mobile phones are widely welcomed by users all over the world. The reason is actually very simple, that is, they are of high quality and low price, and there are few rivals in the same price range. The just-released Redmi Note 12 series naturally continues the feature of high-cost performance and also explores the flagship technology.

There are 4 models in the Redmi Note 12 series this time, namely Redmi Note 12, Redmi Note 12 Pro, and Redmi Note 12 Pro+, and this article reviews the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition. And Redmi’s exploration of top technology is actually in the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition. As a mobile phone priced at 2K, some of the configurations are indeed at the flagship level, so this exploration of Redmi will provide us with What kind of experience, let’s take a look at this Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition today.

The Redmi Note series can be said to be the pioneer of all mobile phones on the road to popularizing charging technology. The previous generation of Redmi Note 11 has already used the 120W fairy second charge. The charging power of 120W is actually the flagship level, but this is not the goal of Redmi. So we saw the 210W fairy second charge in the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition.

210W Immortal Second Charge is the top fast charging technology in the current mobile phone market, and its charging power is the highest in the entire mobile phone market. However, achieving 210W fast charging is not a simple and rude increase in numbers. It requires the entire charging link from the charging head to the battery. upgrade.

Desgin & Design

This 210W charger adopts a dual GaN design. The GaN material has the characteristics of stable performance and high operating frequency. It can also reduce the size of the charger and improve charging efficiency. The maximum output specification is 20V/10.5A, and the maximum output power is 210W.

What is marked in the charger is basically Xiaomi’s private output protocol, but after our actual measurement, it can support the PD protocol and can charge the laptop. However, the weight and volume of this charger are too large, 222 grams is heavier than a mobile phone, which has some impact on portability, but considering the positioning of the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition, this is understandable, and you want a smaller charger device, you can look forward to Mi 13.

In terms of connecting cables, the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition is also newly customized. This time, Redmi did not use the magic port of the previous 120W fairy second charging and directly used the C to C connecting cable. This cable supports a maximum current of 10.5A has low impedance and has strong anti-interference performance.

In the internal charging link of the mobile phone, the 210W Shenxians second charging is still the solution of dual-cell high-current, but the charging current is much larger than the 120W fast charging technology, so it achieves a faster-charging speed, but the core is actually It is the charge pump solution that is still in use today. The function of the charge pump is to change the output voltage/current ratio, from a 2:1 input to the mobile phone terminal to a 1:2 ratio, and to increase the charging speed through a large current. This process will cause loss and heat generation, and the higher the load of the charge pumps The greater the loss.

The Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition deploys a total of three charge pumps inside the phone, 2 on the main board and 1 on the sub-board, to avoid the concentrated heating of the charge pump. At present, the maximum power load of each charge pump is 100W. For the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition with the highest power of 210W, three charge pumps must be used. Three charge pumps also increase the design margin. Each charge pump only needs to The output current of 7A is enough, and the load is only 70%, which is far from the standard of full load. Therefore, the conversion rate during charging is high, the heat generation is small, and the charging speed is improved.

Of course, in order to carry the high current during charging, the battery must also be upgraded. The previous 6C battery cannot carry the high current of 21A. The Redmi Note 12 Discovery Edition uses a brand-new 10C battery, which speeds up charging through technologies such as MTW multi-pole structure, ultra-low viscosity electrolyte, small particle size fast-charging graphite, ultra-thin coating design, and 5μm ultra-thin diaphragm.

In terms of heat dissipation, a 3,000 square millimeter VC vapor chamber covers the processor and battery, a 1,268 square millimeter graphene phase change vapor chamber covers the motherboard’s charging chip to enhance heat dissipation, and the heat conduction efficiency of the aluminum alloy middle frame is also 77% higher than that of the previous generation. %. This luxurious heat dissipation configuration takes into account charging speed and safety and is also helpful for the long-lasting high-performance experience of the mobile phone.

Hardware

The Redmi Note 12 series is this year’s “Little King Kong”, which is definitely not comparable to the “Performance Little King Kong” Redmi Note 11T series in terms of performance, but it has also been upgraded in terms of hardware. In terms of processor, the newly released Dimensity 1080 is used. This processor is an iterative version of Dimensity 920. It is manufactured using a 6nm process. It has good performance specifications and has advantages in terms of energy efficiency.

Dimensity 1080 adopts an eight-core CPU architecture design, two large cores are Cortex-A78 with the main frequency of 2.6GHz, and Mali-G68 GPU is used for graphics. In terms of imaging, it is equipped with a MediaTek Imagiq ISP image processor, which can support up to 200 Megapixel main camera. The MediaTek HyperEngine 3.0 game engine brings players a high-performance, low-latency gaming experience, and the MediaTek third-generation APU can further optimize the platform’s energy efficiency during games.

In terms of storage, the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition uses LPDDR4x memory + UFS 2.2 flash memory. With the support of the MIUI 13 system, it has technical support such as memory expansion and IO Turbo, which improves the retention of background applications and speeds up the startup speed, ensuring a long-term smoothness of 36 months.

How is the performance of this set of hardware specifications, let’s take a look at the performance of the benchmark test. The room temperature AnTuTu evaluation score easily exceeded 500,000, slightly ahead of the Redmi Note 11 Pro, and the 3DMark cycle test stability was 99.1%, and it can stably output high performance for a long time.

The fluency performance of the game is also good, “glory of the king”supports 90 fps high frame rate mode, ultra-high resolution + high-definition image quality + 90 fps ultra-high frame rate + anti-aliasing enabled to watch a peak game for 25 minutes, with an average frame rate of 88.4 frames and a frame stabilization index of 1.6. Frequent teamfights did not affect stability. Judging from the frame rate curve, starting a group will cause some frame rate fluctuations, but the frame rate has never dropped below 60 frames, and there is no visually detectable lag.

The heating of the game is also very good. The temperature is measured after a whole game. The highest temperature is 38.5 degrees on the front and 37.8 degrees on the back. The warm experience is very good, and suitable for long-term gaming experiences. The test results show that the performance of the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition has been slightly improved, and the advantages of high energy efficiency and ultra-high stability are significant, fully meeting the performance requirements of daily use.

Cameras

Taking pictures is another major upgrade point of the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition. Redmi has equipped it with a brand new HPX outsole main camera. This main camera is as high as 200 Megapixels, with a 1/1.4-inch outsole and 2.24μm fusion large pixels. , and provides OIS optical image stabilization support. The other two lenses are an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens and a 2-megapixel macro lens.

The quality of the main camera is obviously ahead. The 1/1.4-inch outsole is larger than the high-end commonly used IMX 766 and has a strong light sensitivity. When taking pictures normally, the Redmi Note 12 Discovery Edition provides 12.5 Megapixels, using 16-in-1 pixel fusion; 50-megapixel ultra-clear mode is 4-in-1 pixel fusion, and 200-megapixel mode is one-to-one correspondence for taking pictures.  The pixel size at this time has been reduced to 0.56 μm, so it needs to be used in an environment with good light conditions. Equipped with the flagship 7P lens, ALD coating is added to reduce the reflectivity and optimize the glare problem. The software algorithm introduces the Xiaomi Imaging Brain. In addition to optimizing the image quality of the photo, it can also significantly increase the imaging speed, especially in the triggering of the shutter, which has changed from raising the hand trigger to pressing the trigger.

The Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition debuted the film camera function, which uses software algorithms to simulate the classic color effects of the film. The system will focus on the characteristics of the film effect, from the three aspects of color, grain, and vignetting, and according to the original RGB value of each pixel of the shooting screen, perform color adjustment, calculation, and generate grain and vignetting effects in real-time, so as to achieve the real texture of the film reduction. As for the camera effect of the machine, let’s look directly at the proofs.

The sharpness improvement brought by 200 Megapixels is very significant, especially in the detailed performance after zooming in on the picture. Judging from the comparison effect in the proofs, the feather series after zooming in on the 200 Megapixel proofs are completely preserved, and the texture in the lotus leaf is also preserved. very clearly. But the 12.5 Megapixels are somewhat blurred after zooming in, and you can only see a general idea, and don’t think about the details.

In the usual daytime proofs, the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition inherits the excellent experience of the previous generation. It can have a better photo effect with just one shot. Ordinary users can open the AI ​​​​camera and click the shutter, which is very convenient to use. Even when taking pictures at night, the system can automatically recognize the switch, without the need for the user to manually switch the night scene mode.

The triggering of the HDR algorithm is relatively sensitive, but the saturation of the picture is too full, which makes the software traces of the picture a little obvious, especially when the sky and green plants are in the same picture, the expressiveness of the sky is a bit wrong.

The angle of view of the ultra-wide-angle camera is very large, and the white balance is quite different from that of the main camera. The ultra-wide-angle lens supports the night scene-long exposure mode, but the picture is more smeared.

In the photo taken in night scene mode, the color restoration under long exposure is good, and the red restoration in street signs is very accurate. In bright and dark scenes, the highlight suppression performance is very good, and some dark parts are not bright enough. The brightness of the extremely dark environment is very good, and the definition of the left front foot of the lion is very high, but the color of the highlighted part of the lion is slightly pale.

In terms of the film camera function that Redmi is focusing on this time, in fact, the use method is exactly the same as the filter, and this function can be edited and added to the album after the photo is taken, and the filter is forced to be used when the photo is not needed, which is more flexible. . This function is more usable for photographers who have experienced the film era, and ordinary users can also try it. After all, the film camera function is still very useful in presenting the sense of atmosphere.

If you want to add a sense of age to the photos of the film camera, you can try the exclusive film photo frame function. Looking at the time numbers in the photos, people who have used film cameras will definitely be able to recall that era.

Battery

In terms of battery capacity, the 2150mAh dual-cell is equivalent to 4300mAh, which is not large in terms of power. It is measured that 5 hours of continuous high-intensity use consumes 50% of the power, and the battery life is still behind the previous generation. However, the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition has an extremely fast charging speed, and it will not cause us too much battery life anxiety.

The charging speed of the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition is very fast. It takes 1 minute to charge from 1% to 16%, 4 minutes to 41%, 10 minutes for the system to display 100% power, and 11 minutes and 02 seconds for the charger to output a very small current to fully charge up. The measured data shows that whether it is a short-term emergency fast charge or a full charge, the charging speed is very satisfactory to us. This charging speed allows us to completely avoid charging before going to bed. Even if the phone runs out of battery and turns off after waking up, you can easily go out with a 100% full charge.

Judging from the change of charging power, the maximum charging power of 210W can be supported for a very short time, less than 1 minute. After the battery power of the mobile phone rises, it begins to enter a stable high-power charging stage, which will last about 4 minutes at the 140-150W high-power stage. It can be seen from the data in the chart that the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition is charged at a high-power fast charge throughout the charging process, even if it is close to full charge, it can have a charging power of 50W.

In addition, the charging speed of the Redmi Note 12 Discovery Edition is also very fast. The measured charging system shows 100% power in 23 minutes, and it is fully charged in 25 minutes. This charging speed is even faster than that of some mobile phones with the screen off. Obviously, the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition is the well-deserved fastest-charging mobile phone nowadays. It can subvert our charging habits and the ability to be fully charged in a short time allows us to always ensure 100% full charge when we need long battery life.

Read Also: Redmi Pad In-Depth Review: 2 Days Long Battery Life!

Verdict

The main upgrade points of the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition are actually the above three points, and the specifications other than this are also reasonable. The screen adopts a 6.67-inch OLED flexible straight screen. The screen panels are from the three major domestic panel manufacturers of China Star Optoelectronics, Tianma, and Visionox. The three screen panels are all arranged in a diamond-like arrangement.

The screen is packaged in COP, and the lower frame is reduced to 2.9mm, which has a strong visual impact on the screen. In terms of color, it supports 100% P3 color gamut, 10bit color depth supports HDR 10+, and hardware-level low blue light. It supports 16000-level automatic dimming, 1920Hz PWM dimming, and supports a high refresh rate of 120Hz.

The design is the same thin and capable design, but the back is Xiaomi’s classic ceramic texture, which has a particularly strong reflective effect and can be used as a mirror. As for other configurations, there are X-axis linear motors, stereo dual speakers, NFC, infrared, and headphone jacks.

New technologies in the mobile phone industry are often first applied to the top flagship models, then continue to sink, and finally spread to most mobile phones. However, the Redmi Note series is constantly challenging this rule. Before that, we could not have imagined that the top fast-charging technology would appear in the Redmi Note series, but this is the case.

Beginning in 2021, the Redmi Note series has formulated a product strategy of alternately updating the Experience King Kong and the performance of King Kong. As the Redmi Note 11T series performance King Kong, all kinds of high-end hardware are open to use as if free of money; now, to experience the Redmi Note 12 series of King Kong, it is to use various new technologies regardless of cost. The 210W fairy second charging has completely changed the charging habit, and the ultimate fast charging technology can also eliminate battery life anxiety. Redmi, who insists on taking pictures with high pixels, gave us both the outsole and high pixels this time.

We have always believed that price is the biggest advantage of the Redmi Note series, and the Redmi Note 12 Explorer Edition naturally does not abandon this traditional advantage. On this basis, it also has a top-notch fast charging experience, so why not try it. In short, this is a phone that is hard to return to once you use it.