Xiaomi Redmi A3 smartphone review – Lots of upgrades on the budget phone

Not much has changed about its cameras: Xiaomi has installed the same sensors as are inside the Redmi A2. This means it only has an 8-megapixel camera on the back which is supported by a depth sensor for portrait shots. 

The main camera mastered the HDR photo well, which consists of a plant with a light background and little light shining onto the subject itself. Both planes were exposed well, however, you can already notice some missing detail on the petals. In the photo of our surroundings, many individual details got lost in the lighter areas of the picture and in general, it lacks sharpness. Even so, it's fine just as a snapshot.

You can just about make out subjects in candlelight, but photos are quite blurry. When we lit up the test chart at only 1 lux inside our photography studio, the phone's camera no longer delivered any usable pictures. In full studio lighting, on the other hand, photos looked relatively sharp—only the red background resulted in the text looking a little blurry.   

Videos can be recorded at a maximum resolution of 1080p and 30fps; they look quite blurry overall and the autofocus is slow.

The 5-megapixel front-facing camera takes decent photos at first glance, but they lose a lot of detail as soon as you enlarge them.

The display has a different aspect ratio compared to the predecessor model: The Redmi A3's screen is now longer and similarly wide, resulting in a new aspect ratio closer to 21:9. This is unusual, but it allows for quite a slim design.

With an expanded 720p resolution, the phone is as expected for the class but its brightness of less than 400 cd/m² leaves more to be desired. During the summer, this could be an issue when using the phone outside. Furthermore, the Redmi A3 doesn't have a true brightness sensor—instead, ambient light is measured via a virtual sensor that uses the front-facing camera. This isn't as accurate, which we also noticed during the test: Every now and then, the screen didn't react correctly to very bright or dark surroundings.

Apart from this, the screen makes do without PWM and suffers from a considerable blue cast; almost all colors and especially yellows are depicted quite inaccurately.

The MediaTek Helio G36 is by no means a powerhouse and even for such a cheap phone, it delivers little power. This means you'll already be faced with stutters when navigating the device's menus and demanding applications quickly bring the smartphone to its limits. For example, streaming in Full HD is an issue: when streaming without copy protection, its performance is often not sufficient for smooth streaming in Full HD—for example on YouTube. In addition, the smartphone is not Widevine L1-certified, meaning that HD streams cannot even be selected on many major platforms. 

Its low RAM of 3 GB is also a bit of a problem, resulting in complex apps not even launching. The slow virtual memory within the data storage doesn't help either. The phone's speed is sufficient for simple tasks such as writing WhatsApp messages or surfing the web. Its mass storage is also quite slow, so you will have to allow for some delays during copying processes.

We measured a maximum temperature of 39.5 °C on the case after prolonged load, which is not an issue and there is still some buffer for warmer environments. Unfortunately, the 3DMark stress tests don't run on the phone, so we used the older GFXBench T-Rex stress test instead. We noted hardly any fluctuations and after 30 runs, the device's performance was similar to that at the beginning.

The same as on the Redmi A2, the A3's speaker is located on the top edge. This is unusual, but not necessarily a bad idea. Its sound, on the other hand, isn't the best, as it is very treble-heavy—resulting in music not being terribly fun to listen to. It's better to connect headphones or speakers via its 3.5 mm jack or Bluetooth. This sounds much better, and the most important codecs are available for wireless transmission, even LDAC and aptX HD for Hi-Res audio.

It can take up to three hours to charge the phone completely and you can do so at a maximum of 10 watts. A charger is not included, but the smartphone works well with most readily available models. Its battery still has a capacity of 5,000 mAh and lasts about as long as its predecessor—we measured 15:02 hours during the Wi-Fi test. The Xiaomi Redmi A3 therefore also offers good runtimes compared to similarly priced phones. 

Xiaomi has really made an effort to offer the best possible phone to people who only have a small budget when it comes to its Redmi A3: Its new design looks more sophisticated, there is a USB-C port (although the EU regulations have probably been a help here), much faster Wi-Fi, a 90 Hz screen, a fingerprint sensor and relatively unchanged Android 14 software with a three-year update guarantee.

This means that a lot has improved compared to its predecessor, and some of our points of criticism have been addressed. However, it must also be noted that the phone is still very slow, even for its price range. Its cameras will only really excite a small number of buyers and although Xiaomi has upgraded its memory, 3 GB of RAM is still very little for the entry-level version of this phone.

Its screen could also do with being brighter—especially on sunny days—and its lack of NFC limits its use to some extent.

Special features such as a three-year update promise and fast Wi-Fi make the Redmi A3 an interesting choice among budget smartphones. However, the sluggish SoC slows the phone down.

If you find yourself torn between the Redmi A2 and the Redmi A3, then we would definitely recommend going for the more modern Redmi A3. An alternative with better performance could be the Motorola Moto G04 which additionally runs a lot smoother.