The Redmi 12 5G has been officially launched in India. The new 5G smartphone from Xiaomi is making its global debut in India, and is currently the company’s most affordable 5G smartphone starting at just Rs. 10,999. The device brings some class-leading features such as a glass back panel, new Snapdragon SoC, and more. Is the Redmi 12 5G the real deal? While we work on the full review, here is our first impressions of the phone.

Starting with the unboxing, the Redmi 12 5G comes with all the necessary accessories bundled such as a SIM tray, translucent case, and some documents. The box also packs a 22.5W fast charger and a USB Type-A to Type-C cable.

Redmi 12 5G 4 Redmi 12 5G

Moving on, the Redmi 12 5G comes in three colours. Xiaomi sent us the Moonlight Silver colour which has a shimmery finish for the glass back and produces prism-like colours when light falls on. The phone also comes in Classic Black and Pastel Blue options.

The Redmi 12 5G feels quite hefty mainly due to the big battery and the glass back design. Xiaomi has managed to keep the weigh under 200g while maintaining a thickness of 8.17mm. To offer some extra protection against drops and scratches, the Redmi 12 5G has a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass on the back.

The Redmi 12 5G sports a tall 6.79-inch full-HD+ IPS LCD with a 90Hz refresh rate support. The screen is claimed to offer 450 nits of peak brightness. Indoors, the display gets amply bright to consume content. We have not been able to test the display’s performance in outdoor conditions mainly due to the Mumbai rains but do stay tuned for our full review.

There is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 4 Gen 2 SoC under the hood. The base variant comes with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage which is priced at Rs. 10,999. The one with 6GB of RAM is riced at Rs. 12,499, while the top-end variant with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage is priced at Rs. 14,999. The phone also packs a 5,000mAh battery and supports 18W fast charging.

The Redmi 12 5G features a dual-camera setup on the back with a 50-megapixel primary camera and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. The handset has an 8-megapixel front camera inside the centrally-aligned hole-punch cutout of the display. To make the camera experience more fun, Xiaomi has added some filters which are based on its learnings from its Leica partnership.

In terms of software, the Redmi 12 5G boots the latest MIUI 14 based on Android 13. The software does offer many customisation and personalisation options. However, there are a few bloatware apps preinstalled. Other specifications include a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, AI-based facial recognition, an IR emitter, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity.

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Acer introduced the Swift Go laptop series at CES 2023, powered by both Intel and AMD CPUs. The AMD Ryzen-powered laptop was launched in March of this year in India, and today we’ll be reviewing the base model of the Swift Go 14. It is aimed at the urban youth who would want a stylish and premium looking laptop which is portable and powerful. Let’s find out if the Swift Go 14 checks all the boxes.

Acer Swift Go 14 price in India

The Acer Swift Go 14 is available in Prodigy Pink and Pure Silver colours. On the Acer India online store, the laptop starts at Rs. 59,999 and is the variant we’ll be testing. This comes with an AMD Ryzen 5 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. For about Rs. 5,000 more, you can get the same configuration but with 16GB of RAM.

Acer Swift Go 14 design and features

The Acer Swift Go 14 features a metal chassis which is what gives it a premium look and feel. It’s also quite compact and lightweight measuring just 15.9mm in thickness and 1.25kg in weight. The pink variant actually looks nice and grows on you after a while. You get a good variety of ports for a 14-inch laptop and these include two USB 3.2 (Gen1) Type-C ports for charging, HDMI, USB 3.2 (Gen1) Type-A port, USB 2.0 Type-A port, headphone jack, and a Kensington lock. There’s no SD card reader of any kind, which I don’t think is a total loss. The right side of the laptop also has two LEDs for the power and activity status.

The Acer Swift Go 14 features an all-metal chassis and is fairly light

The backlit keyboard on the Acer Swift Go 14 is nicely laid out, and the keys themselves are responsive and not noisy. There’s a fingerprint sensor in the power button which wobbles when pressed, unlike the rest of the keys, but it works fine when it comes to authentication. The trackpad does a good job of tracking and you get a decent amount of room to rest your palms.

The 14-inch display has a 16:9 aspect ratio, making it ideal for watching most video content. The Acer Swift Go 14 uses an IPS display panel with a full-HD (1920×1080) resolution and comes with a matte, anti-glare finish. The display has a rated maximum brightness of 300 nits which I found to be more than adequate. The 1080p webcam is quite inconspicuous and is located just above the display. The Acer Swift Go 14 ships with just a 65W USB Type-C charger in the box.

Acer Swift Go 14 specifications and software

The Acer Swift Go 14 features an AMD Ryzen 5 7530U CPU featuring six CPU cores. It’s part of AMD’s mobile CPU refresh which was announced during CES this year. However, this model is based on a refreshed Zen 3 architecture, unlike the 7040 series which uses the latest Zen 4 architecture. This is currently the only CPU configuration that Acer offers in India for the Swift Go 14 series. Storage is taken care of by a 512GB NVMe PCIe Gen3 SSD, and there’s 8GB of RAM. The laptop also features Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.1, and a 3-cell 50WHr battery.

The Acer Swift Go 14 features a good number of ports for a 14-inch laptop

The Acer Swift Go 14 ships with Windows 11 Home, along with the usual preinstalled programs such as Microsoft Office Home and Student, McAfee antivirus, and bunch of softwares by Acer for system diagnostics and keeping drivers up to date.

Acer Swift Go 14 performance and battery life

General performance of the Acer Swift Go 14 is very good. It runs cool and the fans are not audible when performing simple tasks, but you can hear them faintly during gaming. I found the typing angle to be quite ergonomic as the base is propped up a bit when the lid is open. The keyboard backlighting is also soothing and the display gets sufficiently bright even for daytime outdoor use. Applications are quick to load and I never really felt any lack of power.

The stereo speakers get loud but don’t sound all that great. Games run decently well with the onboard Radeon graphics. I was able to get smooth framerates in Fortnite with medium graphics and running at the display’s native resolution. In synthetic gaming tests such as 3DMark, the Acer Swift Go 14 returned a score of 1,268 in the Time Spy test suite, and 13,570 in Night Raid. CPU and SSD performance was also very good. The laptop scored 566 and 3,664 points in Cinebench R20, and returned an average read speed of over 1.5GB/s for both sequential and random tests in SiSoft Sandra. Write speeds were lower coming in under 900MB/s.

Video rendering and encoding performance was also quite good. The Acer Swift Go 14 took 45 seconds to encode a 1.3GB AVI file to H.265 MKV, while the BMW test scene in Blender took 6 minutes, 18 seconds to render. These were lower (better) times compared to something like the Intel Core i5-1335U CPU which we recently tested in the Dell Inspiron 16 2-in-1.

The keyboard on the Acer Swift Go 14 is comfortable to type on

Battery life is another highlight of the Acer Swift Go 14. Considering its size, it ran for an impressive 3 hours, 26 minutes in the Battery Eater Pro benchmark. With my daily workflow, I was able to get roughly 7-8 hours of non-stop use before the battery went below 10 percent. By these estimates, it should be possible to get even up to 10 hours of use on one charge (or more), if you don’t use it non-stop. The laptop can be charged fairly quickly using the bundled charger. You get roughly a 70 percent charge in an hour.

Verdict

It’s really hard to find fault with the Acer Swift Go 14 as it does everything you’d expect from a thin and light laptop, and this is before you even consider the price. At Rs. 59,999 (less during sales), you get a well-designed compact laptop with good performance and long battery life. The speakers are possibly the only thing that’s a little underwhelming, and the wobbly power button feels a little out of place in an otherwise well put-together laptop (or it could just be our unit). The Swift Go 14 is definitely worth recommending if you’re looking for a compact Windows laptop under Rs. 60,000 that doesn’t compromise on battery life.

The post Acer Swift Go 14 Review: Striking the Right Balance appeared first on Review Products.

Although the Apple Watch series is aspirational and may be a bit pricey for many of us due to its price and positioning, it has increased interest in smartwatches. As a result, the market for budget smartwatches is growing, driven by several firms that use their knowledge of smartphones and Bluetooth connectivity to provide capable wearable technology at affordable rates. This includes Xiaomi, which unveiled the Redmi Watch 3 Active, a smartwatch focusing on health, which costs Rs. 2,999.

Regarding fitness tracking, my previous experiences with low-cost smartwatches could have been better; generally, low-cost devices are best suited for fundamental features like notification mirroring and watch face customization. In addition to checking the boxes for a low-cost smartwatch, it will be interesting to see if the Redmi Watch 3 Active can live up to its moniker and perform effectively as a fitness and health tracker. In this review, you’ll learn if the Redmi Watch 3 Active is worth the money.

Along with step tracking and other features, the Redmi Watch 3 Active can measure your heart rate and blood oxygen levels.

Design and technical details of the Redmi Watch 3 Active

The budget smartwatch market aims to provide as many functions as possible at an affordable price. Design and form are somewhat simplistic in this market, and the Redmi Watch 3 Active maintains this straightforward appearance. The absence of distinguishing features and emblems makes identifying this as a Redmi product at first glance challenging. You decide whether that’s good or negative, but the appearance is too plain and unremarkable.

Review of the Fire-Boltt Phoenix Ultra: Best Smartwatch Under 3,000 Rupees.

Nevertheless, it is valid, and some people might even prefer the shiny exterior complementing the 1.83-inch color screen. If you use a watch face with a black background, you won’t see the screen’s thick borders, and unless you pay great attention, the front will appear relatively uniform. A button that controls power unlocks the app drawer and awakens the screen from standby is located on the watch’s right side.

Fortunately, the screen can also be turned on by double-tapping it or by using the lift-to-wake motion, which involves turning your wrist to face you as you would ordinarily look at a wristwatch. By covering the screen with your palm, you may instantly switch it off. Alternatively, using the screen timeout feature, you can set the Redmi Watch 3 Active to go into standby mode.

The sole logo on the Redmi Watch 3 Active is located directly above the optical sensors on its underside, allowing blood oxygen levels and heart rate tracking. The magnetic charger attaches to the contact points below and connects to a USB Type-A port on the device’s opposite end; a power adapter is not included. The smartwatch’s interchangeable straps can also be detached from it at the bottom.

Charcoal Black and Platinum Grey are the two color choices for the Redmi Watch 3 Active. Although the latter may appear slightly better looking and more distinctive, the review unit supplied to me is the former. The smartwatch’s 5ATM water resistance certification and the default strap’s comfort level and waterproofness work hand in hand. The Redmi Watch 3 Active connects through Bluetooth 5.3, and when coupled with a smartphone, it supports Bluetooth calling. Of course, a speaker and microphone are built-in for this to function correctly.

Active software, user interface, and app for Redmi Watch 3

Compatibility with smartphone operating systems (and occasionally even inside the Android ecosystem) isn’t guaranteed on low-cost smartwatches, but the Redmi Watch 3 Active checks all the right boxes. The device supports the smartwatch on iOS and Android platforms and is compatible with the Mi Fitness app.

For my review, I used a OnePlus 9 Pro (Review) with the Redmi Watch 3 Active connected and the Mi Fitness app installed. The program manages the connection between the smartwatch and the smartphone using Bluetooth. It also establishes the link for voice calls and synchronizes notifications between the two devices. The app receives fitness and health information gathered on the watch to offer improved insights and analysis.

With widgets for activity, sleep, steps, heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and more, the software itself is well-presented. Additionally, you may begin exercises from within the app. Outdoor activities incorporate mapping into the monitoring; however, this depends on your phone for position information because the smartwatch does not enable location tracking. It’s simple to change the gadget’s settings and essential tools; overall, the app is functional and well-equipped for the device.

The Redmi Watch 3 Active boasts a wide selection of watch faces, just like any good wristwatch should. A wide array of downloadable options, arranged arbitrarily, is available in addition to the three default choices. The smartwatch may store up to two additional watch faces in addition to the three default choices, which can be deleted and updated as much as you like if you find one you prefer and download it using the app. There were a few good choices, but most were too bizarre for my tastes.

The Redmi Watch 3 Active is compatible with the iOS and Android-based Mi Fitness app.

Redmi Watch 3 Active battery life and performance

Regardless of price, almost all smartwatches offer the most basic form of fitness tracking. The Redmi Watch 3 Active tries to distinguish itself as a fitness-friendly alternative given its ‘Active’ label, but the accuracy and utility of this could be better on low-cost gadgets.

The Redmi Watch 3 Active doesn’t live up to its boasts, essentially in line with the rest of the inexpensive wristwatch market. Even though there are more than 100 tracking and sport modes with allegedly optimized tracking performance, most of these are specialized, making it difficult to determine whether the tracking data is reliable.

I focused on recording the fundamentals for my evaluation, particularly steps, heart rate, and blood oxygen levels. The Redmi Watch Active estimated 1,060 steps in our 1,000-step test while I physically counted 1,000, indicating a 6% inaccuracy rate. This is too far removed from the more precise step-tracking data that high-end devices can produce, but it is close to what other smartwatches in this price range deliver.

Similar issues arise with heart rate tracking, especially when taking a reading while moving around; the results are frequently too low or fluctuate erratically. The blood oxygen tracking and the heart rate reading, compared to the Apple Watch Series 7 for accuracy, were limited to standing still or sitting with my arm steady.

Water resistance for the Redmi Watch 3 Active is 5ATM.

The specifics of sleep tracking didn’t seem remarkably accurate or detailed; it was very simplistic and reasonable about the amount of time spent sleeping. Overall, health tracking on this can give consumers a rough understanding of what’s happening, but it’s far too erratic to be depended upon for anything significant.

The Redmi Watch 3 Active performs admirably overall, with the default user interface and apps generally functioning as expected. The Redmi Watch 3 Active’s screen is bright and adequate for the price, even though it isn’t quite as sharp and attractive as some of the competition in this market (which employs OLED displays).

I could wear the smartwatch all day, occasionally while sleeping, and use it for around seven days on a single full charge. If you turn off the continuous connection for calls and avoid using the Redmi Watch 3 Active for too many calls, you can extend the battery life a little.

Turning it on through the Bluetooth settings is simple if that is something you plan to utilize. The Redmi Watch 3 Active will only activate for calls if you answer the call on the smartwatch itself. This is useful since, even with the connection active, answering a call on your linked smartphone rather than the watch guarantees that audio is diverted to the correct device. Call quality is acceptable for brief calls in comparatively quiet settings. You’ll find it too soft and annoying for prolonged calls or in noisy surroundings, and you’ll probably want to switch to your smartphone or good earbuds.

Verdict

The Redmi Watch 3 Active is a fitness-focused smartwatch, although there isn’t much evidence to support this. It still qualifies as a wearable device and is a capable budget option that effectively manages tasks like notifications and calls. It is attractive and comfortable, has an excellent screen and software, and can operate effectively for around seven days on a single charge.

As a result, there are a few issues, but the Redmi Watch 3 Active only offers a little that makes it stand out. If you’re looking for a new, inexpensive smartwatch that costs less than Rs. 3,000, consider this, mainly because Xiaomi products are known for their dependability and longevity.

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