Introduction

Have we got an interesting phone comparison today – the newly announced pair from Xiaomi – the Mi Note goes up against the Xiaomi Mi Note Pro in a battle to see which one reigns supreme.  Okay, not really…we already know which one is the king and queen in this roundup, but this gives us a way to let our readers know exactly how much alike these two devices really are.  However, it will also give us a chance to show you what the ‘Pro’ has to offer that the regular Mi Note does not.

Xiaomi is a Chinese company that has rocketed to the top of smartphone sales in China – pushing out Samsung, Apple and other Chinese rivals like Huawei and ZTE.  They patterned the design of their smartphones a lot after the Apple iPhone…and they make no apologies.  The devices, up until this point, were high quality and low to a reasonable price with all sales online and shipped directly to the purchaser.  With the new Mi Note and Mi Note Pro, Xiaomi has raised the bar and are now offering high specs to go along with their high quality and lower pricing.

As you can see from the picture above, the devices are identical on the outside – except the Mi Note Pro can also have gold trim, in addition to the standard chrome.  The real differences are on the inside, which I will go over under each individual device listed below.  So please, first take a close look at the detailed Specification chart below and after you look those over, work your way down to the Summary, where we will pick the winner of this comparison.

Specifications

Xiaomi Mi Note

The Xiaomi Mi Note is a thing of beauty – it uses 2.5D Gorilla Glass 3 for the display and 3D Gorilla Glass 3 for the back of the device and a metal strap holds it all together.  What all this 2.5D and 3D means is that on the display the glass is angled down slightly towards the metal band and on the back the glass is actually curved up all around the edges to form something like a ‘cup’ shape that goes up to meet the same metal band.  This combination forms a smooth, rounded and polished look, making it very comfortable to hold and giving it a very premium look.

The Mi Note sports a 5.7-inch IPS LCD Full HD (FHD) display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and 386 pixels-per-inch (PPI) for a beautiful viewing experience.  It comes with a 32-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor clocked at 2.5GHz and hooks itself up to 3GB of RAM and options of either 16GB or 64GB of onboard internal storage – there is no room for expansion.

The camera area is taken care of in good fashion – the main shooter has a 13MP sensor, autofocus, OIS and a dual-tone flash.  The 4MP front-facing camera (FFC) is more than capable of taking great social media selfies or an occasional video chat.  The 3000mAh battery should easily get you through a full day.  It has the usual Dual-Band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1 LE and a microUSB connector for charging and data transfer.

It measures 155.1mm in height x 77.6mm in width and 7mm in thickness and weighs in at 161 grams.  Because of the Qualcomm 800 series processor, it is equipped with Quick Charge 2.0.  The Mi Note also has an extra microphone for noise cancellation and Enhanced audio for its large, bottom mounted speaker.  It has a Dual-SIM for travel in different countries, which is very common in smartphones sold outside the US.

The Mi Note is running Android 4.4.4 KitKat with Xiaomi’s own MIUI 6 shell on top.  You have your choice of Black or White, and will cost you $371 for the 16GB model and $451 for the 64GB model.  The Mi Note should work on AT&T or T-Mobile, but remember, it does not work on all bands and not on the 4G LTE bands in the US.

Xiaomi Mi Note Pro

The write-up on the Xiaomi Mi Note Pro will be a lot shorter as I am only going to highlight the differences – and there really are not many.  The build, look and size are all identical, except you can get the Mi Note Pro in black, white and gold.

As far as additional specifications, the Mi Note Pro increases the display from FHD to Quad HD (QHD), which puts the resolution up to 2560 x 1440 pixels and 515 PPI.  The other big area is in the processor – the Mi Note Pro jumps from the 32-bit Snapdragon 801, skips the 805 and jumps right up to the newest 64-bit Snapdragon 810 octa-core with four cores clocked at 1.5GHz and the other four cores clocked at 2.0GHz.  Xiaomi also threw in 4GB of RAM rather than 3GB and only offers 64GB of internal memory – and again, with no room for expansion.  The battery jumps from 3000mAh to 3090mAh and, because of the processor, it can handle LTE Cat 9 – if you could ever encounter speeds that fast in the real world.  The pricing is $532 for the one 64GB model.

…And The Winner Is…

Summary

Obviously, I have chosen the Xiaomi Mi Note Pro as the winner of this comparison – for an increase of only $81 ($532 – $451) you can have the upgraded display, processor and RAM…what a bargain.  If money is extremely tight, then you should purchase the 16GB Mi Note model for only $371 and save yourself $161 and store your pictures, videos and music in the cloud.

The Mi Note Pro is a device that would keep you updated for over a year with the QHD display and Snapdragon 64-bit 810 processor.  My only reservation about buying one if you live in the US is the non 4G LTE factor – if Xiaomi would include that, they would have a real winner on their hands.

Please hit us up on our Google+ Page and let us know what you think of the Xiaomi Mi Note and Mi Note Pro…as always, we would love to hear from you.