Xiaomi Redmi 3 review: Precious little one

The gallery

The Xiaomi Redmi 3 comes with a custom Gallery app, slightly updated since the MIUI 6. It defaults to your camera roll, but it also supports Albums, Cloud, and People. The People sorting, once chosen, sorts all of your photos by people's faces. Everything is automatic. Here you can also create a new baby album, to put your newborn pics inside.

Gallery

The integrated editor offers various effects, frames, tools (crop, mirror, straighten, rotate, fisheye, doodle) plus light adjustments that let you bring out the shadows or the highlights.

Editing an image

Music player

The MIUI music player is a custom app with a well laid out, easy to navigate interface. It features two tabs - the first one is cloud music, similar to Google Music service provided by Xiaomi while the second tab has your own local and cloud music.

The player has cool effects, transitions, and transparent elements, especially on the expandable Now Playing section.

Music Player with streaming service* My music • Now Playing screen • Lyrics

Xiaomi Redmi 3 offers customizable equalizers within the phone's Settings menu - there are a few default presets already available for use. You can also try Xiaomi's MiSound enhancer, which comes into play when you use headphones, and especially, a Xiaomi-branded headset.

Audio enhancements and equalizers

An FM radio app is also available. The Redmi 3 requires a headset to use as an antenna. FM recording is also available.

FM radio

Video player

Xiaomi Redmi 3 features a separate video app, which offers a paid video service. Whether you will open your files from the Video app (Local setting) or File Explorer - it doesn't matter.

The video player interface is very basic, subtitles and pop-up play are not supported.

Video player

Audio output is mostly good

The Xiaomi Redmi 3 didn’t quite manage to impress us with loudness (it was only average), but its output with an active external amplifier was clean. With no weak points to its performance, it will do an excellent job of powering your home or car stereo.

Plug in a pair of headphones and stereo crosstalk skyrockets, but other readings remain stellar. It’s not a perfect showing, but it’s more than you can expect at this price point.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Xiaomi Redmi 3	+0.02, -0.07	-94.2	90.5	0.0022	0.0096	-93.7
Xiaomi Redmi 3 (headphones attached)	+0.12, -0.01	-92.7	90.1	0.032	0.076	-44.2
Xiaomi Redmi 2	+0.06, -0.04	-94.8	95.9	0.026	0.016	-95.8
Xiaomi Redmi 2 (headphones attached)	+0.04, -0.06	-94.0	91.0	0.039	0.053	-70.0
Samsung Galaxy J2	+0.05, -0.25	-93.0	93.0	0.031	0.029	-92.8
Samsung Galaxy J2 (headphones attached)	+0.03, -0.16	-93.2	93.2	0.0042	0.056	-58.9
Meizu m1 metal	+0.02, -0.12	-93.6	93.5	0.0016	0.0068	-93.9
Meizu m1 metal (headphones attached)	+0.03, -0.16	-93.2	93.2	0.0042	0.056	-58.9
Oppo R1x	+0.01, -0.04	-93.5	92.9	0.0010	0.400	-94.7
Oppo R1x (headphones attached)	+0.22, -0.03	-92.6	90.4	0.0029	1.144	-69.8
Motorola Moto E (2015)	+0.02 -0.06	-90.8	91.1	0.0026	0.097	-90.9
Motorola Moto E (2015) (headphones attached)	+0.05, -0.06	-90.2	90.7	0.0029	0.063	-51.4

Xiaomi Redmi 3 frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.