The newly launched Redmi Note 9 Pro will be available in the Philippines from June 4 through Xiaomi‘s flagship store on Lazada. It is the most specced-out and expensive smartphone in the Note 9 lineup.

(Update, July 13: Our full review is up! Read Redmi Note 9 Pro review: Living up to the legend.)

Locally, the phone is priced at P12,490 (around $248) for the 6GB/64GB variant, while the 128GB model costs P13,990 ($277). Both come in Interstellar Grey, Tropical Green, and Glacier White colors.

SEE ALSO: Redmi Note 9 priced from P7,990 ($159) in PH and Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Lite launched in PH. See its price, specs here

Owing to its namesake, the Redmi Note 9 Pro is being marketed as an affordable phone with excellent specs and performance for its price. It also has a large 5,020mAh battery that allows it to last days on a single charge, and hours when playing an intensive game like PUBG Mobile.

If you’re interested in gaming benchmarks, let’s start with a couple of synthetic tests. Here are the Antutu and Geekbench scores for our Redmi Note 9 Pro review unit.

Let’s move on to the gaming tests, in which the Redmi Note 9 Pro should have no trouble with given the Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G it has under the hood. The Snapdragon 720G is a substantial upgrade from the Snapdragon 710 and 712 chipsets and uses the same Adreno 618 GPU as the Snapdragon 730G in the Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Lite.

We’ve already seen what the processor is capable of, thanks to the Realme 6 Pro, which we recently reviewed. So our expectation is that the Redmi Note 9 Pro will be able to run demanding games at medium to high settings. For this round, we tested the following games at these settings:

• PUBG Mobile — HD with Frame Rate set to High; anti-aliasing is turned on
• Call of Duty: Mobile — Very High; all graphics options enabled
• Mobile Legends — Ultra with HFR [high frame rate] mode enabled

Video: Watch us play PUBG Mobile, Call of Duty: Mobile (5:00 mark), and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (10:00 mark) on the Redmi Note 9 Pro

PUBG Mobile, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang game settings

Impressively, the Redmi Note 9 Pro was able to maintain a solid 60 fps on all the games we tried with the graphics settings (mostly) maxed out. The highest frame rate the phone supports is 60Hz, so the results we got are as good as it gets given the hardware on offer here.

True to the hype, this Redmi can play graphically taxing titles without missing a step, or slowing down after several minutes of gameplay. We were able to finish a Classic match in PUBG Mobile without the phone’s internals going above 40 degrees Celsius. That’s impressive considering how much strain the game puts on the CPU and GPU.

READ ALSO: Redmi Note 9S price in the Philippines revealed and Redmi Note 8 Pro beats Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus in gaming test

In our gameplay footage, you’ll see that the Redmi Note 9 Pro is able to keep the frame rate at 60 fps even when the action kicks off.

We’ll be back with more on the Redmi Note 9 Pro in our full review. But so far, at least from a gaming standpoint, it looks genuinely promising. It sure seems like Xiaomi has another formidable contender in its Note 9 lineup.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro specs

• 6.67-inch LCD display, punch hole (top center), 2,400 x 1,080 resolution (20:9), 60Hz refresh rate, Corning Gorilla Glass 5
• Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G processor
• 6GB RAM
• 64GB/128GB storage
• Quad 64-megapixel, f/1.89 (main), 8-megapixel, f/2.2 (ultra wide), 5-megapixel, f/2.4 (macro), 2-megapixel, f/2.4 (depth) rear cameras
• 16-megapixel, f/2.48 front camera
• Fingerprint reader (side-mounted)
• 5,020mAh battery with 30-watt fast charging
• MIUI 11 based on Android 10
• Colors: Interstellar Grey, Tropical Green, and Glacier White

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