I Bought the Cheapest REDMI Smartphone in 2026, and Here’s What I Got

A few months ago I bought a vivo X300 after five years on Xiaomi — a flagship camera phone that I’m still happy with to this day. But at some point, I decided to feel closer to the people and picked up the cheapest REDMI available. For the experiment. For the understanding of what’s happening on the other end of the market. And, honestly, so I’d have something to write about. REDMI A5 is the cheapest smartphone of 2026 from the Xiaomi lineup, and after a few weeks of use, I’ve formed a pretty clear opinion about it.

Reviewing the cheapest REDMI I could buy

The Cheapest Xiaomi in 2026

Let me start with the main thing. The price of REDMI A5 in Russian retail is around 6-7 thousand rubles depending on the configuration and store. I got the smartphone for approximately 5,500 rubles (the 3/64 GB version). That’s the one I lived with for a few weeks.

For that kind of money in 2026, you could buy a decent power bank, good wired headphones, or a couple months of a streaming subscription. Buying the REDMI A5 is a conscious choice by people who need a working smartphone for the least amount of money. No illusions. Let’s see what you get for that price.

Design and Display of the REDMI A5

The REDMI A5 smartphone looks pleasant until you turn on the screen. A black plastic body with neat lines, a small camera module without excessive protrusions, a nice-feeling matte back. Holding it in your hand — the feel is quite decent for its price. It suspiciously resembles a mid-budget HUAWEI nova, just without any pretensions of status.

This is the screen that greeted me after turning it on

And then you turn on the display and see the bezels. Wide, noticeable, especially at the bottom. It’s not a catastrophe by budget segment standards, but the contrast with modern flagships is striking. The REDMI A5 display is 6.88 inches, IPS, 1640×720 resolution, and a 120 Hz refresh rate. On paper, 120 Hz in a budget phone sounds like a gift. In practice, due to weak hardware, the smoothness is barely noticeable. And the HD+ resolution after high-resolution screens makes itself known: pixels are visible when reading text and viewing photos. Not critical, but the eye notices.

REDMI A5 Specifications

Before I started using the smartphone, I looked at the specs with moderate optimism. Here’s what’s inside:

The Unisoc T7250 chip (12 nm) scores around 260,000 points in AnTuTu. For context: that’s roughly six times less than the vivo X300 in my pocket. The 5200 mAh battery looks decent. 15 W charging (modest). The 32 MP main camera doesn’t look like a disaster on paper. Expectations were moderate. Reality turned out to be a bit different.

A Xiaomi Smartphone Without the HyperOS Shell

What I didn’t expect was how noticeably the absence of the proprietary shell would be felt. Xiaomi without HyperOS is a bare OS running Android 15 Go. Go is a lightweight version of Android for low-powered devices: stripped-down system apps, minimal extras, maximum resource savings.

Android Go is Android for those who have no choice.

After HyperOS, One UI, OriginOS, or any other modern shell, Android 15 Go looks bare-bones. There are no proper navigation gestures in the familiar form, animations are jerky, and there are significantly fewer settings. Xiaomi apps are all present: gallery, file manager, browser. But the system layer itself feels poor. The HyperOS shell isn’t just beauty on top of Android — it’s years of work on convenience and details. Here, that’s absent.

This is what the shell looks like without HyperOS

It’s also worth noting: updates for Android Go come out less frequently and with lower priority. The three years of support promised by Xiaomi means three years of minimally necessary security patches, not three years of active development.

REDMI A5 Performance

The REDMI A5 processor Unisoc T7250 handles basic tasks (calls, messages, browser). But as soon as you get to social media, the nuances begin. Scrolling through a feed — the smartphone thinks. Switching between apps — the smartphone thinks again. Opening a heavy website — you could make tea in the meantime.

eMMC 5.1 in 2026 is like ADSL in the era of high-speed internet.

The main problem isn’t the chip itself, but the memory. A cheap Android smartphone with eMMC 5.1 has a slow storage drive that slows down app launches and system operation. Modern smartphones use UFS 3.1 or UFS 4.0, which are several times faster. On the 3/64 GB version I used, apps regularly get kicked out of memory simply because there isn’t enough RAM. Open Telegram, go to the browser, return to Telegram — it restarts from scratch.

How the Cheap Smartphone’s Camera Shoots

32 MP — a number that looks decent on the specs page. Reality is more modest. A smartphone with a bad camera — that’s exactly what the REDMI A5 is, though with a caveat: for its price category, it’s acceptable in exactly one scenario.

Quality is mediocre even in daylight. Photo: club.dns-shop.ru

In good daylight, shots are legible: you can make out water meter readings, photograph a document, capture a receipt. Everything else is already a gamble. Indoors with artificial light, photos are noisy and soft. In twilight — frankly bad. At night, the camera simply gives up.

The REDMI A5 camera is only good enough for meters and documents.

The 8 MP front camera works roughly the same way: in ideal conditions — tolerable, in real ones — mediocre. Video recording is also only for documenting a fact, not for viewing.

REDMI A5 Battery Life with Active Use

A 5200 mAh battery on a weak chip should theoretically provide good battery life. In practice, with active use — about a day and a half. Not a record even for the budget segment: some competitors in this price niche offer more. If you use the REDMI A5 smartphone moderately (calls, messengers, a bit of browsing), you can stretch it to two days. The 15 W charging restores 5200 mAh in two hours. In 2026, when mid-range phones charge in 30-40 minutes, this feels like a trip back in time. A charger is included in the box, and that’s good, because you’ll be waiting a long time.