We all know by now that Xiaomi make some of the best flagship smartphones on the market but it is not just great flagships that they make.  They also make great mid-range and entry-level smartphones with the REDMI Note series.

Recently, they announced the REDMI Note 17 Pro Max and the REDMI Note 17 Pro, with prices starting at AU$599, making them extremely affordable.  After using the REDMI Note 17 Pro Max for the past couple of weeks, I can say not only is it affordable, but also great value and a great phone.

The Xiaomi REDMI Note 17 Pro Max sports a massive 9,210mAh battery, IP66 and IP68 ratings, and Gorilla Glass Victus 2 to protect the display from drops and scratches.  The 6.83-inch display also packs a punch, reaching up to 3,599 nits of peak brightness at 1.5K resolution.  

Starting at AU$799, it sits squarely in the mid-range and at that slot, it kicks goals.

Camera

First off is the camera.  Mid-range smartphones often have half-decent cameras but struggle in low light.  On paper, the Note 17 Pro Max’s camera specs are nothing special, but the results make a mockery of that, capturing excellent images in daylight and decent ones at night.

With a dual rear camera setup of a 50MP main camera and an 8MP ultrawide camera, the phone punches above its weight.  We are seeing this more and more these days, with computational photography and post-processing so good that even “lower-end” specced cameras can produce decent images.

As you can see from the images below, the REDMI Note 17 Pro Max captured photos well.  It will never match a flagship smartphone, but you are paying around three times the price for that better camera.  Is it worth it for you?  That’s a decision you need to make.  See my sample images below.

Design and hardware

The design matches so many other smartphones these days.  The edges are slightly curved, with a flat front display – thank goodness curved displays are dead and buried.

The rear is polycarbonate and feels OK, but it doesn’t look special.  This phone, in black at least, won’t set the world alight with its looks, but how many people these days use a phone without a case anyway?

The display is a big 6.83-inch, 1.5K AMOLED panel (1280 x 2772 pixels) that’s bright and vivid.  These days, AMOLED displays are like cameras; almost all of them are good.  Sure, they won’t match the accuracy, brightness and vibrancy of a flagship, but they are still excellent.  

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The display was easy to see in daylight (while playing golf), and although it wasn’t as easy to read as a flagship, it was still usable.

The REDMI Note 17 Pro Max runs on a Qualcomm SM6850 Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 (4 nm), which is good, but not great.  It performed like a mid-range phone.  It was fast enough, but you could certainly notice when it struggled under the workloads I threw at it.  

It lacked the raw speed and smoothness of some more expensive mid-range phones (depending on what you call mid-range these days), and while it slowed during some transitions, it still handled everything I threw at it.

Software

Earlier this year, I reviewed the incredibly impressive Xiaomi 17 Ultra and covered Xiaomi’s HyperOS operating system and much of the same is here.  While the REDMI Note 17 Pro Max isn’t on the same version of HyperOS that the 17 Ultra is

Xiaomi HyperAI is still present with AI Dynamic Wallpapers, AI Writing, AI Creativity Assistant, AI Speech Recognition and more, as you can see below.  How often do these actually get used?  Unless they run automatically, most people use them rarely.  They are happy enough to ask Gemini or ChatGPT etc how far it is to the moon and more, but these tools?  Rarely.  

As mentioned above, the software is a bit slow on the REDMI Note 17 Pro Max at times.  Not all the time, but occasionally it lags, not excessively, but certainly not as smoothly as it did on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra.

Battery and charging

Xiaomi doesn’t include a charger in the box, which is disappointing, since one of the phone’s headline features is its support for 100W HyperCharge, but you need a supported Xiaomi charger.  OPPO includes one in the box for its 80W SUPERVOOC Charging, so it is disappointing that Xiaomi doesn’t.

When looking at charging time, you need to account for the battery size: 9,210mAh.  The Samsung Galaxy S26 FE has a battery that is just 4,900mAh.  So the REDMI Note 17 Pro Max battery is nearly twice that, so expect it to take longer to charge.

As you can see in the graph below, with my Xiaomi 120W HyperCharge Combo (Type-A) charger, it took a while to charge all the way to full, but given the size of the battery it impressive.

The battery life of the REDMI Note 17 Pro Max was also impressive and I was able to get close to two full days of use – something I have not come across before with any smartphone.  When it comes to batteries, size counts.

Final thoughts

Before making any firm conclusions surrounding the Xiaomi REDMI 17 Pro Max, we need to consider where it sits in the grand scheme of smartphones. It is not a flagship, far from it, and instead it sits at the top of the mid-range, priced at AU$799 for the 256GB version and AU$999 for the 512GB version.

We need to keep this in mind when discussing the device’s pros and cons. It is a big smartphone with solid build quality, and although the Black colour I reviewed is incredibly boring, it’s easy to slap a colourful, fun case onto it. Or, you could buy the Cloud Blush (slightly off-white) or Green colourways instead of the black.

The display and camera capabilities are exceptional for this price range, with it able to capture decent images in all lighting conditions. The software is extremely similar to that on the flagship Xiaomi devices, and although it does not run as smoothly or as fast, it still is a great experience with so many tweaks possible to customise the device to how you want it.

In the end, the Xiaomi REDMI 17 Pro Max is exceptional value for money with so many features and capabilities for such a relatively small price. It is available now at mi.com/au for AU$799 for the 256GB version and AU$999 for the 512GB version.