At a glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Frankly ridiculous battery life
- Tough build quality
- Speedy 100W charging
- Good value for high storage
Cons
- Annoyingly busy software
- Middling performance
- Poorly calibrated display
Our Verdict
The Redmi Note 17 Pro Max might not look like anything special, and it falls short of the competition in some fundamental ways such as performance and software. But if durability is what you’re looking for, then it has class-leading battery life along with tough construction.
Price When Reviewed
This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined
Best Pricing Today
Best Prices Today: Xiaomi Redmi Note 17 Pro Max
Xiaomi’s restless approach to naming conventions continues with the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max (note: not the Plus) – a mid-range phone with one heck of a party trick.
Turning up to any party and boasting about your stamina is likely to get you either ejected or ignored, of course, but the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max’s abnormally large almost 10,000mAh battery is undoubtedly a talking point within the world of smartphone tech.
This is a long-lasting phone in other ways too, with a level of toughness that puts a number of big-name flagship phones to shame.
Besides that, you’re getting the usual Redmi combination of a large, vibrant screen, middling performance, and a just about adequate camera, all somewhat tainted by Xiaomi’s unlovely UI.
We’ve been doling out qualified praise for this Redmi formula for years now. Is Xiaomi’s Maxed out approach enough to push the Redmi brand into the realms of a flat-out recommendation? I’ve been testing the monster Note 17 Pro Max for the last week to find out.
Design & Build
- Big and heavy
- Eye-catching Cloud Blush option, but fingerprinty Black tested
- Unusually high-end Gorilla Glass Victus 2
- Above and beyond durability ratings
The Redmi look, if there even is such a thing, has never been one to set the pulse racing. That’s not the point here.
With the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max you’re getting a phone that almost seems like an initial dummy model for many of today’s flagship phones. It’s got the basic outline of a Xiaomi 17 or an Oppo Find X9 Pro, but without the little details that earn that ‘flagship’ designation.
It is a big phone. At 163.44 x 78.27 x 8.65mm and 225.1g, it’s larger even than the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra – the archetypal ‘big phone’ of 2026 – in most respects.
One thing I can’t complain about is how well built this phone is
Jon Mundy / Foundry
I don’t expect aesthetic extravagance from my Redmi phones, but I still found myself wanting a little more here. For whatever reason, I wasn’t sent the eye-catching Cloud Blush colour (there’s also Green), with its fancy photochromic technology that turns the back of the phone into a sun-dappled sky-scape. I got the boring old black model instead.
For the record, it’s that kind of black where the bit that stands out the most is your greasy paw prints whenever you view the phone from an angle. Bring a cloth.
One thing I can’t complain about is how well built this phone is. The back and frame might be plastic, but the front is coated in Gorilla Glass Victus 2 – not the newest cover material, but still resolutely high-grade. This phone is better equipped to withstand the nicks and scrapes of everyday life than most mid-rangers, Xiaomi says it has a certified 3m drop resistance.
And water, too. With extensive IP66/IP68/IP69/IP69K certification, the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max should stand up to the wet stuff (and of course dust) no matter how it’s propelled at it.
Jon Mundy / Foundry
Screen & Speakers
- Familiar 6.83in 1.5K OLED display
- Colours almost too vibrant
- 120Hz refresh rate
- Stereo speakers
Xiaomi can always be trusted to supply a high baseline of display quality, even in its cheaper sub-brands. The Redmi Note 17 Pro Max certainly puts its best foot forward, with a large 6.83-inch panel size and plenty of pixels (1280 x 2772, or 1.5K).
You get the 120Hz maximum refresh rate that’s become the standard at this point, while it can also hit a peak brightness of 3500 nits. I recorded it getting to around 800 nits with auto brightness turned off, which is a good result for a cheaper phone, though it doesn’t get meaningfully bright until you get quite near the top of the brightness slider.
Despite all this positivity, I have a bit of an issue with the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max display’s colour calibration. I found it to be overly vibrant, even when switching away from the default Vivid mode to Standard.
sure enough, my colorimeter showed that it was a little out of whack
Jon Mundy / Foundry
This prompted a spot of investigation, and sure enough, my pressional grade colorimeter showed that it was a little out of whack, at least for those who still adhere to the widely adopted sRGB colour space (it reported 144% sRGB volume). Of course, Xiaomi offers you the ability to fine-tune this output in the settings menu, but it’s quite normal for one of the main presets to offer a more natural look.
Xiaomi has laid on a solid set of stereo speakers, which retain clarity and separation at frankly antisocial volumes. It almost justifies the Spinal Tap-like ability to crank things up to 400%. Almost.
You don’t get the meaty bass thwomp of the better phones from sister brand Poco, but the quality of audio output is good on the whole, and there’s support for Dolby Atmos.
Specs & Performance
- Modern Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 chip
- Deeply unspectacular performance
- 128, 256, 512GB of storage
The Redmi Note 17 Pro Max is big in a number of ways, but that doesn’t extend to its level of performance. It’s a competent runner, but nothing more.
On the positive side, it runs on a modern 4nm mid-range chip in the Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 with 8GB of RAM. However, this yields fairly uninspiring results if that bothers you.
Day-to-day performance is ok, though I was never in any doubt that I was using a mid-range phone. It’s not that it’s a halting experience, exactly, but the next micro-pause is never far away while flicking between apps and through menus.
This isn’t one of those mid-range phones that gives off flagship vibes in the hand. Look to Xiaomi’s Poco brand for that, instead.
I do appreciate the provision of three storage options
Jon Mundy / Foundry
This is confirmed by the usual benchmark tests, where the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max scores well short of the Google Pixel 10a, as well as the Samsung Galaxy A57 – three of the most popular mid-range phones of the past year or so.
Wuthering Waves is playable on Balanced/Medium graphical settings, though it’s far from silky smooth.
I do appreciate the provision of three storage options – 128-, 256-, and 512GB – though you can’t expand that through inserting a microSD card which is a missed opportunity to offer something different to Google and Samsung.
Redmi Note 17 Pro Max benchmarks
- Geekbench 6 single core: 1034
- Geekbench 6 multicore: 3218
- Wild Life Extreme Score: 1171
- Wild Life Extreme Frame Rate: 7.02fps
- Wild Life Extreme Stress Test: 99.3% stability
- PCMark 3.1 for Android battery test: 23 h 27 min
- Charging with the supplied charger in 15 minutes: 24%
- Charging with the supplied charger in 30 minutes: 46%
Cameras
- 50Mp main sensor
- 8Mp ultra-wide
- 32Mp selfie camera
Xiaomi certainly hasn’t pushed the boat out with the camera on its new phone. There are just the two sensors on the back of the phone, and only one really earns its place.
That would be the 50Mp main sensor, with its wide f/1.5 aperture and OIS. It can take some pretty decent photos, given sufficient lighting, with vivid (but reasonably natural) colours, sharp details, and solid contrast.
When capturing human subjects, skin tones look nice and natural, as does the bokeh
Jon Mundy / Foundry
I didn’t notice much in the way of overexposure, either, though it did struggle to balance things out a little on a couple of shots taken on very bright days.
When capturing human subjects, skin tones look nice and natural, as does the bokeh. The 32Mp front camera does a decent job in this respect too.
Night shots are less of a resounding success, with the relatively small sensor failing to produce the startling clarity in low light conditions that you expect from a pricier phone. They’re not terrible, though.
The lack of a dedicated telephoto is a bit of a bind, especially given that the cropped results aren’t very good beyond 2x. The 8Mp ultra-wide, meanwhile, represents a steep drop off in quality from the main sensor, with a certain edge fuzziness and a lack of dynamic range.
Video capture extends to 4K at 30fps, but you’ll be better serves with 1080p at 60fps. This proved smooth enough, but I did pick up on a lot of wind noise even on a fairly sedate day.
Battery Life & Charging
- Huge 9210mAh battery
- Epic multi-day stamina
- Strong 100W wired charging
The Redmi Note 17 Pro Max justifies its Max moniker with the sheer size of its 9210mAh silicon-carbon battery. It’s the biggest battery I’ve ever seen in a phone, dwarfing even the OnePlus 15’s 7300mAh cell.
That’s just the so-called global model, too, which covers Europe and the UK among other territories. The rest of the world gets a whopping 10,000mAh battery – literally double the capacity of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. Mad.
It’s a brute force approach to improving stamina alright, but it’s also brutally effective. In general use, this makes the concept of an ‘all day phone’ feel somewhat quaint, blowing straight through a second day with consummate ease.
the Note 17 Pro Max leaves the Samsung Galaxy A57 and the Google Pixel 10a very much eating its dust
Jon Mundy / Foundry
With a PCMark result of 23 hours and 27 minutes, the Note 17 Pro Max leaves the Samsung Galaxy A57 and the Google Pixel 10a very much eating its dust. That still falls several hours short of the OnePlus 15 and the Oppo Find X9 Pro, but those are flagship phones with far more sophisticated processors and displays.
A close competitor in the mid-range with its still large 7000mAh battery and comfortable two-day battery life (though the PCMark test failed for a benchmark comparison) is the Motorola Edge 70 Fusion, if you want something with a bit more style and bettery software.
It’s also worth noting that the rest of the Redmi Note 17 range also has large batteries – including 7700mAh for the budget-priced regular model and 8340mAh for the 17 Pro – so you don’t have to get the Pro Max for solid battery life.
See our list of the best battery life phones
Thankfully, you get a healthy 100W wired charging support. My test model came with a suitable European plug, though UK variants rarely do. Your best bet is to buy from the official store and hope for a gift or deal at the checkout.
In my experience, a 15-minute charge from empty will get the phone to 24%, while 30 minutes will get you to 46%. A full charge will take you a little over an hour and 15 minutes.
It doesn’t sound that impressive compared to many rivals but remember the battery is around twice the size.
Software & Apps
- HyperOS 3 over Android 16
- Messy, bloated software with annoying UI elements
Xiaomi releases so many phones under its various labels, and I have the same overriding issue with every single one of them. The company’s HyperOS is very functional, but rather unlovable.
Even more so here on one of its cheaper phones, where I seemed to be perpetually bombarded with notifications from the company’s many home-brewed apps.
That included the pointless Mi Browser (no I do not want to take part in a “Puzzle Challenge”) and Game Centre (hawking sponsored slop games). And no, I don’t particular want to “see what’s topping the charts” in Xiaomi’s Themes app, either.
I just wish it would calm down a little, and realise that Android can be a beautiful thing when you let it breathe
Jon Mundy / Foundry
The sheer level of bloat at setup is exhausting, too. Two messaging apps? Why? Then there’s the string of third-party preinstalls, including Temu, Booking.com, Amazon Music, and a whole folder filled with those aforementioned slop games.
Xiaomi’s UI is perfectly usable, in its iOS-influenced way. But I just wish it would calm down a little, and realise that Android can be a beautiful thing when you let it breathe.
This being one of Xiaomi’s cheaper phones, there aren’t any AI surprises here. The company is fond of bandying the AI term around, but it basically amounts to the usual photo edits, smart transcriptions, and writing assistance options that are available elsewhere.
Google Gemini is present and accounted for, as you’d expect.
It’s unclear what the software support promise is for the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max, but it’s likely to match the previous generation at four major OS updates and six years of security patches. We’re checking with Xiaomi and will update.
Price & Availability
The Redmi Note 17 Pro Max will be available to buy from 17 September from the Xiaomi store, Amazon (already on sale for some reason), Shien and TikTok Shop.
Pricing starts from £499 for the model with 256GB of internal storage and, as usual, it’s not officially available in the USA.
This positions the phone directly up against some pretty big hitters, including the Google Pixel 10a and the Samsung Galaxy A57. It also finds direct competition in its powerful cousin, the Poco X8 Pro Max, as well as the stylish Nothing Phone (4a) Pro.
In truth, I’d probably recommend each of those alternatives over the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max – unless battery life is absolutely of paramount importance to you, in which case it’s the clear winner.
Check out our ranking for the best mid-range phones for more options.
Should you buy the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max?
The Redmi Note 17 Pro Max is a generally by-the-book mid-range phone that absolutely excels in two main departments.
Its battery life is quite simply incredible, with a ludicrously proportioned 9210mAh (at least) battery supplying multi-day running on a single charge. 100W wired charging isn’t too shabby, either.
This is also an unusually tough cookie, with a level of scratch, drop and water resistance we don’t often see for such money.
Elsewhere, the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max is pretty uneventful, and arguably even a little underwhelming. Its performance is mediocre, while its camera provision is a little meagre. Xiaomi’s approach to software, meanwhile, continues to frustrate me.
But if your main priority is to secure a phone that will stand up to a long and active weekend away for around £500 – with good strorage to boot – it’s the stand-out choice on the market.
Specs
- Android 16 with HyperOS 3
- 6.83in, 1.5K, OLED, 120Hz, flat display
- Optical fingerprint sensor
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 5
- 8GB LPDDR5X RAM
- 128GB/256GB/512GB storage
- 50Mp, f/1.5 main camera
- 8Mp ultra-wide camera
- Up to 4K @ 30fps rear video
- 32Mp front-facing camera
- Stereo speakers
- Dual-SIM
- Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6
- Bluetooth 6.0
- 9210mAh battery
- 100W charging
- 163.44 x 78.27 x 8.65mm
- 225.1g
- Launch colours: Cloud Blush, Green, Purple, Black
