Xiaomi Redmi 5A vs Redmi 5: Spec Comparison

Unarguably, low-cost or budget smartphones have been trending in India this year. They offer great value to its users both in terms of hardware and software. Chinese-smartphone developer, Xiaomi, has been at the forefront in this category with a number of successful devices.

Joining this lineup is the Xiaomi Redmi 5A and the Redmi 5. The Redmi 5A retails for Rs 4,999 while the Redmi 5 is expected to be priced at around Rs 7,000-8,000.

Both the phones are powered by chipsets from Qualcomm’s 400-series and also sport similar battery specs. Needless to say, there is more to a phone other than the hardware specs.

Hence, we felt the need to compare the specs of both the Redmi 5A and Redmi to get a clearer picture for you.

Spec Sheet

Before we delve further, let’s go over the spec sheet of these two phones.

Snapdragon 450 vs Snapdragon 425

The Xiaomi Redmi 5A is powered by the 1.4GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 chipset with 4 Cortex A53. When it comes to the Redmi 5, it features the Snapdragon 450 chipset, which carries the same specification, but has 8 ARM Cortex A53 cores instead.

However, the difference lies in the fabrication technology. The Snapdragon 450 is the first chipset in Qualcomm’s 400-tier to come with the 14-nm process technology, which makes it a highly efficient and balanced as a processor.

Features: What’s Missing & What’s Not

As mentioned above, the Redmi 5A has scaled-down features when you compare it to the Redmi 5, owing to its budget tagline. A clear-cut missing feature is the fingerprint sensor. On the brighter side, you get a dedicated secondary SIM card slot so that you can use both your SIM cards and the memory card parallely.

A clear-cut missing feature is the fingerprint sensor.

Software-wise, both the Redmi 5 and Redmi 5A feature MIUI 9, layered on Android 7.1.2 Nougat.

The presence of MIUI 9 means that many of the key Android Nougat features make their way to these phones such as Spilt-Screen, Notification Control or Google Assistant.

Battery Specs

It goes beyond saying that battery life is one of the major features of any smartphone. It can make or break a smartphone. Thankfully, both the Redmi 5 and 5A offer decent battery specs.

The Redmi 5 is powered by a 3,300-mAh battery. Though a bigger display generally means that the battery will drain faster, however, it’s compensated by the power-efficient 14-nm design of the Snapdragon 450 chipset.

On the other hand, the Redmi 5A is powered by a 3,000-mah battery. Xiaomi claims that the Redmi 5A can give up to 7 hours of video playback and 6 hours of gaming. However, when it comes to regular usage, it can easily last a day.

Storage and Pricing

Both the Xiaomi phones sport the same storage specs. While the base variant offers 2GB RAM and 16GB storage, the higher variant comes with a more meaty 3GB RAM and 32GB internal memory.

However, it’s the pricing scenario that is a tad different. As mentioned earlier, the Xiaomi Redmi 5A retails at Rs 4,999 (introductory price) and the Redmi 5 is expected to be priced around Rs 7,000-8,000.

Which One to Buy?

With the feature-rich MIUI 9 and a dedicated slot for the memory card, the Xiaomi Redmi 5A is a good choice if you’re pressed for money. However, the lack of a fingerprint sensor, especially for the 3GB/32GB variant, makes one look at other options.

The Redmi 5 is certainly a bigger and better cousin of the Redmi 5A and, of course, it comes at a higher price. So, the choice is ultimately yours — whether you want a truly low-cost Android device or something a bit better than that but within Rs 10,000.