Got the chance today to compare my Redmi note 4 with Redmi Pro, the Redmi Pro was the top of the line 128/4gb/Helio x25 variant. The results were quite interesting, on paper, the redmi pro seems the clear winner in terms of performance with 2 ARM-A72 @ 2.5GHz cores, 4 ARM-A53 @ 2.0GHz cores and 4 ARM-A53 @ 1.55GHz cores. But my real life tests pointed towards the opposite, both were running the same software, not sure if it is the issue with the software or the mtk x25, the Redmi pro kept reloading apps from the background when opened again, multitasking was a bit shaky as well. The sd625 note 4 also had better thermals after 20-30 mins of heavy testing, another thing that I noticed was the battery life difference, both come with about 4100mAh battery but the redmi note 4 is powered by an octa-core 14nm SD625 and the Redmi pro is powered by a 20nm Deca Core Helio X25, the normal SOT that I am getting on the Redmi note 4 SD625 is 9-10 hours whereas my friend is getting about 5-5.5 hours SOT on the Redmi Pro. Another issue that he was facing was the lack of dev support over at XDA, close to no custom ROMs available for the device, the Redmi note 4, on the other hand, has excellent dev support with a plethora of custom ROMs available for the Snapdragon Note 4. The camera performance was slightly better on the Redmi pro, the device looked a bit more premium as well.
The mediatek processors have come a long way, but they are still lacking in terms of efficiency and thermal control, in the 10-17k they are acceptable, but above that one should opt for something with an SD625.