Photoluminescence, photoconductivity, and Hall measurements were performed over a large range of temperature (13–300 K) for various crystals of the electro‐optical semiconductor CdIn2Te4. Crystals are compensated semiconductors with a high donor–acceptor pair concentration assigned to the disorder in the cation sublattice. The inhomogeneities in the distribution of the donor–acceptor pairs and point defects, due to the lack of stoichiometry, result in band fluctuations, and thus in carrier localization effects, at low temperature. This is suggested by the photocurrent transient responses and the dependence of the luminescence intensity versus the excitation level. The nonhomogeneous distribution of point defects in off‐stoichiometry crystals is observed by the deep level transient spectroscopy technique. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.