diff --git a/py/obj.h b/py/obj.h
index d62bc7b34..1f5a83f91 100644
--- a/py/obj.h
+++ b/py/obj.h
@@ -469,7 +469,7 @@ qstr mp_obj_str_get_qstr(mp_obj_t self_in); // use this if you will anyway conve
 const char *mp_obj_str_get_str(mp_obj_t self_in); // use this only if you need the string to be null terminated
 const char *mp_obj_str_get_data(mp_obj_t self_in, uint *len);
 mp_obj_t mp_obj_str_intern(mp_obj_t str);
-void mp_str_print_quoted(void (*print)(void *env, const char *fmt, ...), void *env, const byte *str_data, uint str_len);
+void mp_str_print_quoted(void (*print)(void *env, const char *fmt, ...), void *env, const byte *str_data, uint str_len, bool is_bytes);
 
 #if MICROPY_PY_BUILTINS_FLOAT
 // float
diff --git a/py/objarray.c b/py/objarray.c
index edf3ee812..05821e8de 100644
--- a/py/objarray.c
+++ b/py/objarray.c
@@ -58,7 +58,7 @@ STATIC void array_print(void (*print)(void *env, const char *fmt, ...), void *en
     mp_obj_array_t *o = o_in;
     if (o->typecode == BYTEARRAY_TYPECODE) {
         print(env, "bytearray(b", o->typecode);
-        mp_str_print_quoted(print, env, o->items, o->len);
+        mp_str_print_quoted(print, env, o->items, o->len, true);
     } else {
         print(env, "array('%c'", o->typecode);
         if (o->len > 0) {
diff --git a/py/objstr.c b/py/objstr.c
index 6656090c8..f9cc27344 100644
--- a/py/objstr.c
+++ b/py/objstr.c
@@ -64,7 +64,8 @@ STATIC bool is_str_or_bytes(mp_obj_t o) {
 /******************************************************************************/
 /* str                                                                        */
 
-void mp_str_print_quoted(void (*print)(void *env, const char *fmt, ...), void *env, const byte *str_data, uint str_len) {
+void mp_str_print_quoted(void (*print)(void *env, const char *fmt, ...), void *env,
+                         const byte *str_data, uint str_len, bool is_bytes) {
     // this escapes characters, but it will be very slow to print (calling print many times)
     bool has_single_quote = false;
     bool has_double_quote = false;
@@ -85,7 +86,10 @@ void mp_str_print_quoted(void (*print)(void *env, const char *fmt, ...), void *e
             print(env, "\\%c", quote_char);
         } else if (*s == '\\') {
             print(env, "\\\\");
-        } else if (32 <= *s && *s <= 126) {
+        } else if (*s >= 0x20 && *s != 0x7f && (!is_bytes || *s < 0x80)) {
+            // In strings, anything which is not ascii control character
+            // is printed as is, this includes characters in range 0x80-0xff
+            // (which can be non-Latin letters, etc.)
             print(env, "%c", *s);
         } else if (*s == '\n') {
             print(env, "\\n");
@@ -109,7 +113,7 @@ STATIC void str_print(void (*print)(void *env, const char *fmt, ...), void *env,
         if (is_bytes) {
             print(env, "b");
         }
-        mp_str_print_quoted(print, env, str_data, str_len);
+        mp_str_print_quoted(print, env, str_data, str_len, is_bytes);
     }
 }
 
diff --git a/tests/basics/string-repr.py b/tests/basics/string-repr.py
index 34da483a5..2a3ef2527 100644
--- a/tests/basics/string-repr.py
+++ b/tests/basics/string-repr.py
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
 # anything above 0xa0 is printed as Unicode by CPython
-for c in range(0xa1):
+# the abobe is CPython implementation detail, stick to ASCII
+for c in range(0x80):
     print("0x%02x: %s" % (c, repr(chr(c))))