Xiaomi has been targeting the budget range ever since they entered the business. They have been one of the best in the biz, lately, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer has been trying to enter the flagship range in order to compete against the giants. A couple of months ago, Xiaomi’s sister brand, Redmi started teasing their upcoming phone which was said to be the next ‘Flagship Killer’. They launched a smartphone in China back in the month of May.
And since then, Indian consumers who follow Xiaomi have been waiting eagerly for its arrival. On July 17, the company unveiled the Redmi K20 in India and here are our first impressions and review of the Redmi K20. The Redmi K20 starts at a price tag of Rs. 21,999 in India and at this price it offers quite a lot, let’s take a look.
Redmi K20: Design and Overview
Straight out of the box, the Redmi K20 is arguably the most attractive device out there in the market right now, change my mind. The company has gone for an entirely new look with the flame inspired pattern at the rear. We received the Glacier Blue variant and trust me it’s gorgeous with the blue flames by either side of the device with a black stripe running down the middle which gives it a premium look and feel.
The company calls this Aura Prime design, which reportedly used a 6-layer stack process of glass. Yes, the rear of the device is made up of glass, however, don’t get your hopes up, it does not support wireless charging.
The Redmi K20 feels comfortable to hold in hand, thanks to its curved design which makes it easier for us to hold the phone even while using it single-handedly. Although the glass back does attract a lot of fingerprints smudges and also it’s risky to use the device without the hard case which comes in the box.
Overall, the Redmi K20 is built for solid use with the back glass panel made of curved Gorilla Glass 5. The device comes with a Flame Red and Carbon Black color variant for you to choose from.
The Redmi K20 comes with all the latest tech including the Pop-up selfie camera on the top of the device with an LED ring pulse notification light, however, the notification light cannot be seen since it’s placed on the camera which is kind of a letdown.
To the right of the device are the volume rockers and a power button that comes with a red accent, both the buttons give good tactile feedback and are responsive.
Redmi K20: Display
The Redmi K20 achieves a full-view display with minimal bezels running around the device. The K20 features a 6.39-inch full HD+ HDR AMOLED display with an aspect ratio of 19:5:9, hence eliminating the bezels. It sports an overall screen-to-body ratio of 91.9 percent with a pixel density of 403ppi and up to 600nits of brightness. And yes, just like the back panel, the display is also covered with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection.
The display of the device feels smooth and the color production is on point as well. As for the viewing angles, thanks to the AMOLED display, you can watch videos, play games and surf the web from any angle you want with crispness.
The Redmi K20 does come with in-display fingerprint support which is average, it sometimes does take up to a few minutes to recognize your fingerprint. However, after using it for a week or so it’s kind of getting hold of it and opens up fairly faster than before. The device does warn you that applying any type of adhesive screen protector may mess up the in-display sensor and only use the ones compatible. You get around 4-5 animations for the in-display sensor, all of them consumes power.
The Redmi K20 managed to get the HDR certified, which will attract consumers who enjoy streaming HD content on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and YouTube.
The AMOLED panel can lighten up to 600nits of brightness. Outdoor readability is not an issue for us, it’s pretty good, it should be since it’s termed as the flagship killer. Even after applying the system-wide dark mode, we had no issues reading the content on the display of the Redmi K20, both indoors and outdoors.
Redmi K20: Cameras
The Redmi K20 comes with the same camera hardware as its older brother, the Redmi K20 Pro. The Redmi K20 comes with a triple rear camera setup since the dual camera setup is way too mainstream nowadays. It features a 48MP primary camera with a Sony IMX 582 sensor coupled with an 8-megapixel 2x telephoto lens and a 13-megapixel ultra-wide lens. None of the cameras have OIS and only offer EIS.
The binned results are pretty impressive with the default 12-megapixel shooter. You also get an option to shoot with a 48MP lens. However, we feel that the 12MP lens does justice to the image as compared to the 48MP which is quite disappointing. The 48MP camera sometimes tends to overexpose the image, although it’s not too much and can be worked around it. In broad daylight, the 48MP is a masterpiece as you can see in the images below.
As for the ultra-wide-angle lens offers a 12mm field of view, which is where most a smartphone camera can go. The images are quite stunning with the images not losing its quality and covering up as much of the field as possible.
A dedicated night mode feature is available in the software of the camera which helps in reducing the noise and increasing the brightness of the image and hence clearing out the image. However, it’s not as good as the one on the Gcam because it washes out the details and the colors completely.
Selfie Camera:
As mentioned earlier, the Redmi K20 comes with a 20-megapixel Pop-up selfie camera and it’s pretty good. Xiaomi has done something unique which i pretty much have liked. When you open up your front camera, the pop-up camera slides up and not only that, the sides of the camera lights up in the color of your device’s variant, which is a sight to see.
As for the images, they are decent nothing too fancy to report, and one thing for sure is that they are not ‘garbage’. I sincerely hope you got the reference. For some reason the front camera tries to beautify everything on the screen, yes the beauty mode was off. The images come off a bit exposed probably because of this bug but overall the selfie camera is fine and the Pop-up camera doesn’t eat up a lot of time when you switch to the front cam but yes it does play some kind of song which you have turned off in the settings or your teacher/boss might throw you out.
Redmi K20 Battery and Performance :
Under the hood, the Redmi K20 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 SoC. We ran some tests on the Redmi K20 via the AnTuTu benchmark app and got a score of 215186 and for the single-core, the K20 scored 2543.
We tested some of the heavy games on the market as of now which included PUBG Mobile, Call Of Duty Mobile and PES 2019. Here are some of the performance graphs after an intense game of PUBG mobile. The gaming experience was fairly smooth with constant 30fps on PUBG with HD and high settings.
We tried playing the game for a straight 3 hours on a single charge and we were left with around 15% battery which was pretty good. The phone takes around 2 hours to charge the device from 0 to 100 thanks to the 18W fast charging.
Verdict:
Now for the main part. Should you or should you not buy the Redmi K20?. There have been a lot of controversies aimed at the pricing of the device since the Realme X has been priced fairly lower on this. If you are someone who likes to remain in the loop and follow the latest tech going on right now like the in-display sensor, Pop-up camera and etc, definitely go for it. If not, I’d suggest you go for the Poco F1 which comes with Snapdragon 845 SoC. Not that I’m saying the Snapdragon 730 SoC is bad, it sure is good and with the refined MIUI software with much lesser bugs and of course, less to no ads, you can surely go for the Redmi K20 for its looks, it’s cameras and definitely for the full view display.
If you are someone who wants the latest tech and does not want to cross the 20k mark, well then, the Realme X is an excellent choice right now. Check out our review of the Realme X. Also, don’t forget to watch our first Impressions of the Redmi K20 Pro here.