Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro Review

It’s not a surprise that Xiaomi has been dominating the budget segment for a good amount of time now. The Chinese smartphone maker’s entire philosophy lies in making great budget phones at cheaper price tags. Even though Xiaomi has Mi series and Mi Mix lineup which targets premium space, the Redmi lineup is the company’s bread and butter. With Poco F1, Xiaomi managed to shake the flagship space by offering immense value to performance ratio.

Xiaomi has now launched a new lineup of the flagship smartphone in the country dubbed Redmi K20 and Redmi K20 Pro. Although everyone was expecting Poco F2, Xiaomi decided to stick with the Redmi branding for some reasons. The Redmi K20 Pro tires to achieve the very same thing which Poco lineup managed to do earlier. It seems like the company is desperate to capture value flagship space more now than ever.

The Redmi K20 is the cheapest smartphone to feature the latest Snapdragon 855 chipset. Some key specifications include Super AMOLED display, up to 8GB of RAM, triple rear camera module, motorized pop-up selfie camera, and a 27W fast charging support. In fact, the device even runs on the Poco launcher out-of-the-box.

We finally get the chance to play around with this new device for a couple of days and here is what we think of it so far. Read on to find more about the Redmi K20 Pro in our comprehensive review.

Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro comes in two different storage variants – 6GB+128GB and 8GB+256GB options. The device is available in three different color options namely Carbon Black, Glacier Blue, and Flame Red. The base variant is priced at INR 27,999 while the top-end variant is going to set you back INR 30,999. You can buy the smartphone exclusively via Flipkart and Mi official website.

Coming to the launch offers, Xiaomi has partnered with ICICI bank to give flat INR 1,000 off on payments made using ICICI credit card and EMI transactions. Airtel is also offering double data benefits with unlimited callings and exclusive thank you benefit with the device.

Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro comes packed in a white-colored minimal and premium box which has a device’s image on top with the name written in relatively large font. Opening the lid, the first thing you’ll come across with is the rectangular section which consists of a soft rubberish plastic case and some documentation. 

Underneath the section, you’ll be greeted with the device itself which is laying there nicely covered in a protective film. By the way, the device looks breathtaking especially with that unique patterns on the back. Apart from all these, you get an 18W fast charger even though the device supports 27W fast charging (classic, Xiaomi), a Type-C cable and a SIM ejector tool. 

Here is a quick overview of what you’ll be getting inside the box: 

– Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro 

– 18W fas charger adaptor 

– USB Type-C cable 

– SIM ejector tool 

– A plastic back case 

– Manuals and documentation

Before we jump right into the review, let’s have a quick glance at the specifications which this device brings to the table. 

– Display: 6.39-inch Super AMOLED display, 2340×1080 pixels, 403ppi 

– Processor: Snapdragon 855 chipset, 7nm

– RAM & ROM: up to 8GB and up to 256GB

– Rear Cameras: 48MP+13MP+8MP 

– Selfie Camera: 20MP pop-up mechanism, f/2.2

– Battery: 4000mAh capacity, supports 27W fast charging, 18W bundled charger

– Software: Android 9.0 Pie, MIUI 10

– Weight: 191g 

– Dimensions: 156.7×74.3×8.8mm 

With specifications cleared out of the way, let’s talk about the very first aspect of the Redmi K20 Pro.

Last year, Poco F1 was the unbeatable smartphone at its price range thanks to the powerful hardware it was packing in. One thing in which the device receives a lot of criticism was the design and build quality which was not that eye-catching. With Redmi K20 Pro, Xiaomi decided to turn the table around by offering the breathtaking gradient design at the back.

Like most premium phones out there, this one too comes with a glass and aluminum sandwich which delivers that premiumness we’ve been expecting.

Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro has a gradient design at the back which is different from most phones out there. It has bold aggressive colors on the sides and edges with the darker shade in the middle containing just the company’s branding. The patterns which produce on the sides and edges when in contact with ambient light looks mesmerizing and breathtaking.

Even the carbon black color which is not that flashy manages to look and feel much different from the previous Poco F1. At the back, there is a triple camera module accompanied by an LED flash and that’s it. I do like the addition of circular accent around the primary camera which is something lots of brands are now adopting. 

The front is dominated by a large 6.39-inch Super AMOLED display with no selfie camera cutout. The Redmi K20 make use of a motorized pop-up mechanism to house the selfie camera leaving us with an all-screen display. The ultra-thin bezels and the thin chin at the bottom delivers immersive viewing experience.

For some reasons, the notification led light has been shifted to the pop-up camera mechanism making it the useless feature of this device. Important notifications come to you via a red notification light located on top of the smartphone.

The power button and volume rockers are located on the right side with nothing much going on the left. At the bottom, there is a SIM card tray, Type-C port for charging and a speaker grille. Fortunately, Redmi K20 has our beloved 3.5-mm headphone jack located on the top along with the pop-up camera mechanism. There is a minor rear camera bump but the device doesn’t wobble at all. 

Thanks to the curved edges and proper weight distribution, the device feels comfortable and premium in the hand. Since the device has a glass back, it is a tad bit slippery so you might want to use the bundled case just in case. Overall, Xiaomi has taken things up a notch in design with its Redmi K20 Pro. We can say that it is one of the good and unique looking smartphones of 2019 as of now.

Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro is equipped by a 6.49-inch Super AMOLED display panel making it the first Redmi smartphone to come with an OLED panel. After using a device for a couple of days, I can say that this device has got the best display panels at this price tag. Having a resolution of 2340×1080 pixels, the display has vibrant colors and excellent contrast level. As expected from a Super AMOLED panel, the blacks are deeper and the sunlight readability is on point.

Coming to the brightness, I’ve seen excellent brightness level for the first time in a Redmi smartphone. There is a minor glitch with the UI in which you’ll have to sometime manually tweak the brightness. Xiaomi might fix the adaptive brightness bug in the upcoming software updates. For an added protection, the display has a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 5, therefore, ensuring durability. 

With an all-screen display and thin bezels, watching movies or playing games is a joyful experience on this device and the HDR10 support is like the icing on the cake. The device also supports Always-On display with 16 digital stickers to choose from. The dark mode looks beautiful on this device with excellent color accuracy.

You can manipulate some display settings such as color tone from the settings app. You can also enable the gesture navigation if you’re looking for some extra real estate.

Overall, Redmi K20 managed to live up to our expectation and checks off all the display features which flagship devices come packed with.

We’ve already mentioned that the Redmi K20 Pro is the cheapest phone to come with Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset coupled with up to 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of onboard memory. For graphics, the device makes use of Adreno 640 GPU. The Snapdragon 855 chipset is manufactured using the 7nm fabrication process consisting of eight Kryo 485 cored clocked at 2.84GHz. 

There’s no surprise that Snapdragon 855 chipset is capable of handling every single task with ease. Heck, it’s the powerful Android chipset and is going to stay at the top for a good amount of time. In terms of performance, Redmi K20 Pro is just as fast as OnePlus 7 Pro, Galaxy S10 and Pixel 3. Redmi K20 Pro handles every task thrown at it like a boss and we faced no issue with it whatsoever. The apps open up quickly, switching between apps is smooth and multitasking is quite snappy. 

Above all, Redmi K20 Pro can effectively handle all the popular graphics-intensive title such as Pubg Mobile and Fortnite. As usual, we tried playing Pubg Mobile at the highest settings possible on this device and the experience was impressive. There were no frame drops or rendering problem during our gaming sessions. Xiaomi has also added a Game Turbo mode which blocks notifications and prioritizes bandwidth. 

The top-end variant of the device is enough to deliver a smooth and snappy experience without any possible shortage of onboard memory. If you’re looking to save some cash, you can opt for the 6GB/128GB variant which will also deliver similar performance with a minor difference.

Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro runs on the latest version of Android operating system i.e. Android Pie out-of-the-box based on the MIUI 10. The smartphone makes use of Poco Launcher to offer a cohesive experience. Like any other MIUI enabled device, this one too comes with plenty of pre-loaded apps. Fortunately, you can uninstall most of them to free up some space. 

Xiaomi has recently received a lot of backlash because of the increased amount of ads in the UI. You can find the ads in almost every other system app with some of them delivering annoying notification pop-ups. Although there is an option to disable a few of them while setting up the phone, it is still not a once for all solution. You can set the US region while setting up the phone in order to minimize the ads. 

One of the annoying things about the MIUI is the addition of Mi Video which sends a lot of annoying and useless notifications to the users. With Redmi K20 Pro, Xiaomi is targetting flagship space competing with the likes of OnePlus. On the other side, the brand is still using cheap tactics by displaying ads.

MIUI is one of the feature-rich custom UI which is capable of much more but the ads downgrade the entire user experience. If not for ads, Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro would have been able to deliver a pretty decent interface. 

In terms of imaging, the Redmi K20 Pro is equipped with triple camera module at the back having a primary 48MP sensor, an 8MP telephoto lens, and a 13MP wide-angle shooter. Like any other popular device, the device makes use of pixel binning to deliver 12MP shots from the primary Sony IMX 586 48MP sensor. The Redmi K20 Pro is the series first smartphone to come with a triple camera module.

If you have been using Redmi smartphones in the past, you’ll find the camera app quite familiar since nothing is changed. You can easily find various modes such as Night Mode, AI camera, HDR, beauty effects and a toggle to switch between the three camera lenses. 

In daylight conditions, Redmi K20 pro manages to churn out photos with full of details, plenty of dynamic range and a little bit of over-saturation. In short, the clicked pictures are social media-ready. If you’re looking for much more detail, you can enable HDR which seems to work exceptionally well. Thankfully, the HDR mode doesn’t alter the color balance and the images turned out to be impressively good.

Switching to the wide-angle lens, there is a loss of a few details but the overall image quality is still pretty well. Things took a little hit when I switched to the 8MP sensor. The photos turned out to be muddy and full of noises. With that said, the overall camera performance in daylight condition is astonishingly good and there is little to complain about. 

Even in lowlight conditions, Redmi K20 Pro manages to deliver well-detailed photos considering the price range. The low-light images turned out to be decent with a good level of details and a decent dynamic range. Of course, the noise starts to creep in every now and then. Xiaomi has added a night mode which seems to work pretty well too.

Comparatively, the shots taken from the Night mode is a little better than the regular ones. With that said, Redmi K20 Pro isn’t going to deliver Pixel 3 or P30 Pro like performance in low-light. At this price range, the performance is reasonably better than most of the phones out there. In fact, Redmi K20 Pro manages to outrun OnePlus 7 in low-light photography. 

Coming to the selfies, the smartphone has a 20MP front snapper having an aperture of f/2.2. The pop-up selfie camera mechanism automatically traces back if you accidentally drop the phone.  Redmi K20 Pro comes with a portrait mode which has up to the mark edge-to-edge detection. We clicked plenty of selfies from the device and the result was overall impressive. The level of detail was exceptionally well with a little bit of over-saturation but not in a bad way.

Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro is backed by a massive 4,000mAh battery with the support of 27W fast charging. As expected, Xiaomi bundled just 18W fast charger with the device. The smartphone can easily last for an entire day on a single charge if the adaptive battery is turned off. Switching it on, you can get a day and a half easily which is quite impressive. 

Our daily usage while testing the device looks something like this – WiFi and Bluetooth always-on, constant text messaging, plenty of music playbacks, few hours of YouTube videos and two or three gaming sessions of Pubg Mobile. With all that, the device was able to last throughout the day. For the one who games a lot, the battery might take a hit since the power consumption increases by fold.

As mentioned earlier, Redmi K20 Pro supports 27W fast charging feature and to fully utilize it, you will have to shell extra cash to buy a compatible charger. Although you can still use 18W bundled charger, having a 27W fast charging at your hand might come in very handy.

For audio, Redmi K20 Pro has a bottom-mounted single loudspeaker which delivers loud output without any sign of distortion. Sadly, there are no stereo speakers which might be a deal-breaker for many. The best part is the fact that Redmi K20 Pro has our beloved 3.5-mm headphone jack and output from which is quite excellent. So far, we haven’t faced any issue with the earpiece or microphone and the call connectivity is also up to the point. 

Coming to the biometrics, Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro has an in-display fingerprint sensor which is quite reliable and accurate. The fingerprint sensor is quite fast with the device unlocking in less than a second. To be honest, I didn’t face any major issue between the Redmi K20 Pro and OnePlus 7 in terms of the in-display fingerprint sensor. You can also use Face Unlock but it is painfully slow since the pop-up camera takes a little time to open up.

When it comes to connectivity, Redmi K20 Pro has all the bells and whistles packed inside. The device comes with features such as dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0 with aptXHD, dual-band GPS, FM Radio and NFC for mobile payments and one-tap pairing.

Pros

– Attractive design and premium build 

– Super AMOLED display panel 

– Two-day battery life 

– Top-notch performance 

– Exceptional camera performance 

– Insane value for money 

Cons

– No OIS 

– Low-light photography takes a little hit 

– No stereo speaker 

– Annoying ads in the UI