Redmi K20 Pro Review

• Redmi K20 Pro
• 18W charger
• USB-C cable
• SIM ejector tool
• User guide
• Hard case

The content of the Redmi K20 Pro is quite advanced. The phone comes with a SIM eject tool and manuals. Despite support for 27 W charging, the phone comes with an 18 W charger with the faster charger available as an aftermarket accessory. There are also no headphones included, but you will get a standard hardcover in the package. It would have been nice to see a pre-installed screen protector, such as on OnePlus devices.

Redmi K20 Pro Review – Design

• 156.7 x 74.3 x 8.8mm
• 191g
• Gorilla Glass 5
• P2i Coating

With a switch to the design language aura-prism, the latest Redmi telephones were all about gradients. However, the Redmi K20 Pro goes one step further with a flamboyant design that shouts “look at me!” There are three different variations available. Black is the most modest. We had the Flame Red version of the phone at hand and it is quite the looker. A nice gradient blue version is also available.

Gradients come in all colors of the rainbow, but the take of the K20 Pro is the fieriest to date. The central black belt merges into the red side panels with shape-shifting licks of flame between them. These fiery gradient patterns are barely visible in the open air but burst into the screen as they change shape and color based on how the light falls on them. The end result is an aggressive design that perhaps fits well with the young, performance-oriented audience that is the main demographic group of the Redmi K20 Pro. More conservative types may prefer the Carbon Fiber black variant.

Earlier this month, Xiaomi confirmed to the Android Authority that the Redmi K20 Pro is not a successor to the Pocophone. Operating separately, the two sub-brands strive for completely different approaches to smartphone design. Nowhere is it clearer than in the build quality. The glass and metal sandwich of the Redmi K20 Pro feels luxurious in the hand. The hardware has nothing cheap and is 191 g heavy enough to transmit power, but not heavy to load your wrist

That sense of quality applies to the buttons, which are perfectly edited for the hardware. Located on the right side, the on / off button and the volume button is perfectly clickable and easy to reach. As a design flourish, the blue and black variants of the phone have a red on/off button. The phone is packed in Gorilla Glass 5, both on the front and back, so there is sufficient protection for your screen. In addition, a P2i coating promises a small degree of resistance to water splashing. No, you cannot let your Redmi swim along.

With the recent trend in pop-up selfie cameras, smartphone designs become quite generic when viewed from the front. The face of the Redmi K20 Pro is minimalist. The large screen is flanked by slender side edges and a slightly larger chin. It looks great. Meanwhile, the USB-C port, the speaker grille, and the dual SIM card slot are located on the bottom. The top edge has the headphone jack and pop-up selfie camera.

The Redmi K20 Pro is the first Redmi device with a pop-up selfie camera. The implementation has a playful approach with a little usefulness thrown in for a good measure. The pop-up camera module has an LED around the frame that lights up whenever the height is activated. This same LED also serves as a notification light.

Unfortunately, the location of the notification light makes little sense. While lying on a table, it is impossible to view the notification LED. Fortunately, the K20 Pro has an always-on screen that makes it easy to recognize notifications. Moreover, I found the in-display fingerprint sensor remarkably fast and reliable.

Redmi K20 Pro Review – Display

• 6.39-in AMOLED panel
• 2,340 x 1,080
• 403 PPI
• 19.5:9 aspect ratio
• HDR-capable
• Gorilla Glass 5

The Redmi K20 Pro and the Redmi K20 are the first Redmi devices with an AMOLED panel. This screen scores very well in our independent tests and appears to the naked eye as a pretty good looking panel. The size offers a good balance between providing an extensive canvas for content and yet manageable. The brightness is good enough, with the Redmi K20 Pro reaching 430 nits in our tests. This is more than enough for visibility outside on a sunny day. The screen is also perfectly sharp between resolution and screen size.

In the standard configuration, the panel of the Redmi K20 Pro was once so slightly saturated but is rich in contrast and consumer-friendly. Switching to the standard display profile gives a more accurate picture. Although the OnePlus 7 has a more accurate screen, Xiaomi has done a fantastic job here and the Redmi K20 Pro must delight even picky users. The panel can play HDR and the added Widevine L1 support makes this a fantastic device for media consumption.

As usual for Xiaomi devices, the Redmi K20 Pro comes with robust screen adjustment options. The standard configuration immediately adjusts the contrast and works well. There is an increased contrast mode, but the highly saturated look was not very visually appealing. It is also possible to switch between warmer and cooler image profiles.

Redmi K20 Pro Review – Software

• Android Pie
• MIUI 10.5.5
• No Ads

The Redmi K20 Pro is square in the flagship and as such must offer a software experience that matches the high-end hardware. While the Redmi K20 Pro continues to use MIUI 10.5.5, the experience here is clearly different than what you would get on something like a Redmi Note 7 Pro. To begin with, there are no ads. Yes, you heard that right. You no longer have to dodge shady advertisements the moment you install an app from the Play Store. The same cannot be said about reporting spam.

The Xiaomi system apps continue to send spam messages with a continuous barrage of messages that do not fit on a premium smartphone. It is fairly easy to disable this per app, although I can’t help but wish that Xiaomi provides a single interface to reduce system notifications. The user experience is generally quite good. The Redmi K20 comes standard with the POCO launcher, which comes with add-ons such as an app drawer, something that is still missing in MIUI. Oh, and the launcher comes with a full system-wide dark mode that shines on the AMOLED display of the phone.

Because the phone is focused on performance, Xiaomi has made special additions to the game mode. In PUBG, for example, you can switch to a special screen calibration that changes the contrast level to improve visibility in the game during the night.

Redmi K20 Pro Review – Audio

The Redmi K20 Pro has a headphone connection but flows over to the stereo speakers of the Poco F1. Audio output from the headphone jack sounds neutral. Headphones are not included, but the music sounded great through my 1More Triple Driver earphones. The single speaker along the bottom edge becomes loud, but it is no match for the stereo speakers on the OnePlus 7. It works fine, but I would recommend a good Bluetooth speaker if you want to play your media noisily.

Redmi K20 Pro Review – Hardware and Performance

• Snapdragon 855
• Adreno 640
• 6GB or 8GB RAM
• 128GB or 256GB storage

An important highlight of the Redmi K20 Pro is the Snapdragon 855 processor. Combined with 6 GB or 8 GB RAM, this is the fastest Redmi phone to date. I found the performance in line with the OnePlus 7, with some delay or delay. The Redmi K20 Pro offers a highly optimized experience and ensures that MIUI flies on the hardware. Xiaomi’s RAM management has also become a lot better and overall it is difficult to find performance gaps.

It is understandable that the Redmi K20 Pro excels in gaming and has enough grunt to make maximum use of current games. PUBG runs at the highest settings without breaking a sweat. Redmi has introduced a special Game Turbo feature to further streamline performance and silence notifications while playing. Synthetic benchmarks support our experience and the phone performs exceptionally well. The Redmi K20 Pro achieved 372,205 points in the CPU-oriented AnTuTu benchmark. The telephone achieved 5,417 points in the GPU-centric 3DMark benchmark.

Redmi K20 Pro Review – Camera

Rear:

• Standard: 48MP, f/1.75, 0.8μm, Sony IMX586
• Wide-angle: 13MP, f/2.4, 1.12μm, 124.8-degree FoV
• Telephoto: 8MP, f/2.4, 1.12μm, 2x optical zoom

Front:

• Selfie: 20MP pop-up camera
• 4K 60fps video
• 960fps slow motion

The Redmi K20 Pro is the first device from the Redmi series that offers multiple focal lengths. Theset-up between the ultra-wide-angle, standard and telephoto lenses is versatile and competitive. We have already seen the primary IMX586 sensor in action on the Redmi Note 7 Pro and the tuning has not changed dramatically since then. Xiaomi expects you to use the 12 MP images with pixels, but there is also a handy switch to switch to 48MP images with full resolution.

Daylight photos of the Redmi K20 Pro are pretty good. The dynamic range is on the point, but you will have to deal with a slight saturation burst. The camera app allows you to switch to an AI mode that uses built-in machine learning algorithms to tweak images. wasn’t so fond of the photos taken with the AI ​​mode. The camera tends to sharpen images too much and increase the saturation a little too much. The Redmi K20 Pro also tends to get images overexposed for a brighter appearance. That said, the results are perfect for use on social media.

The wide-angle camera of the Redmi K20 Pro offers a whopping 124.8 degrees field of view, one of the widest available at the moment. This allows you to capture wide, expansive landscapes. Distortion is arranged reasonably well, but you lose details at a low level. For example, the foliage looks like green mush. The telephoto lens on the Redmi K20 Pro is the weakest of the three. You need ideal light to get a decent image, and even then there are just not many details in recordings. Everything less than moderate to bright light leads to a blurry and noisy image that, more often than not, is unusable.

There is a noticeable difference between the standard and AI-enabled modes. The latter gives a shift to the sharpening levels, which makes images just a bit sharper. By eliminating shadows and with a slight saturation boost, the photos taken in this mode are usually more visually appealing, but not perfectly natural. After the debut on the Redmi Note 7 Pro, the Redmi K20 also gets the new night mode function. With a combination of exposures and multiple shots, the camera can stack images and produce a fairly clear, noise-free image.

As a person who is not too big at taking selfies, I like that I can hide the front camera. For those who care, the 20MP front camera on the Redmi K20 Pro does pretty well. I found that images were slightly overexposed. The camera switches on a beauty filter as standard, but it is a trivial task to switch it off. The portrait mode in the selfie mode was rather poor and the depth of field fell out very unnatural.

The phone also does a good job of capturing videos. It does not produce the most detailed images, but the electronic image stabilization works even at 4K 60 fps, which is definitely a useful function. In addition, the phone can use the ultra-wide camera to capture 4K, 60fps videos – something that almost no other phone does in this or higher price range.

Redmi K20 Pro Review – Battery Life

• 4,000mAh
• 27W charging support
• 18W charger included

Like most Redmi telephones, the K20 Pro contains a battery of 4,000 mAh. In our standard browser test, the phone was able to surf the web for more than 13 hours. This was a head start on the OnePlus 7, which has a smaller battery. Xiaomi phones generally have excellent battery management and the K20 Pro is no exception. I could conveniently get between 6.5 to 7 hours of screen time before I had to charge the phone. A distinguishing point for OnePlus and Realme telephones is their support for the very fast Warp and VOOC charging standards. This time the K20 Pro supports 27 W fast charging, but there is a trick: the fast charging adapter is not included in the box.

Redmi K20 Pro Review – Conclusion

The Redmi K20 Pro is Xiaomi who flexes his muscles to show off his capabilities. The company that initiated the revolution in the value segment is now planning to change the affordable flagship. The challenge now is to change the market perception that Xiaomi is only an affordable player in the smartphone segment. The Redmi K20 Pro is a premium smartphone for a fantastic price. If you are looking for an affordable flagship, the Redmi K20 Pro should be very high in your list of devices to consider. That’s it for our Redmi K20 Pro Review.