The most-awaited Redmi K20 series finally landed in India last week. Amid all the price controversies, the new flagship series from Xiaomi is going for its first official sale today in the country. Redmi K20 and K20 Pro will be available exclusively via Flipkart and Mi.com starting today.
While the critics have helmed the K20 smartphones as the best in their respective range, the public has not received the pricing very positively.
The company came out with an open letter a couple of days back to clarify on the India pricing, and added that it’s an honest pricing with less than 5 percent of profit. In a nutshell, the K20 smartphones are obviously great at their prices, and also probably the best in the range.
So, should you buy?
Here’s a broad breakdown of all the important things you need to know about Redmi K20 smartphones, whether you should buy or shouldn’t buy.
Contents
#Buy: The Aesthetic Design
The Redmi K20 smartphones come with a glass sandwich body on the out. With a 3D gradient at the back, the smartphones feature a compact design with curved sides at back. The 3D finish glass body featuring a gradient finish weighs 191 grams.
Both the sides are protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5, and does look awesome.
The company has done a good job in terms of overall ergonomics. The smartphone feels very premium on hand. On the downside of the design, the smartphone doesn’t feature two speakers as Poco F1 or OnePlus 7.
#Buy: Awesome Display
Both Redmi K20 and K20 Pro features a 6.39-inch Full HD+ Super AMOLED display without any notch in an 19.5:9 aspect ratio with 600 nits of maximum brightness with support for HDR content. The AMOLED panel looks stunning with very thin bezels and a slight chin down under. It looks amazing.
The smartphones come with the seventh generation in-display optical fingerprint scanner, which works fine, but at times could be snaggy.
#NotBuy: Really Slow Pop-Up Sensor, Probably The Slowest Of All
The company has used a pop-up camera on both the K20 devices. To make space for a full-screen display, the front camera has been shifted to the top. It’s all great, looks good, has a notification light, is protected by sapphire and will live up to 3,00,000 pop-ups.
According to the company, the pop-up front sensor is wear-resistant and scratch-resistant.
It’s all okay, but it’s damn slow.
Like the slowest we have probably seen on a smartphone. It doesn’t feel premium, and not at all convenient. If you choose to use face unlock on a regular basis, be prepared to spend a lot of time of the day to wait for the sensor to pop-up fully.
#Buy: The Top Of The Line Hardware
Redmi K20 Pro will run on the Qualcomm flagship octa-core processor, Snapdragon 855, the top-rated 7nm chip coupled with Adreno 640 GPU. The smartphone achieved more than 380,000 on AnTuTu to become the fastest Android smartphone on earth beating OnePlus 7 Pro.
The regular Redmi K20 comes with the newly launched Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 processor.
We tested both the devices rigorously, and honestly, both do a perfect job in their own range to offer a powerful performance. You won’t face any issue in terms of daily performance or extended gaming and even extensive multitasking.
#Buy: Seamless Gaming Experienced
These are not gaming devices, but both do offer a top notch gaming experience, especially, Redmi K20 Pro. The smartphones come with 8 layer liquid cooling to keep the phone cool during extended gaming sessions coupled with a three dimension double-sided cooling structure with a top level graphite architecture.
Redmi K20 Pro and Redmi K20 both have a special Game Turbo 2.0 feature to optimize the smartphone for gaming, headphone/sound quality while gaming, optimization for WiFi/ mobile network while gaming and special improvements to touch mode while gaming.
The K20 smartphones also optimize the dark areas of the screen while gaming to offer a better viewing experience during gameplay.
#NotBuy: No Additional Storage
This may not be a big issue for many, but extra storage is always welcome. Neither of the devices support additional storage. Redmi K20 Pro comes with upto 256GB of internal storage, while the regular Redmi K20 has only upto 128GB of storage.
Redmi K20 is available in 64GB and 128GB models, and the Pro version is available in 128GB and 256GB models.
You can pick a variant depending on your needs. There’s no support for additional storage, so pick a model wisely.
#Buy: The Amazing Camera
Coming to optics, both Redmi K20 and K20 Pro come with a three camera setup at the back. The rear triple camera setup on K20 Pro features the 48MP Sony IMX586 camera as primary lens with an f/1.75 aperture coupled with a 8MP telephoto secondary sensor with an f/2.4 aperture and a tertiary 13MP wide-angle sensor with an f/2.5 aperture and a 124.8 degree field of view.
Redmi K20 also features a similar triple camera setup at the back, expect for the 48MP IMX 586 sensor. Xiaomi has used Sony IMX 582 48MP sensor for the regular Redmi K20. It only lacks 4K videos at 60fps.
Upfront, Redmi K20 Pro and Redmi K20 comes with a 20MP sensor supporting wide-angle shots. Both the Redmi K20 series smartphones will have the same pop-up sensor rising smoothly at under 0.8 seconds.
Both the smartphones do a fair job offering a great dynamic range with almost accurate colours irrespective of lighting conditions. Each support Google Camera and dedicated Night Mode for long-exposed shots.
#Buy: 3.5mm Headphone Jack
A feature missing on almost all premium smartphones, the Redmi K20 series doesn’t disappoint you in this department. While it may lack stereo speakers, it doesn’t lose out on a dedicated headphone jack.
The audio output is great, be it from the speaker or headphone jack.
The K20 speaker is not the loudest you will find in the market, but is fairly loud. We could run HD videos on Netflix, and the audio from speaker was more than okay. The 3.5mm headphone jack supports Hi-Fi audio.
#Buy: Big Battery
Both Redmi K20 Pro and Redmi K20 houses a huge 4,000 mAh battery supporting AI smart optimization to extend the phone’s battery to last longer. Redmi K20 Pro comes with 27W wired fast charging support, whereas Redmi K20 supports 18W fast charging technology.
Both of the smartphones pack in a 18W fast charger inside the box, and for the 27W SuperSonic charger, you need to purchase it separately for Rs 999.
#NotBuy: Overpriced?
Most people are unhappy with the increased prices in the country. The smartphones in India cost around 2,000 or 3,000 rupees more. Many were expecting it to be the same as the China pricing, or a bit pricier given the excise and custom costs.
The company came out with an open letter a couple of days back to clarify on the India pricing, and added that it’s an honest pricing with less than 5 percent of profit.
The regular Redmi K20 has been launched starting at Rs 21,999 and the top model, the Redmi K20 Pro starting at Rs 27,999.
If compared to the China prices, Redmi K20 was launched at around Rs 20,000 (converted), while Redmi K20 Pro starts at around Rs 25,000 (converted). The big differential with the price in India turned out to be a big disappointment for many.
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