Redmi K30 Pro: Xiaomi's latest and now greatest

3/24/2020






Finally the Redmi K30 Pro series was announced and it’s true to Xiaomi form. 


  • As per Xiaomi’s formula, the K30 Pro looks to be another strong combination of price and performance.

  • But this year it is quite a bit more expensive than last year’s best phones in the K20 Pro/Mi 9T Pro, which I reviewed as one of my first Xiaomi phones in Europe. (TL;DR: Great, but the software is annoying, and not up to Google’s Pixel line, Samsung, or OnePlus. Unless you liked Mi everything. Which I don’t know anyone who does. Anyway.) 



K30 Pro: What you get


  • The Redmi K30 Pro is a 6.67-inch OLED phone, packing a Snapdragon 865, quad-camera with 8K recording in a circular housing, pop-up selfie camera, headphone jack, 5G capabilities, NFC, and a more expensive variant called the “zoom edition”.

  • The displays are 1080p AMOLED panels, but capped at a standard 60Hz refresh rate which is different to other flagships and might serve to save battery life and costs.

  • There’s no wireless charging but 33W wired charging should charge to 100% in just over an hour.

  • The K30 Pro Zoom Edition is the extra extra Pro, offering the same phone with a more complete camera offering, adding OIS to the 64MP main camera, and swapping out a macro lens on the standard for a 8MP 3x telephoto shooter with OIS.

  • Battery life will be interesting. Both pack a 4,700mAh battery, but with 5G demands that figure doesn’t tell us much. 



Europe? US?


  • When this device comes to Europe and wider markets, it will likely be known as the Xiaomi Mi 10T or Mi 10T Pro, but there’s a chance it becomes the base device for the Pocophone F2 as well.

  • Not that I’ve ever really understood Xiaomi’s naming conventions.

  • As for distributing widely in US with the right carrier bands on board, that now seems less likely now than ever before.



Rising costs:


  • The K30 Pro starts at 2,999 yuan (~$424) for the 6GB/128GB model, which is quite a bit more expensive than last year’s K20 which started at 2,599 yuan (~$367). The K30 Pro Zoom Edition starts at 3,799 yuan (~$537) for the 8GB/128GB variant.

  • That’s nearly all because of the cost of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 and its 5G capabilities.

  • In terms of competition in the Snapdragon 865 stakes out of China, the Realme X50 Pro 5G starts at 3599 yuan in China (~$510) offering a 90Hz screen and telephoto lens compared to the standard K30 Pro (2,999 yuan/~$424). 

  • Either way, both the new Realme X50 and Redmi K30 models are more expensive than their predecessors.

  • And that may test Xiaomi’s power to overcome in both this period of economic upheaval and its more true value options which remain high-performers.

  • This is as close as Xiaomi has come to an unaffordable flagship.