Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Xiaomi

Chinese OEM Xiaomi is gunning for the price/performance crown with the newly announced Redmi K30 Pro. This phone features Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 865—normally found in $1,000 smartphones—at a price point that has been massaged all the way down to CNY 2,999 ($425).

The phone has a 6.67-inch 2400×1080 OLED display at a regular-old 60Hz. The base model gets 6GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 128GB of UFS3.0 storage, and there's a bigger, faster tier with 8GB of faster LPDDR5 memory and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage, which ups the price to CNY 3,399 ($481). The phone has a 4700mAh battery, 33w fast charging, an in-screen fingerprint reader, and a not-great dust and water resistance rating of IP53 (it will probably survive rain, but it's not submergible).

The front design looks incredible for this price point, thanks to the pop-up 20MP front camera. There's no notch, hole punch, or any other screen blemishes, just an all-screen design. There's a headphone jack on the top edge, NFC, Wi-Fi 6 compatibility, and even an IR port. Thanks to the Snapdragon 865, there is sub-6GHz (but not mmWave) 5G compatibility.

The back of the phone has four cameras in a circular camera bump. There's a 64MP main sensor, a 13MP ultrawide, a 2MP macro camera, and a 5MP telephoto. The 64MP main sensor and the camera bandwidth of the Snapdragon 865 means this phone can record 8K video, an impressive feature for something at this price point.

Seeing the Snapdragon 865 at $425 is a shocker of a price point, but it's still more than Redmi phones have been in the past. The K20 Pro debuted with a Snapdragon 855 at CNY 2,499 ($354). The $71 might not seem like a ton of money, but at this hacked-and-slashed price point, that's a 20-percent increase. We've seen similar price jumps at the higher-end of the market, too, and it's proving too rich for some OEMs.

The K30 Pro is out now in China, with a global release coming later. Last year, the K20 Pro ended up in Europe as the Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro, so don't be surprised if this one gets rebranded, too.