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Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review — Meet Xiaomi’s Latest Entry Level Smartphone
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Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review — Meet Xiaomi’s Latest Entry Level Smartphone

by August 27, 2018
Positives

+ Perfect for those preferring small-sized devices
+ Affordable price
+ Fingerprint sensor is fast
+ Offers facial recognition (which is fast as well)

Negatives

- Battery performance could be better
- Speaker Grill not ideally located
- Occasions of lag and crashing
- Low-light photography is poor

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Pokde Rating
Appearance
6.0
Features
7.0
Materials
6.0
Performance
7.0
Portability
9.0
Value
7.0
Bottom Line

Perfect for those who love smaller-form smartphones.

7.0
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Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review — Meet Xiaomi's Latest Entry Level Smartphone 34

Introduction

In today’s review, we’ll be having a look at Xiaomi’s latest entry-level device, the Xiaomi Redmi 6. The device is an ‘upgraded’ version of the Redmi 6A (which we will review as well). So let us kick things off.

Unboxing

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So from the box, you’ll be getting the Redmi 6 itself (duh!), a manual guide, a micro USB cable as well as a power brick.

Appearance

Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review — Meet Xiaomi's Latest Entry Level Smartphone 36At the front of the Redmi 6, you can see that they’ve kept it very simple with the camera up top along with the proximity sensor taking up both sides of the earpiece.

Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review — Meet Xiaomi's Latest Entry Level Smartphone 37

Head on over to the top of the device, you can find the 3.5mm jack port (thank god!) and also the microphone hole. Personally, I prefer to have my audio port on the top side of a device, which I’m glad they did implement it there.

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Over the bottom, there’s only the micro USB port for you to charge the device and also the secondary microphone hole.

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On the left side is where you can find its dedicated dual-SIM and microSD trays.

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On the opposite side, that’s where you’ll find the power button as well as the volume rocker.

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Lastly, you’ve got the dual camera setup at the top-left of the back of the device, accompanied by a single LED flash. There’s also the fingerprint sensor located there and at the bottom is the speaker grill.

Specifications

CPU/Chipset: Mediatek MT6762 Helio P22 Octa-core 2.0 GHz Cortex-A53
GPU: PowerVR GE8329
RAM: 3GB
Display: 5.45″, IPS LCD 720p 18:9 ratio display
Storage: 32GB (expandable via microSD up to 256GB)
Camera: Main Camera(s)
Primary: 12 MP, f/2.2, 1.25 μm, PDAF
Secondary: 5 MP, f/2.2, 1.12 μm, depth sensor
Single tone LED flash, HDR, Panorama
Front Camera
5MP
OS: Android 8.1 Oreo (MIUI 9)
Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/
Bluetooth 4.2
SIM: Dual SIM
Battery: Li-Po 3000 mAh (non-removable)
Dimensions: 147.5 x 71.5 x 8.3 mm
Weight: 146 g

Performance

Coming in with a Helio P22 which is an entry-level chipset, we don’t expect the performance to be blowing us away in these tests. Well here’s the results.

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Not surprising that the Redmi 6 didn’t performed so well on Antutu here. It does offer a huge upgrade over the ubiquitous MediaTek MT6750 chipsets though.

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Here we can see that the Redmi 6 falls just short of the ZF4 Selfie Pro’s Snapdragon 625 chip, which is quite popular in Xiaomi’s stable.

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On the graphics performance, it performs as expected with it coming in below a Snapdragon 625 device (ZF3 Zoom).

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Well surprisingly, the Redmi 6 didn’t do too bad here in productivity-related performance. It comes just short of the ASUS Zenfone 4’s score which uses a Snapdragon 630 chip.

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It didn’t do well in the battery benchmark, clocking just 6 hours and 17 minutes on the PCMark battery life test. Somewhat surprising considering this chipset is manufactured on the 12nm process node.

Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review — Meet Xiaomi's Latest Entry Level Smartphone 47As for real-life battery performance, here’s what I got in terms of usage. This includes intensive Facebook scrolling, messaging on Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger as well as taking a couple of pictures with the phone. I started off with 100% battery and after 7 hours in the office, I had 42% of battery life left. Pretty good showing here.

User Experience

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When I first got my hands on the Redmi 6, I thought to myself “Wow, this might take some time in getting used to it”. Why you might ask? Well for one thing, the size of the device is small, with the display to be 5.45-inch to be precise. As I was already used to longer devices (please don’t think of it negatively), it does feel a bit awkward, but over time, I managed to get comfortable with it. There are people who prefer smaller devices, and this would be great for them.

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With the phone, you’ll be getting Xiaomi’s MIUI. The phone’s interface is simple with only small amount of bloatware. Regarding the smoothness of the device, I encountered lag and some random crashes here and there. Not exactly a buttery smooth experience.

As for the charging of the device, you would have to be very patient with the device. Wondered on how much juice you can squeeze with a 30-minute charge? Well you will be getting only 17%. So if you have plans to go out one whole day, just prepare some time to charge the device just before you go out as it will take time to be fully charged up.

As you would expect from a device of this caliber, low-light shots is quite noisy and the Redmi 6 is no exception. Image quality in better lighting is quite acceptable though. I would like to add that some of the shots taken in the day looked a bit ‘gloomy’.

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While this part may seem like not a big of a concern to some, it did bother me by a small amount. I’m talking about the phone’s speaker grille location. Well thanks to its position on the back, if you put it on a flat surface, the speaker’s sound becomes muffled and it would be hard for you to notice if there was a call. I’d prefer it to be exactly at the bottom of the device, like most recent devices.

Conclusion

Okay, let’s get this straight. The Redmi 6 is an entry-level device. While I don’t see myself using it as my daily driver, it will be a good fit for those who prefer smaller devices. It is also a great choice for those who are on a tight budget its affordable price tag of just RM499. For those who have an extra RM100 in their wallet, I would recommend you to purchase the Redmi Note 5 instead.

Our thanks to Mi Malaysia for providing us the Redmi 6 used in this review. You can click on the link down below to purchase the device on Lazada while also supporting us:

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About The Author
Raja Idris
The name's King, Kingky King. Likes to keep it simple and straightforward. A person who games regardless of what platform. Need value for money performance? Get AMD.

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