Redmi K30 in for review

Following up on the success of the Redmi K20 from the early summer of 2019, the company announced the K30 and K30 5G in December, with the vanilla K30 going on sale in China immediately. Well, a Redmi K30 has arrived at the office and it's straight into the lab for review.

Looking at the specs, the Redmi K30 shares more of its genes with the Redmi Note 8 Pro, than it does with the K20. For example, the camera system on the back is directly lifted off of the Note and includes a 64MP main shooter, an 8MP ultrawide, and a couple of 2MP units - one for close up shots, the other for depth info. The K20's telephoto is, sadly, gone.

Gone is the K20's 4,000mAh cell too, but that's a good thing - the Redmi K30 opts for a bigger 4,500mAh power pack like on that same Redmi Note 8 Pro. The new phone also supports 27W charging and comes with such a charger in the box - a bit on the heavy and bulky side, but powerful nonetheless. A quick spoiler from the review - full charge from flat takes 69 minutes.

But perhaps we should have started with the most important bit - the Redmi K30's display has a 120Hz refresh rate. It's also HDR10 compliant, though that won't work in Netflix or Amazon Prime Video due to DRM restrictions. YouTube does play HDR videos, which is something.

The 6.7-inch panel is an LCD, so you won't be getting the deepest of blacks OLEDs can muster. For the exact numbers we measured in our tests, you'll still need to wait for the review, though.

You don't need the review to see that the Redmi K30 has a cutout in its display. A Galaxy S10+ lookalike in this respect, the K30 has a pill-shaped selfie camera assembly (even if it does it in software) with a 20MP main shooter and a 2MP sidekick for depth detection in portrait mode. So, is this a worthy trade-off, or do you prefer the K20's pop-up unit? Or maybe the Redmi Note 8 Pro's waterdrop notch?

The Redmi K30's Gorilla Glass 5 sandwich is held together by an aluminum frame - a more premium solution than the Note 8 Pro's plastic and a trait shared with the K20.

Unlike any other Xiaomi phone before, the frame is home to the fingerprint sensor, a capacitive one. Our initial experience with it is quite positive and it unlocks pretty much all the time. While it is embedded in a button, you can choose in setting whether a press is required to unlock or just a tap will do - nice.

Stay tuned for the complete review with the usual in-depth analysis of all aspects of the Redmi K30's performance, coming up within a week.