Xiaomi Redmi 6

Redmi 6 is back as the powerful budget phone for people who have a tight budget but wants a powerful performer in their hands. Priced at Rs. 8,439, this phone will turn a lot of heads towards it.

Plastic-built and bezeled – Redmi 6 will not draw the attention of an artist. But behind the moderate looks is a power-packed performer, with reasonable battery and a good camera that will be a satisfaction of any budget user. Redmi 6 is the value-for-the-money phone to go for.

Redmi comes with a moderate design that does not make it a looker. Unlike high-end phones which have modified to glass, Redmi 6 has understandably stuck to cheaper plastic build with brushed metal finish, which looks better with the curved edges. It’s lighter than Redmi 5 at 146 grams and smaller too, making it fit in hand comfortably. The loudspeaker of the phone is placed on the back panel and might lose some richness of sound if placed on its back, but on the whole, it is satisfactory. Redmi has retained the 3.5mm headphone jack but it has got rid of the familiar IR emitter. The fingerprint reader at the back is conveniently placed and could be reached with either of the index fingers.

Redmi 6 has a  5.45-inch screen, which is a tad bit smaller than the 5.7-inch screen. However, it means that the display of Redmi 6 is brighter since it comes with the same HD+ resolution and 18:9 aspect ratio. Scores show that it has 295 pixels per inch which provide a reasonable display. Viewing angles are decent and Redmi gives you the option to tweak the display to your liking. It offers ample brightness indoors but it suffers a significant fall in brightness under harsh sunlight. One unusual decision from Xiaomi is the bringing back of bezels. It’s back and it’s thick lowering the screen space to work with.

Redmi 6 is powered by Helio P22 processor which works surprisingly well. It does not have any noticeable lags, especially during app switching or running different apps in the background. Regular games can be handled smoothly though graphics-hungry games may lag a little bit. PubG can run smoothly in low settings, though there might be an input lag. It might be 1-2 seconds late in opening apps unlike high performers like OnePlus, but it is hardly noticeable. The fingerprint sensor and face unlock works fast with this processor too. Benchmark scores put its score at 75,723 points for all-round performance in AnTuTu, and for GPU performance, it capped an 8,051 in 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme, both exceeding Redmi 5.

Redmi 6 has upgraded the camera to a dual-cam module with a 12MP primary camera with a f/2.2 lens and a 5MP secondary camera with the same aperture for Portrait mode. In good light, the images captured are vivid and detailed. In daylight, it got the metering right and was able to turn on HDR automatically in bright situations. However, the phone struggled to focus on details while clicking macros. The secondary camera captures good Portrait modes with nice bokeh effects. Low-light images suffer with the camera as it is not able to capture enough details, Low-light images appear grainy. The camera app noise reduction is aggressive giving a watercolour effect to the processed image.

The 5-megapixel selfie camera with f/2.2 aperture is good outdoors with enough light, but can produce dull pictures indoors. While 1080p videos can be captured with stabilisation, there is a jelly effect.

The 3000 mAh battery is smaller than the 3,300 mAh battery offered by Redmi 5, but it can still last a day with light use. An HD video loop test found that the phone could manage to run for 14 hours and 34 minutes, which is impressive. Keeping the brightness moderate can significantly help the battery, but an all-time use would make the battery last for 12-14 hours. However, it is paired with a 5W charger and can charge from 0% to 35% in an hour, which is quite fast for a budget phone.

Redmi 6 brings about some improvements over Redmi 5 over performance and design, but downgrades in terms of battery and display. The base variant is equipped with 3GB RAM and 32GB of storage comes at quite a cheap price and does not have a worthy competitor at the similar price range. However, if you can bump up your budget a little bit, RealMe 1 and Asus ZenFone Max Pro beats the phone on performance, with ZenFone Max Pro pairing it with a killer battery.