Xiaomi Redmi 6 Pro

Balancing style and performance, Redmi 6 Pro is all set to recapture the budget market, fighting against the likes of Nokia and Honor. Priced at Rs. 10,590, Redmi 6 Pro comes with the confidence of Redmi 6 series and a bump in its specifications.

Redmi 6 Pro is an accomplished set. It has decent performance, capable cameras, and a massive battery that can chug on for two whole days. Even though the camera is a bit mediocre, it can still click decent photos, making the phone a capable all-rounder.

The Redmi 6 Pro looks similar to Redmi Note 5 Pro, coming with a plastic build. However, the back is made out of cold single plate metal. The edges are curved, making it easy to sit in your hand and manageable for one-hand use. However, the large battery can make it feel weighty. The camera also bumps out a little bit though it is not uncomfortable. The only thing that looks shabby on this phone is the thick chin at the bottom.

The Redmi 6 Pro sports a 5.84-inch display. It is a notched display with a high resolution of 1,080 x 2,280 pixels. It comes with a new 19:9 aspect ratio. The colours appear excellent and accurate with the right tones. The display is quite bright too, though it a struggle in direct sunlight. Viewing angles are moderate, given that in extreme angles, a bluish tone is created. The phone allows you to adjust the white balance and enter into Reading Mode for ebooks. While video content is ok, the round edges of the phone can make your content viewing experience less immersive.

The phone sports an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chipset which is paired with an Adreno 506 GPU. The 8 A53 cores are clocked at 2GHz. It is the same chipset as the Redmi Y2. Casual games like Alto’s Adventure can run well on this phone, but it can stutter mildly. Games like PUBG can run well, but it has to be in minimal settings to get a playable framerate. The phone has enough power to run multiple apps without entering into slowdown mode. Even the RAM management of this phone is excellent, making app switching smooth.

The Redmi 6 Pro arrives with a dual-camera setup with 12 MP primary camera and a supportive 5 MP camera fit in a vertical module. The Daylight shots are quite good – the subjects are focussed well. But the colours are not always accurate. You will require steady hands because the shutter speed can reduce at times. AI processing, however, is quite good. The low-light shots turn out to be disappointing. The HDR mode is aggressive and can make the image turn out artificial. Little detail is captured in low-light settings.

The Redmi 6 Pro arrives with a 5MP AI-integrated selfie camera. The selfie camera does not have a front flash. It can produce social-media decent shots during the day, but in low-light, it falters.

Video shooting is maxed out at Full HD resolution at 30fps. There is Electronic Image Stabilization, so you can get steady footage. However, panning can result in a drop in frame rates.

The Redmi 6 Pro does come with a massive 4,000 mAh battery. While this might put it ahead of its competitors, and can keep up with the two-day claim that Xiaomi puts in – that is only for moderate use. Intensive use can drain the battery a lot – for example, running an hour of PUBG with Wi-Fi on can take 22% of it. However, moderate use like watching videos, emails, social media, and phone calls can easily make it go for two days. Charging is a bit slow and can take the phone 2 hours to get to 100%. Battery tests found that it could last for about 12 hours and 27 minutes, which is decent enough.

The Redmi 6 Pro is a well-rounded phone with suitable processing, amazing battery, and a decent display. It does fall flat in the camera section, but it is in no way terrible. The phone can offer a stellar competition to its competitor, ZenFone Max Pro M1. If you are looking for a performance-based phone, then ZenFone Max Pro M1 gets you a better Snapdragon processor. However, display-wise, Redmi 6 Pro easily beats ZenFone Max Pro M1.