Redmi K30 Racing Edition, First Impressions And 1 Week Partial Review

August 08 18:39 2020 by Ray Kyle De Castro Print This Article

The Redmi K30 Racing Edition looks like to be a Chinese exclusive, though there are third party retailers managed to import the device.

With the curiosity on China ROM devices, we decided to pick one up for review. It packs interesting hardware for its price. It has the Snapdragon 768G, a speed binned Snapdragon 765G, a 64 megapixel Sony IMX 686 main camera and a 120Hz refresh rate display for PHP 14,990.

Build quality/ergonomics

At 208g, the device feels substantial. It has an okay weight distribution, but the device is a little bit top-heavy.

A sheet of glass is equipped on the rear, it has a silky/powdery-like finish to it.

At the sides, the painted polycarbonate frame encompassed with a matte finish. Despite being plastic, it does not feel cheap Though it does lack the “cold to the touch” premium feel as with a aluminum rail.

Design

Identical design to the Redmi K30 devices that has been released before.

Our unit we have in hand is in mint green. The rear of the device has a pearlescent shine. It reflects light and shows a subtle rainbow ray effect.

At the top, the IR blaster and microphone is situated and offset to the left portion.

To the right, the user can access the volume rockers and power button, slightly recessed with the integrated with a fingerprint scanner.

The left frame has the dual SIM card tray. Unfortunately, the user cannot place an Micro SD card for expansion as it only supports two nano sim cards.

The bottom part is loaded with hardware features. It resides the added mic, headphone port, the USB Type C port and speaker grill.

Display

The front panel flaunts a Full HD IPS panel with a pill punch-hole cutout offset to the top left. It stretches significantly at 6.67 inches and refreshes at 120Hz. It feels silky smooth with every transition and scrolling with social media applications being more defined. This makes the device not only function fast but perceivably nimble as well.

Blacks lack substantial contrast being an LCD panel. Imperfections on the cutout such as shadowing can be observed especially on white backgrounds.

Performance

Powering the device is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 768G paired with 6GB and 128GB memory config. The chip performs more than enough to chug light usage. Social media, emails, media consumption and the like will be no hassle. In terms of thermals, it does not heat up immediately even when cycling through borderline heavy applications such as multitasking through light mobile titles and social media apps.

Well that’s it for now. Our camera, detailed performance and battery tests will be published on our full review.

Here are our gripes with it.

• For some reason, notifications does not work on this device. It seems that it is a Chinese ROM issue.

• Being a China ROM device, app compatibility issues also rise as well.

• MIUI takes a toll on performance despite the screen refreshes 120 times a second, there are still stutters and lags even in light usage.

• GPS does not function properly. Applications such as Grab and Google Maps are having problems locating the device in some cases.

So far, the device has been promising packing some punch never seen before at this price point. Though issues arises to basic tasks such as GPS and app compatibilities that may cause inconvenience to the user. Also, Xiaomi Philippines will not be liable for any factory defects since the unit is imported from China.

Key Specifications