Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review: Not Much Of An Upgrade

Xiaomi Redmi series has been instrumental to its India success story. From Redmi 1S to Redmi 5 and Redmi 5A, Xiaomi’s affordable phones have been dependable and easy recommendations for first-time buyers. Having said that, the competition has been inching closer and the Redmi 6-series phones won’t go unchallenged as their predecessors. (Xiaomi Redmi 6 review हिंदी में पढ़े)

Xiaomi has already launched the Redmi 6 and Redmi 6A in India on September 6. However, for the sake of Redmi 6 review, we decided to get the global variant from Gearbest international store. Here’s our detailed review of the Redmi 6.

Jump To:

• Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review: Specification and Price
• Review: Xiaomi Redmi 6 Box Content
• Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review: Design and Build Quality
• Review: Xiaomi Redmi 6 Display
• Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review: Performance and Software
• Xioami Redmi 6 Camera Review
• Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review: Battery, Audio and Connectivity
• Verdict for Xioami Redmi 6 Review with Pros & Cons

Editor’s Note: The phone has officially launched in India and we have updated our review based on experience with the Indian variant.

Xaiomi Redmi 6 Specs and Price

Xiaomi Redmi 6 Unboxing: What’s Comes Inside the Box?

• Phone
• Wall Charger
• USB to Micro USB Data Cable
• User Manual
• Sim ejector tool

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Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review: Design and Build quality

Looking at the Redmi 6, it seems that aesthetics haven’t evolved much as compared to the Redmi 5-series. The phone looks uninspiring with large size bezels all around the display and a bland plastic back. Xiaomi also doesn’t seem to get bored of the triple-layered back design which has been around for more than 3 years now.

Both the Redmi 6 and Redmi 6A look almost the same. The We’d have expected Xiaomi doing things a bit differently, at least with Redmi 6 (if not the Redmi 6A). The Redmi Y2 that retails in the same budget looks and feels a lot better. But maybe these flaws are excusable at this price point.

Competitors like Realme, Honor, and Infinix certainly offer better-looking devices at the same price, but they make compromises elsewhere. As for build quality, we are quite content with Redmi 6. The phone feels really solid in hand and doesn’t really pops-open on applying pressure with thumbs.

The front of the phone is dominated by a 5.45-inch display while the rear panel houses a dual camera module, camera flash, a fingerprint sensor, and a loudspeaker close to the bottom. Once again, the edges are subtly curved which ensures handy grip. The rear camera module bulges out a bit, and you need to be careful otherwise it could get scratched easily.

The right edge of the phone features a volume rocker and a power key whereas the left edge gets dual SIM slots along with a dedicated microSD card slot. Since Xiaomi has shifted the loudspeaker to the back of the phone, the bottom edge only features a micro USB port and a microphone. On the top, the Redmi 6 includes a noise reduction microphone and a 3.5mm audio jack.

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Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review: Display

The Xiaomi Redmi 6 features a 5.45-inch IPS LCD screen which is a tad smaller than its predecessor. The screen has 720+ resolution (720 x 1440 pixels) with 18:9 aspect ratio. The Redmi 6 display is layered with 2.5D curved edge glass and unspecified Gorilla Glass version.

In terms of colors and contrast, the Redmi 6 display with default settings looks a little pale. Therefore, after fiddling with the phone for a few minutes we switched the default contrast and saturation settings to standard. The Redmi 6 display’s brightness levels are good enough for indoors usage though feel slightly underwhelming outdoors, especially with the sun beating down.

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Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review: Performance and Software

Due to a legal battle with Ericsson, for years Xiaomi was barred from offering Indian consumers a MediaTek SoC backed smartphones. Actually, it worked well in favor of Xiaomi.

Now that the case is settled, Xiaomi can launch phones with Mediatek chipset in India. Post case settlement, Redmi 6 and 6A are the first Xiaomi phone that comes with a MediaTek chipset.

The Redmi 6 is powered by octa-core MediaTek MT6762 Helio P22 chipset which is manufactured using the 12nm process. The chipset is assisted by PowerVR GE8320 GPU.

The unit which we imported for review comes with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage. It also has a separate slot for microSD card slot. The Redmi 6 manages to do well on the general performance count. It manages to perform day to day activities well without any stuttering. Where it fell short was with the gaming experience. Games like PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 9 took some time to load and gameplay wasn’t smooth. In comparison, the gaming experience on Realme 2 was far better.

As for the software experience, the Redmi 6 is not much different from any other Xiaomi smartphone. It boots up MIUI 9.6 which is based on Android 8.1 Oreo. The MIUI 9.6 comes with quite a few preloaded apps though you can remove most of them.

Apart from that, there’s nothing special here. There are regular MIUI gestures and on-screen navigation bar. Xiaomi said that the Redmi 6 will be upgraded to Android 8.1 Oreo-based MIUI 10 soon, so let’s wait for that as Android 9.0 Pie seems far-fetched right now.

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Xiaomi Redmi 6 Camera Review

The Xiaomi Redmi 6 camera hardware has improved as compared to its predecessor. The budget smartphone is equipped with a dual 12MP+5MP rear camera setup with 1.25um size pixels.  Xiaomi has also added EIS (electronic image stabilization), which is rare for phones in this price range. Well, the image quality seems to have improved in comparison to its predecessor.

Under good lighting conditions, the phone manages to shoot some well-balanced shots. The default camera app also has an HDR mode which we decided to turn off as the images were little off.

If you are a fan of blurry background images, you will find the Redmi 6 portrait mode to be a handy addition. The portrait shots we took turned out clean without any artifacts. As for low light performance, there is certainly some improvement if you compare it with the last generation Redmi phone. Still, the ample amount of noise grains and details aren’t really exciting. There’s a 5MP selfie camera as well which also manages to take some decent pics in good lighting conditions.

Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review: Battery, Audio and Connectivity

The Redmi 6 packs a 3000 mAh battery which is 300mAh smaller than what Xiaomi used on Redmi 5. It is also worth mentioning here is that the phone doesn’t support fast charging out of the box. It comes bundled with a charging 5V/2A which is not really fast as per 2018 standards. In our day to day usage, we managed to get approx 8 hours screen-on time.

The audio experience on the Redmi 6 is not much different from any budget device. The phone packs a mono loudspeaker which is I don’t know why have been placed at the rear end. The phone also has a 3.5mm audio jack which manages to deliver decent sounds on good headphones which you will have to buy separately, though.

Connectivity wise, the Redmi 6 sports dual VoLTE and dual Standby which means you can slip in two VoLTE enabled SIM cards and use Data on either of the two without one going inactive. We faced no difficulty in call reception in our locality. It also supports Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, WiFi Direct, hotspot, Bluetooth 4.2, A2DP, LE, and micro USB 2.0.

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Xiaomi Redmi 6 Review: Should You Buy It?

The Xiaomi Redmi 6 is yet another Xiaomi offering under 10K. There is nothing radically new about the phone when compared to Redmi 5, but there are minor enhancements like a slight improvement in camera performance, separate card slot which was long overdue, and the Dual 4G VoLTE support – a feature that’s incidentally missing on the more expensive Redmi 6 Pro that launched alongside.

You might as well go with the Redmi 5 and get a similar experience from a practical standpoint. Even with a few necessary refinements, the Redmi 6 feels like more of the same thing.