Xiaomi is renowned for offering your buck a ton of bang with its smartphones often on many of the best cheaper phones. It is no wonder that between the stacked spec sheet and its ultra-competitive price, the brand rises in Europe and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the Redmi 10X range, which includes the Redmi 10X and the Redmi 10X Pro model, may have outstripped itself this week. When we have it in our hands, we will reserve our full verdict, although we will still be listening on a final release date for Redmi 10X. There are however several reasons why you might want to keep an eye on the latest Xiaomi phones.
The cheapest 5 G handset still available
The biggest draw-card here could easily be that the standard model is the cheapest 5 G telephone we’ve seen so far. With the Redmi 10X price in China starting at 1.599 yuan (~$224/~€202) for the 6GB/64 GB model, the market is far from other 5 G appliances.
When Xiaomi phones hit Europe they normally get a respectable price raise, but even an improvement of ~€100 will lead to a very fair price rise of €302. This is also cheaper than the newly introduced Mi 10 Lite 5 G for €349 in Europe. The Mi 10 Lite 5 G retail outlets worth around ~2,099 yuan (~€265) in China (a price decline of ~€84).
5 G is not available yet in India, and will not start soon, but the Redmi 10X series still could prove to be a popular purchase for spectacular fans on the market. The 820 chipset will be in a different class as far as mid-range power is concerned. With Xiaomi telephones in India achieving market parity with the Chinese market or a marginal increase at best, the company’s regional portfolio will turn out to be a hot product.
The Redmi 10X series also supports 5G+5 G dual SIM technology, enabling two 5 G networks to be run on the same system. This could be very handy in the early days of 5 G, when the high-speed network range is gaping.
This technology is now only available on specific MediaTek 5 G chips and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon silicon is completely lacking in this feature. MediaTek 5 G processors are not tolerant of mmWave (as opposed to Snapdragon processors), however, this is less of a issue outside the United States where sub-6GHz is common.
A lot of strength as well.
The Redmi 10X series could be among the cheapest 5 G phones, but with a processor Dimension 820, they offer tons of power. Aside from the MediaTek benchmark, it already looks like one of the most strong mid-level boots.
The new MediaTek processor is roughly comparable to the paper Snapdragon 700 5 G SoCs in series, although it contains four Cortex-A76 heavy-weight cores compared with the 2 heavy-weight cores in the 700series. This will give it a multi-core processing edge, which should also be up to normal standards.
We are not too sure if the Dimension 820 would threaten the efficiency of the Snapdragon 765 G and 768G. Higher-end chips of Qualcomm are after all renowned for providing excellent GPU efficiency. I would suggest that Qualcomm beats out MediaTek in this respect if I had to gamble on it. But you still get equivalent power to older phones for a budget price.
Only a lot of cameras
The flexible back camera layout features a 48MP main camera, an 8MP ultra wide camera, an 8MP 3X telephoto lenses and a 5 MP macro sensor is a further feather in the range, at least for the pro model. In reality, if you really need it, your phone still offers 5X hybrid zoom and 30X optical zoom. This means that you have better theory of zooming than the LG V60, OnePlus 8, and Xiaomi Mi 10.
The Redmi 10X standard has a more pedestrian camera setup with a 48MP main shooter, a listed 8MP, and a 2MP depth sensor. However, it also offers you a degree of flexibility.
Redmi 10X and 10X Pro: Two to look at
Toss in the 3.5 mm connector, IR blaster, 4,520 mAh battery, FHD+ OLED panel, and IP53 splash resistance, and there’s little denying that the Redmi 10X specs are amazing for that size. We would not like to see any extra features (for example, NFC on a regular model or a faster refresh rate), but this undoubtedly signals the introduction of cheaper 5 G models.
This is not the only affordable 5 G smartphone this month, since the Honor X10 ~$267 is another smartphone that is worth your time. Pay just $40 extra for China and you get an LCD 90Hz monitor, popup style and a 40MP main camera that’s perfect for low light. But don’t expect the integration of Google Play Services.
In any case, the Redmi 10X series tells us how much 5 G pricing has sunk over the last 12 months since Xiaomi became the first 5 G system with €599 (~$665) Mi Mix 3 5G. And it looks like we just started.