Reviewing a mobile phone has become relatively straightforward because brands like Xiaomi are releasing a new phone every month. While the successive launch of new phones has slowed down in the last few months, I’m yet to review one of the last phones of 2020 — the Redmi 9 Power.

The Redmi 9 series continues its predecessors’ legacy and aims to provide maximum features at the most affordable price. In fact, Xiaomi’s own portfolio is often confusing for the customer. The Redmi 9 Power is a brand new offering that’s supposed to be pushed to the extreme.

The Redmi 9 Prime is priced slightly lower, so what’s different about the Power? Plenty. Let’s find out!

It has a 6.5-inch LCD with a water-drop notch

The back has a grooved design that’s very grippy

For authentication, it gets a side-mounted fingerprint scanner

So far, all the usual Xiaomi features. So, what’s new?

The phone looks like a very conventional affordable phone consisting of polycarbonate construction. However, it feels very solid in hand. There’s no flimsy plastic or poor build, and I managed to drop it quite a few times, without any visible damage. Keep in mind, the plastic body is helping reduce the phone’s overall weight.

The outside of the phone may not be very amusing, but the internals indeed are. The phone packs a 6000mAh battery that supports 18W charging, so you’re practically never going to run out of juice. The phone easily lasts two days with heavy usage, and I often ended up using it as a power bank for my headphones, smartwatch, and even secondary phone (albeit very slow).

If you travel a lot, this phone can be an ideal secondary phone. It rarely runs out of charge, and you can afford to deplete your battery in low network regions. Another useful application of the phone is for studying online. Students can attend a full day’s lecture with the display switched on without needing a charger.

The Redmi 9 Power takes a little more than two hours to completely charge the battery but provides an insane screen-on-time of more than nine hours. No wonder the phone is called Power.

Designed for entertainment

IU 😍

The phone has a 6.5-inch display that’s bright enough, produces accurate colors, and offers decent viewing angles. At this point, Xiaomi has figured out the affordable display formula, and all their budget phones have consistent results.

Although, when paired with the massive battery, this phone is perfect for non-stop entertainment. Watch as many YouTube videos as you can, or maybe even binge-watch a show on Netflix. There’s a chance the show will end, but the phone still chugs along. The phone is available in 64GB and 128GB internal storage options, which is expandable via a microSD card.

Powering the phone is a Snapdragon 662 chipset, which is a slightly boosted sibling of the Snapdragon 660. It incorporates a faster Adreno 610 GPU, but don’t expect a radical change in gaming experience than the Redmi 9 Prime, which an Helio G80 processor powers. The phone comes with 4GB RAM only, so it’s safe to assume that it isn’t designed for hardcore gaming.

MIUI runs smoothly on the phone and enhances the user experience to a great extent. The Android skin is conveniently customizable based on preference, and day-to-day tasks are a breeze. I tried Call of Duty: Mobile, Asphalt 9, and Sniper Fury on the phone, and all of them ran smoothly. The phone rarely heats up unless you’re pushing it to the peak with performance and charging.

A reliable set of lenses

It has a quad-camera setup that consists of a 48-megapixel primary camera, an 8-megapixel wide-angle lens, a 2-megapixel macro sensor, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor. Together, the cluster gives many options to users, and MIUI’s add-ons further extend this. In a nutshell, the pictures range from good to decent, with nothing exceptionally good or bad.

Daylight pictures are capture a lot of detail but look dull due to inaccurate color saturation. In many pictures, the highlights are blown out, further making the image look unsatisfying. The same highlights issue is also observed in low-light shots.

Indoor pictures are pretty good, but it does feel like the phone needs a lot of manual attention to click an image. Xiaomi has made phones in the past that have sported brilliant cameras for the price. The wide-angle sensor works as you’d expect it but sometimes manages to distort the edges. Thankfully, the macro and depth sensor are uniform across all Xiaomi phones.

Coming to the front, there’s a 13-megapixel shooter located in a water-drop style notch. The selfies are on point and look appealing. You can toggle on/off the beauty mode based on your requirement or even tune it. The AI-based portrait mode is pretty good actually and detects edges accurately.

Is this your GadgetMatch?

If you’re looking for a phone that never runs out of juice and keeps you away from the wall as much as possible, this phone is perfect for you. I’ve also suggested the phone to many folks who’re using a flagship phone but would love to have a secondary option at an affordable rate. The Redmi 9 Power can seamlessly complement an iPhone or a Note 10.

With a starting price of INR 11,999 (US$ 165), the phone carves a perfect balance of features that make it a must-have. The display is enjoyable, the performance is above average, an unbeatable battery, and the goodness of MIUI. If you have a slightly flexible budget, the Redmi Note 9 is also a good pick that offers a much-improved design.