Xiaomi has yet launched another Redmi smartphone in India in its Redmi 9 Series, the Redmi 9 Power is a budget smartphone that packs a massive 6,000 mAh battery, a 48 MP quad-camera setup, and powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 SoC. Priced at Rs 10,999, here’s what we have to say about the Redmi 9 Power in our full review.
Design, Display, & Build
The Redmi 9 Power, alongside the Redmi 9, Redmi 9 Prime, Redmi 9A, and Redmi 9i, adds to the Redmi 9 Series collection. If you look at the Redmi smartphones under the budget category, you will find a bunch of them, the Redmi 9 Power being the latest one.
Speaking of the design, the Redmi 9 Power uses the Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the front with a notch atop, the backside has a polycarbonate body with a textured surface and a huge Redmi branding on the slight left. Nothing is interesting about its design and build aside from its big Redmi label on the back, you may find it similar to the Redmi 9 Series smartphones.
Digging more about its design, the back uses a vertical camera setup with the quad lens, the back has an anti-fingerprint texture and unibody curved surface which gives a comfortable hand feel. The phone has P2i nano protection that means it can resist water splashes and light rains and that seems to be a great addition.
The size of the smartphone is slightly on the bulkier side, 198 grams and 9.6 mm thick while having a 6.53-inch display. It uses a Full HD+ IPS display with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio and 400 nits brightness. The Full HD+ panel couples with the stereo speakers available on the phone making it a multimedia device in the budget segment.
You don’t get a fingerprint scanner on the backside, rather on the sidewards mounted on the power button, similar to the Redmi Note 9 Series smartphones. The Redmi 9 Power comes with a 22.5W fast charger, a USB Type-C cable, and a silicon flexible case that appears to be made of good quality.
The bottom side has a USB Type-C port, loudspeakers, and a microphone whereas the top side has another loudspeaker making it stereo, a 3.5 mm jack, and a second microphone. The right side has a power button that doubles as a fingerprint scanner and volume keys, and the left side has a triple-slot SIM tray with a dedicated microSD card slot.
Software & UI
The Redmi 9 Power runs on Android 10 with MIUI 12 on top, the latest user interface by Xiaomi. The MIUI 12 has the new November Android Security patch dated 1st November 2020.
The user interface is loaded with features, new icons, new wallpapers, and the new Settings page. With the new software, there are several additions in the UI which also includes the bloatware. The interface is now more intuitive as compared to the older versions.
Pre-installed apps like Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, WPS Office, LinkedIn, and plenty more alongside a bunch of games and Mi apps. Most of the apps can be removed, however, you won’t be able to remove some Mi apps. The interface is smooth, the performance of the phone is good, and works flawlessly in our initial use.
There are new themes that you can make use of, new wallpapers as well. Other features like Game Turbo and Ultra Battery Saver in addition to the regular features you find on the MIUI software.
Hardware, Performance, & Gaming
On the performance side, the Redmi 9 Power packs a midrange 11nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 octa-core SoC clocked at 2.0 GHz paired with 4 GB RAM and either 64 GB storage or 128 GB storage depending on the variant.
The specs overall here are very decent and suit the price, the Redmi Note 9 on the other hand offers a MediaTek chip instead, rivals like realme Narzo 20 offers the same 12nm MediaTek Helio G85 CPU.
We performed the benchmarks on the Redmi 9 Power and it turns out that it is far better than many smartphones in this price range, take the Samsung Galaxy M21 for example which is a tad higher in price.
The Geekbench 5 benchmark gave us 314 points in a single CPU and 1351 points in multiple CPU. The GPU benchmark on the other hand gave us 368 points in the Geekbench 5 Compute.
For gaming, it equips an Adreno 610 GPU, the gaming performance on the Redmi 9 Power is fair, you won’t notice lags if you are playing casual games. For graphics demanding games, consider a smartphone with a faster GPU, the Redmi 9 Power is good for gaming for this price, not the best. We played a few games on it, take a look at the screenshot of the NFS No Limits with default graphics.
Cameras
The Redmi 9 Power packs a quad-camera setup on the back and a single camera on the front. The backside has a 48 MP AI quad-camera with the other three cameras, 8 MP wide-angle, 2 MP depth, and 2 MP macro, the front side has an 8 MP selfie camera. At this price, the Redmi 9 Power offers a quad setup with a primary camera of 48 MP which is noteworthy.
Speaking of the user interface, you get the regular Xiaomi camera app loaded with features HDR and AI, among other things. You get the Macro feature, the Vlog feature, as well as Night mode, 48 MP mode, Panorama, and more.
Photos taken with the Redmi 9 Power is surprisingly good, the 48 MP camera is a star in this segment, take a look at the photos captured from the main camera in daylight. The wide-angle camera captured a significantly wider field of view, the macro camera seems okay, nothing interesting in it, the depth mode or the portrait mode takes impressive shots, the camera is good for the price.
Redmi 9 Power Camera Samples
Battery Life
On the battery side, the Redmi 9 Power packs a massive 6,000 mAh battery with fast charging support up to 22.5W. Comparing with the smartphones in the budget segment, there’s no doubt the Redmi 9 Power is ahead of others, you will hardly find smartphones with this battery capacity.
When it comes to battery life, the Redmi 9 Power won’t disappoint you, the battery life is highly reliable, assume it to run as much as 2 days on average to moderate use. The battery offers you up to 45 hours of VoLTE calls, 13.5 hours of gaming, 215 hours of music playback, 26 hours of video playback, and 10 hours of video recording.
The big battery is aided with fast charging technology, the smartphone comes with a 22.5W fast charging adapter, however, the phone can only support up to 18W fast charging.
Verdict
The Redmi 9 Power shines with its battery performance (6,000 mAh) and its 48 MP camera. Not only it has a reliable battery life and a good 48 MP camera, but it also acts as a great multimedia device, thanks to the Full HD+ display with stereo speakers, you can binge-watch movies and TV shows on it. The Snapdragon 662 offers decent performance and the MIUI 12 perks add to the overall value, the Redmi 9 Power is a recommended buy for the price of Rs 10,999.
