Since ancient times, the mid-range mobile phone market has been a must for all manufacturers. In the early years, Xiaomi, Coolpad, 360, LeTV, Meizu and other manufacturers are fighting each other here, and this year, as the mobile phone market continues to roll in, the top five mobile phone manufacturers in the domestic market share have invariably chosen brand upgrades and entered the high-end flagship field. The vacant mid-market cake is mostly taken over by manufacturer sub-brands.
Among the sub-brands in the mid-market, Redmi is undoubtedly the best growing manufacturer. Through the digital series to take root in the 100 yuan market, through the Note series to sit firmly in the 1,000 yuan market, through the K20 series in the high-end reputation, and then use the K40 series to consolidate the image of the people, although there are inevitable bumps along the way, Redmi is still firmly moving forward, and its products are also sought after by many users.
By 2021, Redmi mobile phones ushered in the new K50 series, which contains three mobile phones, namely K50, K50 Pro and K50 Esports Edition. Consistent with the previous generation, the Redmi K50 series still adopts a "dual flagship" strategy, and the three products use different processor configurations; unlike the previous generation, the Redmi K50 series released this time pays more attention to the ultimate stacking on the core hardware.
Among the three products released this time, the Redmi K50 is undoubtedly the "flagship goalkeeper" in the product line, and Lei Technology also got a Mirage (blue) redmi K50 for the first time. What was the actual experience of this model? Our assessment may tell you the answer.
The design is acceptable, and the three circumferences are fully increased
"Why did you buy the Redmi K series?"
"Because the sex can be strong", "because the price is very good", "because... It's good in every way, and it's cheap."
If you ask consumers of Redmi K series products on the e-commerce platform, you will get a lot of answers. Perhaps in the past, the label of Redmi mobile phone cost performance and bucket machine is too strong, and everyone generally does not have too deep impression on the appearance design of Redmi mobile phones, or the expectation value will not be too high, which is also a commonality of the current cost-effective bucket machine on the market.
Even so, the Redmi K50 series is remarkable in terms of design. Redmi K50 has a total of ink feathers (black), silver (silver), mirage (blue), glow (green) four colors, xiaolei in the hands of this is the mirage (blue) version, the entire back cover using gradient color treatment, under the influence of lighting will gradually transition from blue to pink, the overall look and feel and Redmi K40 series of mirage color matching is somewhat similar.
The back cover material of Redmi K50 is a relatively common glossy glass, although the appearance of this bright glass is not bad, but it loses the advantage that AG glass is not easy to retain fingerprints, and can only be said to have a sacrifice. Inherited from the Redmi K40 series of plastic frames, the use of a new scrub process for polishing, while reducing the weight of the product can also bring a good texture, it can be said that it is a reasonable choice to ensure the cost performance of the product.
Compared with the product design, many consumers are more concerned about the size and feel of the product. For a product equipped with an oversized battery, the thickness of the 8.48mm fuselage and the weight of the fuselage of 201g are reasonable levels, but it is slightly pressed in the hand. The excellent transition between the glass back cover, the injection frame and the screen bracket left a very good impression on Xiao Lei.
On the side of the fuselage, the Redmi K50 is equipped with fingerprint recognition function keys and volume adjustment buttons. Obviously, this product still chooses the side fingerprint design, which is still rare on the flagship machine. Of course, in addition to helping users quickly unlock the phone, this fingerprint recognition button also has more custom operations, such as directly opening the Alipay health code, WeChat scan and other functions or some system applications, which is convenient for the user's daily use.
Turning to the back, the Redmi K50 also looks a little different in the lens module design. In the rectangular stepped matrix, a three-shot module wrapped in a circular star ring is accommodated, and the overall bulge amplitude is quite OK. Personally, I think that although the camera module design of the machine is not as good as the design level of the Xiaomi Mi 12 series, it is still recognizable.
Top straight screen, popularize 2K
In terms of screens, the Redmi K50 series has reached new heights.
Redmi K50 is equipped with a 6.67-inch Samsung flexible AMOLED direct screen, resolution up to 3200 * 1440, 526PPI, support 120Hz refresh rate, 1200nit peak brightness, JNCD ≈0.36, deltaE ≈ 0.45, support AI HDR, Dolby Vision, true color display, global DC dimming, ambient color temperature sensing, ultra-resolution touch technology, excellent paper parameters.
Generally speaking, the mobile phone at this price point will not have too much material on the screen, and the vast majority of competitors at the same price may only be able to do things with a high refresh rate, but the screen of the Redmi K50 has really brought surprises to Xiao Lei in terms of comprehensive performance.
In addition to some paper parameters such as refresh rate, resolution, etc. at a high level, in the naked eye perception, Redmi K50 brings us a sense of transparency and accurate color that is not available in this price segment of the product, if you look at a few more mobile phones at the same price, I believe you can easily conclude: this is definitely an excellent screen that far exceeds the performance of the same price rival.
From the actual display effect, Redmi K50 the whole screen color is gorgeous, delicate and transparent, uniform color, whether it is picture browsing or video viewing, this screen can always present the color relatively realistically, almost no color cast, the experience is absolutely "leapfrog". It is not difficult to see that Redmi is quite deliberate in wanting to make this screen a differentiated selling point of the whole machine, so that the comprehensive strength of the whole machine can be further improved.
How does the Tianji 8100 perform?
In terms of performance, Redmi K50 debuted the MediaTek Tianji 8100 processor, which uses TSMC's 5nm mature process to build, the CPU part contains 4 2.85GHz A78 cores + 4 2.0GHz A55 cores, the GPU is Mali-G610, compared to the TSMC 4nm process of Tianji 9000, although the performance is weak but the energy consumption ratio is more outstanding, it is also a chip that has attracted much attention on the market.
Not only that, Redmi K50 is also equipped with LPDDR5 + UFS 3.1 storage combination, large X-axis linear motor, Dolby Atoms stereo dual speakers, support 32000 * 14400 ultra-resolution touch technology, game 4D vibration and other technologies, and strive to create a better game experience for players.
Next, the author first used the Antutu review, 3DMark, Geekbench 5, and AndroBench to test the performance of the Redmi K50:
In the Antutu review, the total score of Redmi K50 is 840704, ranking in the top 88% of the Android mobile phone performance list of Antutu, and the performance has surpassed the Snapdragon 870 and Snapdragon 888 processor models, which shows that the computing power of the Tianji 8100 is indeed outstanding.
In the 3DMark "Wild Life" project that tests GPU performance, the Redmi K50 scores 5726 points, which is basically the same as that of models equipped with Snapdragon 888 such as OnePlus 9 and realme GT2. In the "Wild Life Stress Test" project, the Redmi K50 has an optimal score of 5753, a minimum score of 5329, a stability of more than 90%, and still excellent performance under high load conditions, and the GPU pressure resistance is very good.
In the Geekbench 5, which tested CPU performance, the Redmi K50 had a single-core score of 932 and a multi-core score of 3622. For comparison, the multi-core score of the previous generation product Redmi K40 equipped with snapdragon 870 processor is 3282, the multi-core score of redmi K40 Pro, the predecessor product equipped with Snapdragon 888 processor, is 3450, and the multi-core score of Snapdragon 8100 is close to that of Snapdragon 888.
From the paper data, the REDMI K40's CPU, GPU, storage, and memory running scores are very good, compared with the previous generation of products, there is a certain improvement, and in the current Android mobile phone market is in the upstream level. So, can the strength of paper data continue to run the three major games of "Glory of Kings", "Peace Elite" and "Original God"? I put this to the test.
In the "Glory of Kings" test, the author turned on the 120 frame mode and opened the game under ultra-high resolution and extreme graphic conditions.
The data shows that during the half-hour test, the Redmi K50 basically stabilized the full frame rate between 115-120 frames, and the frame rate dropped to about 90 frames once. In addition, in the course of the game, both the character position and the skill release are smooth, and there is no stuttering.
In the "League of Legends Mobile Game" test, the author used special means to open the 120 frame mode and played the game under the theoretical best picture conditions.
The data shows that during the half-hour test, the average frame rate of the whole game was stable at 115.6 frames, of which several frame rate fluctuations were caused by the later team battles, and the line period could basically be maintained at the level of 120 frames, and the overall game experience was still very smooth.
In the Original God test, the author turned on the 60-frame mode and played the game under the theoretical best picture conditions.
The data shows that during the nearly half-hour test, the Redmi K50 basically stabilized the full frame rate between 52-60 frames. In the case of turning on the performance mode, the frame rate of fighting monsters in the wild will basically not fluctuate, but when entering the city and the copy, because of the large burden, there will still be some frame rate fluctuations, but overall the game experience is not bad.
As for the heat problem that everyone is concerned about, in the environment of 25 ° C room temperature, Redmi K50 tried to play "Glory of the King" for an hour, the entire fuselage has a slight heat feeling, the heat source mainly comes from the upper thumb of the whole machine, the back is near the camera, the fuselage temperature comes to about 44 ° C, which belongs to the normal game level.
I have to say that although Tianji 8100 is a chip positioned in the middle range, its performance is indeed beyond Xiao Lei's expectations. With the blessing of TSMC's 5nm process process, the overall game experience of the Redmi K50 is basically no different from the Snapdragon 888 flagship mobile phone that has been tested before, and the performance in terms of heat is far beyond the previous generation, and users who like to play games can rest assured.
Mediocre camera, super long battery life
As a cost-effective flagship, the Redmi K40 rear adopts a relatively common three-camera solution, which is a 48-megapixel main camera (IMX582), an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens (119 ° field of view), and a 2-megapixel macro lens, and the configuration is even slightly reduced compared with the previous generation.
However, this time Redmi for the first time in the mobile phone to add OIS optical image stabilization technology, turn on the function, can make handheld shooting will not produce blurry phenomenon, the effect is very obvious in sports photography, in the telephoto shooting process The effect is also immediate. In order to measure the performance of this product in the actual scene, the author took the following photos and chose to speak with pictures.
In the daytime light is sufficient, the shooting effect of this 48 million pixel main camera is quite OK, from the following main camera sample we can see that the main camera imaging effect of Redmi K50 is clear enough, the details in the picture have been well restored, you can record the clear scene details, the overall color of the photo is realistic, not the kind of saturation full of the picture effect.
In the case of night, the performance of the machine is more general. In the close-up range, the Redmi K50 can achieve a good suppression of the light when shooting low-light scenes; in the long-range range, although the Redmi K50 suppresses the distant lights as much as possible, the effect presented is no longer dazzling, but the picture clarity is quite subtle, the shadow details cannot withstand amplification, and it is more difficult to perform in the face of low-light scenes.
Limited by the quality of hardware, the macro lens and ultra-wide angle lens of the machine are basically just a picture of music. We use an ultra-wide angle lens for shooting, you can see that the edge distortion of the finished film is well controlled, as for this macro lens, although the effect is average, it also has a certain degree of playability when shooting by hand.
(Ultra wide angle lens)
(Macro Lens)
As for optical image stabilization, we turned on the "Super Image Stabilization" function and tied the phone to an electric vehicle with a travel speed of 30km/h for video shooting. As you can see, the stabilization effect during shooting is still good, basically there is no up and down shake, but limited by the size of the main camera sensor, the actual picture quality of the video will not be too good.
To sum up, the actual photo performance of the Redmi K50 is decent, there is nothing eye-catching, but it can also meet most of the photographic scenes in daily life.
In terms of battery life, in order to cope with the battery life burden brought by the 2K screen, the Redmi K50 has a built-in 5500mAh single-cell battery, which can effectively reduce the threat of battery phobia to users. In terms of charging, Redmi K50 supports 67W wired fast charging, which is also the more standard wired fast charging in the current price point products, Redmi claims that this charger can fully charge the entire battery in 48 minutes.
Here we use the "Thunder Technology Endurance Simulation Test Scenario" to simply test its endurance, in the case of unplugged cards, connected to Wi-Fi, and opened equalization mode, after one hour of "League of Legends", one hour of "Peace Elite", two hours of Bilibili and Weibo a total of four hours of high-intensity use, the remaining about 55%. For medium and light use scenarios, Redmi K50 can basically last for one day without pressure, if it is used heavily, it is inevitable to recharge more than one day.
After a four-hour heavy battery life test, I continued to use the Redmi K50 until the battery ran out and shut down automatically. Then connect the official charging cable and charging head to start the charging test. The data shows that the Redmi K50 can be charged with 47% of the power in 20 minutes and fully charged in 51 minutes. For this 5500mAh battery, the charging speed is already a first-line level at this price point.
Summary: The "flagship goalkeeper" who pursues performance
merit:
1. The first Tianji 8100 has excellent performance;
2, the standard 2K screen, the display effect is eye-catching;
3. 67W fast charge + 5500mAh battery, long battery life;
shortcoming:
1, the fuselage texture is slightly mediocre;
2. Scanning the code level of the three-camera module;
Overall, the performance of the Redmi K40 in the process of use is satisfactory. Whether it is screen perception, daily experience or game battles, the performance of the Redmi K50 is close to the flagship machine, although there is a little flaw in taking photos, but counting the starting price of yuan, this product is bound to bring a lot of challenges to other mobile phones at the same price.
In Xiao Lei's view, Redmi K50 is a quasi-flagship product that is a good choice and understands its selling points very well, on the basis of providing excellent 2K screens, by abandoning the thin and light body design, in exchange for a 5500mAh super battery and better heat dissipation capabilities. If you just want a powerful workhorse and don't want to spend too much money, the Redmi K50 is a good choice.