Xiaomi Mi 9T/Redmi K20 Review

Performance

The Xiaomi Mi 9T/Redmi K20 is based on the 8nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 mobile platform. It features an octa-core Kryo 470 CPU built on the latest Arm Cortex Technology. The CPU has a dual-cluster architecture with 2x gold 2.2GHz cores and 6x silver 1.8GHz cores. An Adreno 618 GPU manages the graphics, offers 25% higher performance than the Snapdragon 710 and supports Vulkan 1.1 with 20% lower power than Open GL ES. The Mi 9T is equipped with a 6GB of double-channel LPDDR4X RAM clocked at 2133MHz and 64GB/128GB of UFS 2.1 storage. The Redmi K20 also offers an 8GB RAM version and storage up to 256GB. We are reviewing a 6GB+64GB version of Mi 9T. Of the 64GB onboard, 51GB are available to the user. On the Mi 9T/Redmi K20 and Mi 9T Pro/Redmi K20 Pro Xiaomi has provided an 8-layer stacked graphite cooling system for improved heat dissipation. On the software front, the devices include a system-level optimization with the Mi Turbo - the underlying optimization technology of the system which also protects it against ageing. It offers defragmentation for I/O performance optimization and application startup speed optimization. For gamers, Xiaomi has also included the Game Turbo 2.0 acceleration which mobilizes resources to bring improved gaming experience. Game Turbo supports perceived complex game scenarios, intelligently schedules system resources, customizes touch parameters during gaming, and supports custom game display enhancements. More specifically, these features include support for shooting game 4D touch, display CPU usage, GPU occupancy, FPS control, one-click switching network card, information screen floating, game performance enhancement, optimized touch response, custom edge suppression range, turning off automatic brightness, three-finger screen capture, eye protection mode, etc. Our review unit scored 211088 points in AnTuTu 7 which places it on par with the Kirin 970 and higher than the Snapdragon 835 and Exynos 8895. The Geekbench 4 test unveils even more interesting results. In terms of single-core performance, our review unit outperformed the Mi MIX 2S, Mi MIX 3 and Mi 8, and other smartphones based on a Snapdragon 845 mobile platform. In terms of multi-core performance, it is below those but above the smartphones with Snapdraon 835 mobile platform. Compared to the other chipsets from the Snapdragon 7 series, the Snapdragon 730 offers significantly improved performance. The Adreno 618 GPU performs excellently and is on par with the Adreno 616 found on the Snapdragon 710 chipset. The throttling test we performed, showed that the device throttled to 91% of its max performance roughly 3-4 minutes after the test started and sustained that until the end of the test.