The Xiaomi Redmi lineup is one of the most affordable phone series by any manufacturer. The Redmi 4X is as basic as it gets and caters to those who want a smartphone experience but don’t want to churn out a lot of cash for it. Priced at Rs 14,500, the Redmi 4X is the essence of a budget smartphone.

iPhone 6s, but not so expensive

The Xiaomi Redmi 4x is a solid phone with its metal unibody. It gives off a premium feel which is much appreciated amongst the sea of plastic phones at this price point.

As with most Chinese phone makers, they take their inspiration from famous flagships with praised designs. The Redmi 4X takes a page from Apple’s notebook by mimicking the iPhone 6s’ design pattern. The front of the Redmi 4X looks almost identical to the iPhone except for the missing home button. Instead, there are 3 standard capacitive android buttons. A 5-inch IPS LCD screen is the highlight, taking up roughly 70% of the front of the phone. Above the screen is where the earpiece and sensors are located accompanied by the front facing selfie camera.

The back is pretty minimal, with the main camera placed at the upper left corner (just like the iPhone). Below the camera towards the middle is where the fingerprint scanner is located: a comfortable position.

Screen

The screen on the Xiaomi Redmi 4X is as basic as they come, no 1080p screen here since that’s reserved for the bigger Redmi 4 Prime. A 5-inch IPS LCD display, with the resolution being 1280*720, meaning you’ll get a passable 294ppi pixel density. The brightness of the Redmi 4X is pretty good with the outside visibility is very good considering the display type and phone tier.

Camera

Being an entry level device, there are no fancy dual camera setups on the Redmi 4X just your standard selfie and main cameras. Diving in, we have a 5MP sensor with a f/2.2 aperture with 1080p video recording. That’s pretty welcomed feature giving the price of the phone. The picture quality is as you’d expect from a basic snapper: adequate but not extraordinary.

On the back of the phone is the main 13MP camera which has a f/2.0 aperture, phase detection auto focus, touch-to-focus and an LED flash. It’s a mouthful but basically means you can take great photos in daylight. Sadly, the photo quality kind of deteriorates in the dark.

Hardware

The hardware on the Redmi 4X is pretty minimal. We have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor powering all the device tasks. It’s a basic processor with 8 cores running at 1.4GHz, but coupled with 3GB of RAM, they should get the job done for most users buying a phone this cheap. There is 32GB of internal storage available should fit most user’s needs but in case you’re feeling limited, the option to expand it is available via a microSD card. The battery in the Redmi 4X is a monstrous 4,100mAh cell which should easily last 2 days of usage. However, there is no fast charging so it’ll take its time to go up to 100%.

Redmi 4X pros:

• It has a huge battery which is a plus point for many users
• Good screen visibility for outdoor usage

Redmi 4X cons:

• None that we can complain about at this price range