Xiaomi has been on a roll this year. They just rushed-released the Xiaomi 17 series in September, skipping a generation, adding more features, and doubling down on the screen, making a fortune in both traffic and sales. Then, they moved up the Redmi K90’s release to October and upgraded the Pro directly to a Max. So today, let’s take a look at how appealing this Redmi K90 Pro Max.
First Impressions
Actually, when we first got our hands on it, we were skeptical. Is this really a Redmi phone? The right-angled middle frame made of aluminum, including its 6.9-inch flat screen on the front and the back cover, the slight curve of the edges, and the smooth transition of the R-angle corners, with a thickness close to 8mm, ensure a good feel in the hand. If it weren’t for the denim color scheme and the Redmi logo this time, one would really think this is what the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max looked like before the back screen was added.
This time, besides the standard black and white colors based on fiberglass material, the newly designed tech denim caught our eye. Some friends might say, “Isn’t this just cut from a pair of jeans?” Well, actually, it doesn’t use real fabric. Instead, it uses the latest tech nano-leather to create the color and texture of denim. It feels gentle yet solid, is non-slip and reliable, and you don’t have to worry too much about heat dissipation.
Sound by Bose
The reason I haven’t mentioned the eye-catching metal deco is that next to the camera matrix cutout, “Sound by Bose” appears on the phone, which is truly rare. For ordinary phones, having dual 1115F external speakers is already a guarantee of quality.
Unexpectedly, this has a dual-voice-coil 1620 module stuffed into the back, and they collaborated with Bose to optimize the tuning and reconstruct the sound field, achieving 2.1 channel sound and compensation down to the 60 to 200 Hz frequency band on a spatially limited phone.
The Display
The entire Redmi K90 series is equipped with the same Huaxing M10 substrate and super pixels as the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max, achieving a fine display effect similar to a traditional diamond-pixel 2K screen with its 2608×1200 resolution.
At the same time, it’s more power-efficient in daily use. We measured the K90 Pro Max’s manual brightness at 880 nits and peak brightness at 1160 nits. The left, right, and top are 1.5mm, and the chin is 1.68mm. With such a great display and speaker foundation, it certainly won’t be overlooked by our friends who love gaming.
Gaming Tests
We have listed the detailed configuration table here for you to pause and view. Please give us a like. Equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and the second-generation dedicated display chip, the Redmi K90 Pro Max has the necessary conditions for playing large-scale games with super-resolution and frame interpolation. The 3D circulating cold pump cooling design and the 6700mm² cooling area provide ample support for performance release. The hardware seems to be in place, so let’s open the software and test its capabilities.
For comparison, we’ve brought in the previous generation K80 Pro, the Blue Camp’s Snapdragon performance flagship iQOO 15, and the performance benchmark of the Dimensity camp, the OPPO Find X9. First, the benchmarks. Geekbench 6 single-core score is 3582, multi-core is 10952, comfortably beating the Dimensity 9500. On 3DMark, it scored 2874, placing it in the upper-middle range among the first batch of Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 phones.
Now let’s look at gaming. In the low-load Honor of Kings ranked match test, the frame rate is nothing special to look at. The Redmi K90 Pro Max has a power consumption of 3.4 watts, but the slightly higher consumption isn’t reflected in heat generation. Its maximum body temperature is 36.4 degrees, a bit cooler than the iQOO next to it. In the moderately demanding Genshin Impact map-running test, it still easily maintains a full frame rate throughout.
The conclusion on power consumption and heat is basically the same as with Honor of Kings. The Redmi K90 Pro Max’s power consumption is a tiny bit higher, but the temperature control is better. It seems the cooling capability is quite good this time; the denim back cover didn’t add any debuffs.
In the more demanding Wuthering Waves test, the Redmi K90 Pro Max seems to be a bit unstable. Its frame rate and power consumption performance are slightly inferior to competitors, but it still maintains its cool character, with the temperature firmly kept around 40 degrees. Okay, it’s time to bring out Honkai: Star Rail. Only this level of intensity can reveal the true face of the Berserk Engine. The measured average frame rate is 58.6 fps, and the frame rate curve is significantly better than the iQOO and OPPO on the side. Of course, the price for this is power consumption and temperature
The Redmi K90 Pro Max’s power consumption reached 8.51 watts, and the temperature almost broke the 50-degree mark. We believe this kind of performance scheduling is more reasonable. It stays cool under light to medium loads and outputs without reservation under high loads. If you find it hot, you can at least add equipment like a cooling back clip to control the temperature, but conservative performance release cannot guarantee the gaming experience.
Battery & Charging
The K90 Pro Max uses the largest battery capacity in a Mi-series phone, 7560 mAh. After our cyclic test, the K90 Pro Max lasted for 11 hours and 5 minutes. Although it’s in a relatively high position on our leaderboard, among phones in the 7500 mAh class, its result isn’t particularly good. The 100W wired fast charging is standard practice, but the 50W wireless charging, same as Xiaomi’s, is not common on phones in the same positioning.
In our test, it charged to 19% in 10 minutes, 35% in 20 minutes, and took 57 minutes for a full charge. Although the battery capacity is much larger than before, looking at this charging speed, I still occasionally miss the days of using 120W or even 200W on a Redmi. BTW, the K90 Pro Max is equipped with bypass charging for gaming, and all-scenario bypass charging will be pushed out later.
Camera System
The main camera of the Redmi K90 Pro Max is the 50-megapixel Light Hunter 900, with a 1/1.31-inch sensor, a theoretical dynamic range of 13.5 stops, paired with an F1.67 large aperture that brings increased light intake. The hardware upgrade is quite substantial. The telephoto is an equivalent of 115mm with the JN5 sensor, an F2.0 aperture, and OIS.
Sound familiar? That’s right, the K90 Pro Max’s camera module is composed of the main camera from the standard Xiaomi 17 and the telephoto from the Pro. Although from a user perspective, jumping directly from 1x to 5x between the main and telephoto lenses isn’t very reasonable, in terms of materials used, this is indeed Redmi’s strongest imaging performance and its biggest improvement yet.
So let’s bring in the previous generation and competitors to see how it really stacks up. Since the differences during the day aren’t obvious and time is limited, we’ll just compare the night shots directly. In terms of color style, the K90 Pro Max is quite close to its bigger brother. And because there’s no Leica involvement, the color reproduction in some sample photos is even better than Xiaomi’s. However, there’s more sharpening, and the highlight suppression isn’t as extreme as on the Xiaomi and iQOO.
For some scenes, retaining the highlights makes the image brightness appear more realistic. But in scenes with more and complex light sources, the K90 Pro Max doesn’t look as good as its big brother. It only significantly improves when the light is really dark, triggering automatic night mode computational photography. Thanks to the Light Hunter 900 sensor, the image quality of the main camera and focal lengths below 2x is quite commendable, even stronger than the iQOO in several sample shots. However, its anti-glare and ghosting performance is rather average.
On the ultra-wide-angle front, although none of them perform exceptionally well, you can still see that the Xiaomi and K90 Pro Max retain details better than the iQOO and K80 Pro. Furthermore, the focal length has been reduced to 18mm, which isn’t much wider than the main camera.
I initially thought the K90 Pro Max’s telephoto would suffer from its small sensor and its long focal length would make it hard to get good shots, but the actual image quality is highly usable. As long as the light isn’t too dim, the image quality at 5x and above is significantly better than that of the iQOO and K80 Pro. Saying it has the best telephoto capability in the sub-brand lineup is probably not an issue.
However, it falters somewhat between 2x and 5x. In this set of 3x samples, both the Xiaomi and Redmi K90 Pro Max, which rely purely on cropping from the main camera, show slight graininess. Fortunately, advanced algorithms make them look better than the K80 Pro, which has a native 60mm small-sensor mid-telephoto lens. The best performer, of course, is the iQOO 15 with its 73mm telephoto lens. We also tested the macro capability of the telephoto lens. The K80 Pro has the highest magnification, followed by the Xiaomi and K90 Pro Max. As for the iQOO, it’s just ridiculously far away.
Final Verdict
I wonder if this Redmi K90 Pro Max is your cup of tea. In fact, the gap between it and the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max isn’t that big. The relatively weaker imaging and the lack of a back screen are exchanged for top-tier external speakers and better cooling performance. If becoming a “Pro” means adding a back screen, then the Redmi K90 Pro Max might just be the missing 17 Max from Xiaomi’s main series.
