Recently, the Redmi K60 Ultra went official in China as the most premium Redmi-branded smartphone to date. Despite featuring high-end features, the device carries a cheaper price tag than regular flagships.
This makes it a flagship-killer smartphone. Although there are several such handsets from fellow Chinese brands, the K60 Ultra offers certain features that make it unique.
For the unaware, the Redmi K Ultra lineup was never like this. The previous (first) two products in the series were merely an extension of the Redmi K family for the second half of the year.
However, this time around, the brand pulled off a winner. The latest Redmi K60 Ultra ticks almost all the boxes for being a flagship phone.
Let’s go through how this device came to be by taking a look at its predecessors as well as itself.
The series kicks off
The Redmi K30 Ultra was the first phone in the Redmi K Ultra lineup. It was announced at Xiaomi’s 10-year anniversary launch conference in August 2020.
It was a companion device for Mi 10 Ultra, the first-ever Xiaomi Ultra smartphone. It was not positioned as a premium product since it was actually cheaper than the Redmi K30 Pro.
The K30 Ultra differed from the K30 Pro in two aspects. It was powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 1000+ SoC instead of a Snapdragon 865 chip. Secondly, it had a 120Hz AMOLED display, making it the first Redmi K series handset with a high refresh rate OLED screen.
It is the only Redmi K Ultra phone with a pop-up camera since its siblings had it. Anyways, the best thing about it was its ¥1,999 (~$275) starting price. No other smartphone offered such a compelling feature set at this price.
Successor sets a trend
There was no Redmi K40 Ultra as the brand skipped a year. The successor arrived as Redmi K50 Ultra in August 2022.
Once again, the Ultra had a different chipset and display, in addition to a non-identical design. The handset featured a more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen SoC instead of MediaTek Dimensity 8100 and Dimensity 9000 chips like vanilla and pro models, respectively.
Though the chipset was better than its siblings, we could not say the same for the display. It flaunted a 1.5K OLED screen instead of a QHD panel. But it started a revolution of affordable 1.5K display phones from the Oppo group (Oppo, Realme, and OnePlus).
As for pricing, the Redmi K50 Ultra was not affordable like the Redmi K30 Ultra. It was introduced at the same price as the Redmi K50 Pro. This way consumers had an option of either going with Qualcomm chip and lower resolution display or MediaTek SoC and higher resolution screen.
Third time’s the charm
The Redmi K60 Ultra also comes with a different design, chip, and display when compared to its siblings. In addition to these differences, it also arrives with some features that are mostly only found on proper flagships.
The device is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 9200 Plus chip instead of the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets found inside its siblings. It is also Xiaomi’s first 24GB RAM smartphone.
Further, the display retains the 1.5K resolution from its predecessor compared to the QHD+ panel on K60 and K60 Pro. But this screen not only offers a faster 144Hz refresh rate but also 2,880Hz PWM frequency and 2,600 nits local peak brightness level.
Apart from the flagship-level bright display, the Redmi K60 Ultra is even IP68-rated for dust and water resistance. It is the first Redmi phone with proper ingress protection.
Finally, it is Xiaomi’s first handset to come with five years of guaranteed software support. The product is said to receive four Android updates and five years of security updates.
Regardless of all the aforementioned upgrades over its predecessors and siblings, the Redmi K60 Ultra is actually more affordable than them. It starts at just ¥2,599 (~$355).
Thus, in the third generation, the Redmi K Ultra lineup has upgraded to an almost proper flagship smartphone status despite carrying an affordable price tag.
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