Gaming phones are not for everyone, but last week’s poll shows that if you want one, the Redmi K40 Gaming is a great choice. It differs from the rest of the K40 family (in itself quite popular) with a MediaTek Dimensity 1200 chipset replacing the Snapdragons.
It’s been on sale in China for a couple of weeks now, going for 2,000 CNY ($ 310 or so), same price as the K40 vanilla. The two share many similarities, including 120Hz OLED with HDR10 + support.
To improve response times, the gaming phone turns up the touch sampling rate from 360Hz to 480Hz and includes shoulder buttons – physical, rather than capacitive or ultrasound like some other gaming handsets.
Redmi K40 Gaming in a nutshell
The K40 Gaming also packs increased cooling and a larger battery with faster charging (5,065 mAh at 67W, up from 4,520 mAh and 33W). It is a phone that is optimized to maintain performance over long periods of time and have as short downtime as possible when it first needs to rest.
Some were concerned about the software – Xiaomi was in hot water with the US government – but it was cleaned up earlier this week so that Redmis (and other devices made by Xiaomi) should not have problems running Google software .
Other issues that people pointed out are the lack of a headphone jack (wired headphones have lower latency) and a microSD card slot (extra space for all non-gaming content). Unfortunately, there is nothing to do about these things (a more expensive Black Shark can solve the first half of these problems).
Of course, there are many who just do not care about gaming phones. And it’s fine, there are three other K40 phones to choose from (not to mention the rest of Xiaomi’s stable). The good news for the company is that very few people prefer a competing gaming phone.
