Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 4: In-Depth Review of a Trendy 2025 Performance Flagship

Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 4: In-Depth Review of a Trendy 2025 Performance FlagshipOn the second day of the 2025 New Year, the highly anticipated Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 4 was officially released. As Xiaomi's opening salvo for 2025, and a flagship product for the Redmi brand's continued success, it's positioned as a "trendy performance flagship" combining high aesthetics and strong capabilities, as previously stated by Redmi brand general manager Wang Teng

Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 4: In-Depth Review of a Trendy 2025 Performance Flagship

On the second day of the 2025 New Year, the highly anticipated Xiaomi Redmi Turbo 4 was officially released. As Xiaomi's opening salvo for 2025, and a flagship product for the Redmi brand's continued success, it's positioned as a "trendy performance flagship" combining high aesthetics and strong capabilities, as previously stated by Redmi brand general manager Wang Teng. Within the Redmi lineup, the K series continues to expand into the high-end market, while the Turbo series targets younger users as a new generation of performance flagships. The Redmi Turbo 4 premieres the MediaTek Dimensity 8400-Ultra processor and features significant upgrades in design, battery, and reliability, virtually eliminating shortcomings and delivering performance comparable to flagship models, as Wang Teng promised. IT Home has obtained this new phone and presents a first-hand in-depth experience.

I. Design: The Perfect Balance of Restraint and Personality

The Redmi Turbo 4's design can be described as "restrained yet individualistic." Restraint is evident in its minimalist ID design language: a flat front and back, a small straight-edged frame, and vertically aligned dual cameras, giving it a clean and pure look. Compared to other performance-focused phones, the Redmi Turbo 4's design is remarkably understated yet unique and unconventional.

Its personality stems from its unique dual-tone back cover. The Redmi Turbo 4 features a sandblasted matte glass finish with a silky smooth feel. The dual-tone design incorporates a dense, diamond-shaped grid texture on the side with the Redmi logo, enhancing visual appeal and creating high recognition. The camera module is made of metal, featuring two cameras arranged in sequence. Hidden within are "whirlwind double ring lights" that support charging notifications, music rhythm effects, and more.

This breathing light design is a perfect blend of nostalgia and practicality. For many users, breathing lights are as important as AOD (Always-On Display). The Redmi Turbo 4's light strip not only enhances the phone's aesthetics but also its utilitywhen the phone is placed on a table, the light strip immediately draws attention to notifications or incoming calls, providing effective alerts without being overly glaring.

The Redmi Turbo 4 offers customization options in the settings, including call alerts, music rhythm effects, and app notifications. However, in the current version (2.0.3.7), app notifications only support one app, and the light effects cannot be customized. This is not a major issue, as the official release will include more customization options via OTA updates.

Due to product positioning constraints, the Redmi Turbo 4's mid-frame is still made of plastic, but the sandblasting process is refined, resulting in an excellent feel. For users prioritizing cost-effectiveness, allocating resources to configuration is undoubtedly more reasonable.

Details include an infrared sensor and speaker openings at the top of the Redmi Turbo 4's mid-frame, and a SIM card slot, charging port, and speaker openings at the bottom. The power and volume buttons are on the right side, while the left side remains clean, providing a neat visual effect.

The Redmi Turbo 4 also features an upgraded drop-resistant body structure, enhanced reliability, and boasts IP66+IP68+IP69K waterproof ratingsa "waterproof grand slam." Furthermore, it's equipped with an in-display fingerprint sensor, NFC functionality, dual speakers, a linear motor, dual-frequency GPS, and tri-band BeiDou navigation.

The front features a 6.67-inch OLED display with a 1.5K resolution, supporting LTPS technology, 500nit typical brightness, 1400nit full-screen peak brightness, and 3200nit local peak brightness. It supports a 120Hz refresh rate and a 480Hz touch sampling rate (2560Hz instantaneous touch sampling rate). The screen has 12-bit color depth, supports HDR10+ and wet-hand touch, and incorporates Xiaomi's QingShan eye protection technology, using 1920Hz high-frequency PWM dimming + quasi-DC dimming technology.

In terms of screen design, the Redmi Turbo 4 adopts a flat design with slightly curved edges. When the screen is on, the bezels are visually even on the top, left, and right sides, with a slightly wider chin; however, considering its price point, this is acceptable.

The Redmi Turbo 4 has a thickness of 8.4mm (with screen protector) and weighs over 200g (with screen protector). Compared to its predecessor, the weight has increased considerably, but considering the battery capacity increase to 6500mAh (1500mAh more than the Turbo 3) and the overall improvements in configuration and reliability, this weight gain is acceptable.

Accessories include a 90W charger (A to C interface), protective case, and SIM ejector pin.

II. Performance: The Powerful Performance of the Dimensity 8400-Ultra

On November 23, 2024, MediaTek officially launched the Dimensity 8400 all-large-core processor. Redmi simultaneously announced that the Redmi Turbo 4 would be the world's first to feature the Dimensity 8400-Ultra processor. In terms of specifications, the Dimensity 8400-Ultra is identical to the Dimensity 8400. The "Ultra" designation can be understood as a result of joint definition by Redmi, MediaTek, and ARM, signifying Redmi's deeper optimization of the Dimensity 8400.

The Dimensity 8400's biggest highlight is its all-large-core design, matching the Dimensity 9000 series flagship chips. It features eight A725 CPU large cores, double the L2 cache, a 50% increase in L3 cache, and a 25% increase in system cache. The GeekBench 6.2 multi-core score reaches 6722 points. The debut of the Cortex-A725 all-large-core architecture results in a 10% increase in single-core performance and a 35% reduction in power consumption.

Built using TSMC's 4nm process, the Dimensity 8400 uses 13.25GHz A725 core, 33.0GHz A725 cores, and 42.1GHz A725 coresall A725 large cores. AnTuTu V10.3 scores can reach 1,806,141 points, with a 44% reduction in CPU multi-core power consumption compared to the previous generation Dimensity 8300.

In terms of GPU, the Dimensity 8400 uses the Arm Mali-G720 GPU, offering a 24% increase in peak performance and a 42% reduction in power consumption compared to its predecessor. It supports hardware ray tracing and variable rate shading technologies, with a 40% bandwidth optimization. The Dimensity 8400's GPU performance is unprecedented in the sub-flagship market.

IT Home conducted a series of performance tests on the Redmi Turbo 4, including benchmark software tests like Geekbench 6, AnTuTu, and 3DMark. Geekbench 6 scores were 1655 points for single-core and 6592 points for multi-core; AnTuTu scores exceeded 1.81 million points; and storage test (16+512GB version) scores reached 240,000 points, reaching UFS 4.0 levels.

Compared to the Dimensity 8300, the Redmi Turbo 4 shows improved single-core performance and a significant improvement in multi-core performance, even approaching the multi-core scores of some Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processors. Considering its price point, this performance is remarkable.

In 3DMark tests, the Redmi Turbo 4 scored 12,874 points, with 87.3% stability in 20 rounds of heavy stress testing, demonstrating excellent performance release.

• For gaming tests, IT Home chose Genshin Impact and Nishuihan mobile games. In Genshin Impact at the highest graphics quality and 60fps, over a 20-minute test, the Redmi Turbo 4 averaged 59.6fps with a stable frame rate index of 0.9, easily handling high-load scenarios. Average power consumption was 5.6W, with a maximum temperature of approximately 42C (located in the camera area).

• In Nishuihan at high graphics quality and 60fps, the Redmi Turbo 4 averaged 59.3fps, with brief frame drops during scene loading, but overall performance was good. Power consumption was below 5W, and heat generation was relatively low.

Overall, the Redmi Turbo 4's Dimensity 8400-Ultra provides powerful performance. While not a flagship-level device, the gaming experience is excellent and